[fergie]

I have a good friend who is a Law Professor and we had a pub conversation about the concept of "property ownership" a few years ago.

It was really mind blowing- I had never really thought about how abstract the notion of property ownership actually is, especially when you factor in inheritance. We should definitely be more critical of political systems that seek to justify concentrating property in the hands of the few.

[0x262d]

It's a pretty crazy thing. An interesting question for libertarians is where did private property originate? Like, taking libertarian assumptions, once you own it, hypothetically you can expand your property profitably. But how did the first resources and land, which before private property were all used more or less collectively, become privately owned?

[fergie]

Right? Its pretty crazy. And extrapolating further, you can show that the concept of private property is what necessitates tax, since the modern state is in large part an apparatus for enforcing the concept of private property. Therefore libertarian complaints about taxation quickly fall apart under close scrutiny.