Explain Like I'm Five

“Property” is both a heavily propagandized and culturally variable concept.

Freedom, in both definitions and practices, is heavily affected by the concept of property.

Firstly, property as defined in common usage in the west is a denial of the rights of the many in favour of a single entity. It exists as a loss of freedom in order to provide exclusivity. This is most obvious with land, and the ongoing enclosure and expropriation of the commons. It results in homeless people camped outside of empty homes, and a net loss of freedom.

Further, property as a system can easily enough be swapped out with relational concepts like stewardship and tenure, while giving up some choices to gain others. Earning the right to live on a chunk of land through merit, rather than by debt, is an example. Sharing access to expensive tools, because the employees own the company, also creates a greater amount of freedom.

Generally, people get confused in this discussion about what property is being referred to, and worry about losing their stuff, or chattel. But we’re talking about land and buildings and companies and machinery, big things that don’t make sense for one entity to control.

The harm mentioned here is specifically the freedom to own and use property. Capitalism allows many people this freedom. Losing it would make some people sad.

The core critique of capitalism is that a diminishing number of people enjoy the privileges of the owner class. Concentration of wealth is inevitable when the economy is organized around this principle of unfettered property rights for individuals.

While human society has no inherent need to be based on zero-sum transactions, simping for oligarchs to have any freedom they can buy, just codifies zero-sum outcomes into reality.

One of the more obvious issues to discuss is the balance between rights and freedoms of the person as opposed to the people. You can’t have people shitting upstream in the river, so you curtail shitting rights even on one’s own property, to give even greater freedoms to water drinkers. At what point do your freedoms steal from the freedoms of others?

If we wish to propose a new system, we must also explain what it is, and why it will do less harm and more good

There is a vast array of alternative economic systems proposed over the last century, and much of it can be labelled socialist—it’s a big ask to expect someone to describe a fully realized alternative in a forum comment, when they can just refer to the body of work on the topic.