ANY MONOPOLY DEFINITION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS IS REQUIRED FOR THE RESOLUTION OF DIS

ANY MONOPOLY DEFINITION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS IS REQUIRED FOR THE RESOLUTION OF DISPUTES:

“Fundamentally speaking, it is illogical to suggest that a “polyopoly” of property rights and definitions is possible since a homogenous “monopoly” definition of property right is necessary in order to logically resolve disputes over rights, obligations and conflicts. Without property rights, disputes are logically impossible to resolve.

If there is a monopoly of property rights at any point, that monopolistic definition, in practice, is the premise for all law within that group of people. Therefore even without the institutions of administrative government, any monopoly of property rights is in fact ‘government’. Everything else is just procedure.”

This is not to say that allocating all property rights exclusively to private property is the only possible solution for a group. We’ve just learned that economic incentives to act, and to produce, and therefore to increase choice and decrease prices, can only exist where individuals have property rights. Without those rights one cannot have incentives. Or rather, without property rights, one’s incentives are balanced between numerous incentives – most of which are not productive, but consumptive.

Anarchic production and exchange require only private property rights. But if a group with homogenous interests, wants to invest in the development of commons’, most generally called ‘infrastructure’ and in particular, commons that occupy physical (unique) space, then anarchic production under a monopoly definition of property rights alone isn’t sufficient. The reason being, that commons are victim to: (a) free riding (b) competition (c) privatization, and (d) violations of the rights of others. We don’t usually consider competition a problem, but it’s a problem for investors in a commons. And governments ( one or more people) that can outlaw free riding (taxes), competition (indirect privatization), direct privatization (theft), and protect the rights of others from abuses of their property rights through the process of creating commons, turns out to be necessary, since the cost of these appropriations of common investments is higher than the willingness of people to take the risk to develop the commons. Furthermore they also consider free free riding, competition, and privatization to be immoral.

THis is not to say that private organizations can’t create commons (they can). The difference is that most commons that are other than symbolic such as monuments, are open to such free riding (consumption without compensation) and appropriation (the ancient practice of stealing of stones to build a house from public works for example) that the combination of moral objection and material theft is higher than the desire and willingness to contribute to a commons.

Furthermore, some commons, like defense, are of such high risk and cost, that near universal free riding (pacifism), or perhaps more clearly, sufficient free riding, is endemic, and therefore it’s very difficult to create both defense, and private property rights. Historically, property rights are determined by those who contribute to defense. Or more commonly, property rights are exclusively possessed by those who contribute to defense

So that is why we create governments.

The problem is not that we’ve created governments to resolve conflicts and to create commons. The problem is that the only governments that we’ve been able to create have consisted of monopolies issuing laws rather than a monopoly of property rights under which we issue contracts the terms of which are binding on all members of the group.

The problems with the organization we call government are (a) lawmaking instead of contract making (b) Monopoly Rule – whether majority, minority, or dictatorship instead of contract negotiating between factions (c) bureaucracy that is insulated from competition and therefore follows its natural incentives to expropriate from shareholders (citizens).

(Snippet from yesterday’s posting on Quora)