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DispatchBulletinOpinion

by Margno. . 9 reads.

Property Rights

Tl; dr: You don't have any.

1. The owner of an object is the one who creates it or the one to whom the previous owner transfers his ownership.
1a. Ownership is a moral right to legitimate control.
1b. It is not equivalent to simple control, else theft would be impossible.
1c. Ownership must be transferrable, because in order for a right to control to be absolute, it must extend to a right to cede one's control under such circumstances as one wishes.
1d. Control can be given by the owner to another without ceding ownership, as in the case of the trust, bank, and the servants described by Jesus in Matthew 25: 13.
2. An object can have only one owner.
2a. Jesus said that one cannot serve both God and money, by the explanation that "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other." If this is true, then it must also be the case that money cannot serve both God and man.
2b. Two people cannot simultaneously have the right to control the same object, because where their wills conflict, one must win out over the other, in which case that is the owner.
2c. Even if two wills are exactly the same, if the usage of an object in consistence with the two wills derives its morality from one of the wills and not the other, it is the property of the one.
2d. Any other system which may be devised to determine the usage of an object in the case of conflict, (including voting, the taking of lots, or consensus decision making,) results in the ownership of the object falling, not to any individual, but to the group. Even so, it is the exclusive property of the group: those outside the group have no right to it.
3. God is the original owner of the universe and man.
3a. God is the creator of the universe, man, his will, his reason, and the concept of right and wrong.
3b. Nothing described in Genesis with the exception of the Sabbath was made for man, but for the glory of God, and man was made as its gardener. It was necessary for God to explicitly give man permission to eat from the garden.
3c. The recombination of owned objects by one's slaves, (or "employees working on company time," to use the modern terminology) using creative faculties, will, and power which one has granted to them, cannot produce anything which one does not own.
4. God has not ceded his ownership to men.
4a. Ownership involves a moral entitlement to use one's property in accordance with one's own will.
4b. God's claim on man is a total claim without reservation: that every aspect of his life must be in consistency not with his own will but with God's will.
4c. This cannot be understood as a case of God once and for all correcting the will of the individual, whereafter he may be his own master and have his own property, because the will is not allowed to remain itself, but must be matched to the will of God; therefore the will of man is in and of itself inconsequential, and only the will of God is consequential. Even when man's will is consistent with the will of God, it is only because it is consistent with the will of God that it resembles the right, not because it is itself; the right is not dependent on man's will and man has no power over it.
4d. Such a claim is inconsistent with any moral entitlement to have one's own will done concerning property or anything else.
4e. Therefore the property of a slave is the property of his master, and not his own.
5. Man is the steward of everything under his control.
5a. No power is given to man outside of God's control, for he has absolute control over one's circumstances and opportunities, and lacks only control over one's choices.
5b. Therefore God has given some control over the universe over to man, but he has retained his ownership.
5c. A steward has no moral right to use his master's property in accordance with his own will, but has a moral responsibility to use his master's property in accordance with his master's will.

In conclusion: God is the exclusive owner of all things; the only moral consideration concerning property is whether some usage thereof is in accordance with the will of God, it is irrelevant whether it is in accordance with the will of any man; among men there is no negative liberty to do as one pleases regarding one's property; and among men there is no distinction between legitimate and illegitimate control, independently of the question of whether or not an object is used accordance with God's will.

PostScript 1: The Lockean proviso cannot be used to grant property to man either, as there is nothing which was originally unowned, and besides, anything becoming the property of man would immediately become the property of God, as man is owned by God.
PostScript 2: Under this operational definition of property, self ownership would equate to "the right to do exactly as one pleases" or "one's own will as the determinant of right and wrong," both of which describe God, but neither man.
PostScript 3: "Theft" as it is generally understood is not necessarily wrong, as an object's "owner" is not its true owner. One has a moral responsibility to "steal" wherever relevant while using everything within one's control in accordance with the will of God. However, actual theft, which is theft from God, is categorically wrong. One steals from God when one represents some object as his own, instead of God's, or uses some object in accordance with his own will, and not the will of God.

Margno

Edited:

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