The Myth of Collective Ownership - Video Transcript and Sources

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I go over the myth of "collective ownership" and explain why it's a performative contradiction.

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Transcript

The Myth of Collective Ownership

The idea of collective ownership is a common trope, especially, when people use the word “public” to describe anything that relates to the state and democracy.
Public roads.

Public parks.

Public schools.

And so on.

And many will also use collective ownership constructs when engaging in joint purchases, such as a married couple jointly owning a home, or friends engaged in a boat share where they each contribute a portion of funds to purchase the boat and share ownership in it.

But are these labels really accurate to empirical reality?

And can libertarians really support this collective framework of “ownership” regardless of public or private status?

To understand the issues, we first need to understand what “ownership” means in libertarian theory.

To be an owner in libertarian property rights norms means that a person has the highest claim over a subject property.

For example, if a person owns a laptop computer, they can:

Use the laptop within the bounds of their own property.

Not use the laptop.

Exclude others from using the laptop.

Improve the laptop using their own property.

Destroy the laptop.

Sell the laptop to a willing buyer.

Gift the laptop.

Or even abandon the laptop so long as it respects others property rights.
As you can see here, this bundle of concepts is what makes “ownership” that specifically defined thing.

It’s a set of actions that others socially view as respectable and accepted if someone “owns” something.

When it comes to the “public” sphere, it’s quickly seen where these rights and abilities can come into conflict.

If you go to a public park, and sit on a public bench, you will inherently exclude anyone else from the bench who tries to sit where you are sitting.

Now, if you are the owner, that is acceptable because you have the highest right to exclude others.

But, if the other person is also an “owner,” as a member of the public, how can they have the highest right of use if you also have that same right?

It’s clearly impossible.

You cannot have two people be equal owners because each person’s act of exclusion violates the other person’s ownership ability for themselves to exclude.

This creates a conflict over the scarce resource because two supposed owners cannot effectively meter their ownership rights over the public property item.

Which highlights an important fact: “publicly owned property” is a farce.
It’s an oxymoron pairing of words like “small crowd,” or “crash landing,” or “same difference.”

The idea of the “public” “owning” is a contradiction because the discreet members of the public cannot enact their wishes individually without coming into irreconcilable conflict.

And we know, in empirical reality, that if someone does try to enact full ownership rights, like intentionally destroying the prior mentioned park bench, they will be arrested for vandalism by state police.

Which then highlights what is truly taking place: The government acts as the ultimate controlling “owner” while using obfuscation of language to get people to believe they are owners, when they are, in fact, not.

This lingual trick is a ploy to deceive people into believing that they have power and control over these resources when it’s really the state.

We now clearly know that “public ownership” is a farce because each person cannot effect his or her ownership rights.

So how does this thinking play out in non-state situations?

Marital property is a good example of this problem when using “ownership” to describe what are contradictions in rights and conflicts of interest.

For example, it is common for a married couple to have a home jointly titled in each of their names.

In the state legal paradigm, this legal ownership means each person has the right to use, modify, and sell the house.

However, conflict comes into view when one person wants to perform an action the other does not wish to have happen.

If the husband wants to paint a room a certain color, and the wife does not, they cannot both have their wishes met at the same time as owners.

The husband could start painting blue, and the wife could immediately start painting the room back to its original white.

Neither has their property ownership desire respected because they both are in perfect competition of ownership rights.

Normally, if a non-owner tried to paint a wall, for example, a complete stranger breaking in and spray painting, the homeowner would have the right to use force to stop and remove the stranger.

If both husband and wife are owners though, who is justified to use force to stop the other?

The husband supposedly has the right to paint, but so does the wife.

The husband cannot use force to stop his wife, and the wife cannot use force to stop her husband, without denying each person’s property right to paint.

When a husband and wife disagree to the point of divorce, courts will engage in partition actions where the court forcibly sells property and splits the proceeds, depriving both the husband and the wife of their physically scarce resources, in this example, the house.

As you can see, people can use language to describe actions, but language cannot overcome the empirical limitations of scarcity.

Whether public, or private, “ownership” must be unitary, that is, given to a sole person, to avoid this tragedy in ownership conflicts.

Calling something “public” or “jointly owned” will not magically erase the ultimate conflict over scarce resources.

Those who want to create arrangements for shared use or shared space can do so using alternative means through contracting or creating a fictious entity, like a corporate form, with decision rights clearly laid out.

In those cases, there will be a specific owner with ultimate decision mechanisms, either human, or fictious.

And when someone owns something that is in a shared arrangement, their ownership will be over the corporate share itself, not the subject property.

This not only helps to reduce conflict over scarce resources, but it helps people clearly understand who has the ultimate ownership rights, and why, based on specific agreement.

As for the tragedy of the public commons, this can only be undone through privatization.

Until state-controlled assets are privatized, there will be never-ending conflict over how “public property” is used, with people battling each other though democracy and town hall meetings, using majoritarianism to force the use of spaces and buildings toward specific ends.

If we want to reduce conflict and help restore ethical incentives, we must respect true ownership through discrete, specific, individual property rights for all.