It's been awhile....

Since I posted, that is.  I have two excuses.  One I have been sick.  Of course, that is scant excuse, because I have been sick for nearly a year and two months with Lyme Disease and still posted.  In a greater sense we are all sick with life and dying from the moment we are born.  But I mean that I actually was sick, in the sense I had sinusitis (or a reasonable facsimile) and couldn't bear to look at any more computer screens. 

Second, I have been reading.  What a shock!  I have been trying to work on a treatise about the nature of property.  Sort of a little "hobby" of mine.  So I have been reading various textbooks, case law, and a little book by Proudhon called "What is Property?"  Some of you may have heard of it.  It is, unfortunately, not something you sit and read on a sunny afternoon, but something you read a page or two at a time and then try to assimilate. 

So what have I learned?  That there most assuredly is some sort of personal property.  My clothes, my house, etc.  These are - more or less - inviolate.  We as a society simply frown upon people ripping other people's clothes off.  No matter how outlandish they are.  And given the way many people would look without clothes, I can support this.But I have also learned that just because I possess something cannot be a basis on which I own it.  Otherwise, I would simply need to steal something to appropriate it.  Otherwise, I could own a person.  Last check, society still frowned on owning people.  In fact, in some circumstances we frown on "renting" people, owning some animals, owning some substances, etc. 

So it seems there must be some other basis for this property thing.  Of course, I am now exploring with Proudhon the idea that labor creates property.  Put in a more modern word, you own what you create.  Again, to some extent this is obviously true.  I have created this blog, I have created the thoughts, I "own" this.  I guess I could take ads and "sell" space, or try to copyright it as intellectual property.  I have done none of this.  But by the same token, what right have I to sell space on the web?  I created the blog, but not the web.  I did not create the computer on which I write.  These ideas are mine, but they are spawned by what I have read.  Nothing exists in a vacuum.  So if everthing and everyone contributed to this blog - this so-called property - then everyone owns a little piece of it.  And if everyone owns it, then NO ONE owns it. 

So I am trying to work my way through these heady ideas.  Maybe I will get somewhere.  Maybe not.  I do not pretend I have an answer.  Just as importantly, I think what I just said hits upon a truth.  There simply are different types of property with different qualities.  A tautology that can be quite helpful.  You see, the real question is not whether there is or is not property.  Obviously there is some sort of property.  Rather the question is what type of property is, or should it be?