government theory

Chapter 31 On Property (2)
34．God has given the world to men in common, for their benefit, that they may derive from it as much as possible the convenience of life, and we cannot suppose that it was God's intention that the world should remain in common forever without cultivation.God has given the world to the use of industrious and rational men (and labor entitles men to it), not to the looting and plundering of men who want to quarrel and strife.Whoever has at his disposal something as good as that which has been appropriated, need not complain, nor should interfere with what others have labored to improve.If he does, he wants to take advantage of other people's labor, but he has no right to do so; he does not want the land which God has given him to work with There remains land as good as his own, and much more than he knows how to use or his industry can bring to bear.

35．Yes, they have both money and commerce in England, or in any other populous country, but no one has a right to enclose or appropriate any part of public land there without the consent of all the co-owners. For private use; the reason is that this is a contract, that is, the laws of the country are left to the public and are inviolable.This land is common to some, but not to all mankind; it is the common property of the country or the parish.Moreover, the remaining land after such enclosure is different for the other co-owners than it was before the enclosure, because then they could use the whole land.It was not so when men began to populate large parts of the world.The laws that restrained people at that time were, so to speak, designed to encourage people to acquire property.God commanded him, and his need compelled him to labor.It was his property, and no one could take it away where he had demarcated it.Therefore, the clearing or cultivating of the land and the possession of the land are combined.The former is the basis for the latter to obtain property rights.So God commanded man to open up the land, and gave man the power to appropriate the land for private use within this range.And human life requires labor and the means of performing it, and this necessarily leads to private appropriation.

36．The extent of property is well defined in terms of the extent of human labor and living needs.No one man's labor can open up or appropriate all the land; He does not injure his neighbor with one piece of property, because after the other has allotted his share, there remains to him as good and as much property.In ancient times, the dangers that people encountered in the wilderness at that time (the people could not live after being separated from the group) were more difficult than the difficulty of planting due to lack of land. At this time, everyone's private property was clearly limited to the appropriate so that the amount of property he may possess is not so great as to injure others.Even though the world seems overcrowded right now, the same limits can still be applied without harming anyone.

Imagine a man or a family living in such a condition (as the children of Adam or Noah when they first inhabited the world): let him plant in the open places of the interior of America, and we shall see him in the The land allocated to our own private use, within the limits we have established, is not so great that, even today, when mankind has spread to every corner of the world, it will not cause harm to others, so that they have reason to complain or think that it is because of that person. Injured itself by the appropriation of , infinitely more than the original tiny amount.Again, without labour, land has very little meaning.Legend has it that this is the case in Spain: as long as a person makes use of the land, even if he has no other rights, he is allowed to cultivate, sow and reap without interference from others.On the contrary, the inhabitants also thought that they had benefited by expending labor on the uncultivated and barren land and increasing their food needs.But in any case, this is not what I want to emphasize.I can say with great certainty that this law of property, that each person Possessing as much as you can use will still work everywhere in the world without embarrassing anyone, since there is still enough land in the world to satisfy the needs of a multiplied population.As to the formation of money, I shall gradually and fully explain.

37．What is certain is that at first people's excessive possessiveness changed the real value of things, which was determined by the utility of things for people's lives; The incorruptible yellow metal is equivalent to a large piece of meat or a large pile of grain. Although people can use all the things in nature that he can make full use of based on their labor, this is not a lot. No one is hurt, because there is still the same abundance left for those who will expend the same labor.To this I would add that a man's appropriation of land for private use on the basis of his labour, instead of reducing, increases the common accumulation of mankind.For an acre of land that is fenced and cultivated produces ten times as much product for human life as an acre of land that is equally fertile but left uncultivated, and this is a relatively conservative statement.The man who fences the land, therefore, gets more necessities of life from ten acres than from a hundred acres left undisturbed.

It may indeed be said that he gave man ninety acres of land: because of his labor ten acres now supply at least as much produce as originally supplied from a hundred acres.I have here put the yield of the improved land very low in proportion to that of the uncultivated, and its produce at only ten to one, when in reality it is nearer to a hundred to one.Will a thousand acres of American woods and uncultivated heaths, which have been left to nature never improve, cultivate, or cultivate, provide for the necessities of life of the poor and needy inhabitants as fertilely as in Devonshire? And ten acres of well-cultivated land offer as much?Whoever collects wild fruits as far as he can, kills, captures, or domesticates wild animals as much as he can, and whoever expends his energy to modify these natural products so as to change their original state, has obtained the right their ownership.But if they are destroyed in his hands without being properly utilized, as the fruit rots, or the venison, before he can consume them, he is punished for violating the common laws of nature.For in this case he violates his neighbour's entitlement, to which he no longer has a right, because they exceed his necessary use and the limits of what may be provided for his life.

38．The same limits apply to possession of land.It is his exclusive right to use all that has been cultivated, harvested, and stored before it spoils.All livestock and products that are penned, raised and utilized are also his.However, if the grass within his enclosure rots on the ground, or if the fruit he grows rots because he has not picked and stored it, the land, although he has enclosed it, will still be considered deserted. , can be owned by anyone else.So in the beginning, Cain could keep as much land as he could cultivate as his own, while still leaving enough land for Abel to pasture his sheep; a few acres would be enough for both of them.However, due to the increase of the family, their hard work has greatly increased the number of their livestock, and their possessiveness has continued to increase with the increase of needs.But before they united, settled together, and built cities, the land they used was still public land without any property rights.

Later, after consultation, they fixed the boundaries of each individual's territory, agreed on the boundaries between themselves and their neighbors, and then applied their internal laws to regulate the property rights of people in the same society.For we know that in the places where the people were first inhabited, and probably the places where the inhabitants were most concentrated at that time, until the time of Abram, the people still wandered freely to and fro with their flocks—their property— and Abram was nomadic in that country as a stranger.It is clear that there, at least most of the land is in communal ownership, and that the inhabitants do not value it, nor claim property rights beyond the portion they use.But when the same place is not enough for them to graze together and raise their sheep, they are like Abram and Lot ("Old Testament Genesis" Chapter 13, Section 36), and after a consensus, they divide and expand their pastures, to the most suitable place for them.Esau also left his father and brothers for the same reason, and went to Mount Xi'er to start a family ("Old Testament Genesis" Chapter [-], Section [-]).

39．From this point of view, we need not assume that Adam had title and property to the whole world, since such a right neither proves nor deduces from it the property of any man; It can be seen how labor enables men to establish property over small parcels of the world for their own use, where there can be no question of rights, no room for dispute.

40．The idea that property rights based on labor should prevail over communal ownership of land may seem strange until it is examined.Actually not.For it is labor that makes all things of different value.Anyone who considers the difference between an acre of land planted with tobacco or sugar-cane, wheat or barley, and an acre of land which is common and uncultivated in any way, will see that it is the improving action of labor which creates the greater part of the value.In my opinion, nine-tenths of the land products that provide convenience for life are the result of labor, and this is an extremely conservative estimate.If we rightly estimate the things at our disposal, and calculate the various costs associated with them--what comes from sheer nature, and what from labour--we shall find that, in the great majority of things, 90.00% of the nine are from labor.

(End of this chapter)