QUESTION: Curt Doolittle, how do you reconcile usufructs with Propertarianism?
ANSWER: Just for everyone’s benefit, lets understand what these things mean:
DEFINITIONS
– Commons (common ownership) – where the three rights of ownership are held by more than one individual:
1 – Usus (use) The right to use or enjoy a commons, directly and without altering it. (Walking in a Park)
2 – Fructus (the fruits of) is the right to derive profit from a commons. (Selling the blueberries you have grown in the park).
3 – Abusus (abuse), the right to transfer, consume, or destroy. (Selling off a piece of the park, or building a home on it. So Abusus consists of two categories of rights
……(a) Right of transfer. (Emancipation) or ‘Mancipio’,
……(b) Right to consume or destroy, or ‘Abusus’.
– Ownership: (monopoly) Possession of all three rights determines ownership.
USUFRUCTUS
The right to use and bear the fruits of some asset without the right to transfer, consume, or destroy it.
Usufruct is technically how land is treated in almost all civilizations: land is a commons distributed via some set of property rights or other (including none), and some set of limited ownership rights are transferred to individuals.
Under anglo saxon and current property rights I have the right also to transfer, even if I do not possess the right to destroy or consume. (ie: pollute).
So while Abusus means an abuse of the commons (Privatization), in the west the right of transfer is separate from the right of privatization, for example just as bitcoin is a fractional asset (divisible), in our western civilization, land is also a allocated as a fractional (divisible) asset. (A fairly uncommon thing as it turns out).
So in the west we would separate the following rights in any commons.
- Usus, 2) Fructus, 3) ‘Mancipo’, 4) Abusus
HOW DO I RECONCILE USUFRUCTUS
These are all just properties of contract. Propertarianism does not allow for incalculable statements of any kind since it is non-operational, undecideable, and therefore this allows for involuntary transfer – and therefore any contractual commons must possess an enumerated set of shareholders, with specifically articulated rights.
I can conceive no conditions under which Abusus – destruction of land (pollution) – can exist as a declared right by any shareholders.
Basic argument is this: those who defend the land own the land, and allocate Usus, Fructus, and Mancipio to fellow shareholders, but never Abusus.
Now I am pretty sure I know all the directions anyone could run with this but I am confident I can cover all objections.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev