Property and Ownership

0:00When we consider the nature of man, we think of him as a rational being using his mind to make decisions and reaching decisions that entail his actions as a result of basic drives and desires that he has. In addition to being a rational being and using his mind, man is also a physical being. In a sense, I suppose this is unfortunate. Many of us would like to be unburdened by the weight of the flesh. Often living in this physical world appalls us because the flesh is heavy and it makes many demands, and we just wish we didn't have to deal with it, but we do.

0:53So far, as I am aware, I have never yet met a disembodied mind coming down the street, and every time I have met a body, there has always been a mind with it. So apparently it goes together. We get the body and the mind, and this seems to be the nature of man. Now if man is to survive, then he is going to have to do certain things with his body. Just as it is important for him to know how to use his mind, it is important for him to I dare say you have studied this elsewhere and that it is a very fascinating subject and perhaps you know far more about it than I do.

1:39The thing that concerns me is man as an acting creature that is able to fulfill his desires and get what he wants out of life, and so I'm going to look at it a little differently perhaps than the mere biological approach. I'm going to look at man as both a producer and a Consumer. You see, for human beings to live physically, for us to sustain our lives, there are certain natural laws that we have to obey. As I see it, this is not a matter of ethics or a matter of morals. It is simply a matter of fact. If I want to stay alive, I am going to have to ingest a certain amount of food. Now, I have certain choices as to the kind of food and whether Whether it will be highly seasoned and served warm or cold, I have a range of choices, but I have no choice here. If I am to survive—and I have a choice on that, I might decide not

2:43to—but assuming that I am going to survive, I now confront a natural law. To survive, I must have a certain amount of food. There is no argument here. We don't have to discuss I am confronted with a natural fact. The same is true with respect to sleep. Man by his nature is a creature who has to pause periodically and relax and just turn himself off and slumber. Now there is a big argument as to how much of this is needed and I don't want to get into the argument because I don't know. I will only say that it is in the nature of of Man, that he will wear himself out very quickly if he doesn't get sufficient rest and slumber. So this is a part of his nature. Whether he likes it or not, he is bound by these physical laws. Once having made up his mind to stay alive, he is going to have to take some of his life span and spend it asleep. That's the way it is. Additionally, he is

3:42going to have to guard himself against disease, contagion of various sorts, exposure. These These are unfortunate things, but these are the prices we pay for living a physical life in a physical world. Here we are bound by laws over which we have no control. We can make selections. I can decide what kind of shelter I want, what kind of clothing I'm to have, but that I have to have some means of protection, I don't have to decide that. Nature has decided that. If I don't have the protection, I won't make it. So we are granted certain areas of choice here, but no real ultimate choice—excepting the ultimate choice of shall I stay alive or shall I not?—that we can make, that choice.

4:31But having made the choice of staying alive, then there are certain laws that we have to obey very well. Now all of the things that we depend on for life can be classed as property. And we deal with property constantly. I would point out that this is not only true of man, it is true of every living sentient organism. Every organism that is alive stays alive by virtue of his ability to dominate his immediate environment to some degree. And his immediate environment contains properties that he uses in order to stay alive. Now let me look at this particularly as it relates to Man. I've indicated that man is both a consumer and a producer. Let me take these one at a time. Let's consider the question of consumption.

5:29First of all, man is like any other living organism here. If he doesn't consume, he will Now, what he consumes is going to be largely up to him, but that he consumes isn't entirely up to him. If he's going to make it, he's got to consume. From the moment of birth to the moment of death, he is a consumer. Actually, I think most economists agree on this point that one of the major characteristics we detect in man is the vast variety of things he wants Man is perhaps the most avid consumer of all life forms. We have apparently no limits here.

6:18We hear the various economists saying that man's wants are insatiable. He is simply engaged in wanting more and more of everything. He wants to consume all these things to his own advantage. Man is certainly a very skillful and a very avid consumer. In this sense, I'd like to point out that man here operates almost as though he had an instinct. He is born hungry. He wants. In fact, he has these drives that are constantly propelling him. He's a gimme person. He wants things. He needs them. He cries for them. So he is like a very, very sensitive organism that is just starving for all kinds of things, And he reaches out avidly and attracts these things to himself so he can consume them.

7:12Now this is the nature of man. And you don't really have to teach children to do this. They're going to do it. What we teach children is how to do it gracefully. We try not to stop them because to stop them would be to kill them. They have to consume. But we do say, don't stuff it all into your mouth at once. Take it a bite at a time. We try to teach them to be nice and gentle and polite and things like this. But assuming the child is normal, you don't have to teach it to consume. It wants to consume. You just guide it a little. So in this respect, we have very, very powerful drives. Let me point out something else to you about consumption. When we're talking about consumption, we're talking about something that happens to the individual. The only merit The merit to consumption is the merit that I get out of consuming something.

8:09You may have a nice meal, well, hooray for you, but where's mine? You have a nice dress or suit of clothes, wonderful. Where's mine? I'm not going to get any satisfaction out of what you have, I've got to have something for me. You have a nice car, well fine, where's mine? You have a house, bully for you, where's my house? And so on. Whenever we are thinking in terms of consumption, and we are viewing ourselves as a consumer, we are very egocentric. We're a little bit like the dog with the bone. That's mine. Get away from me. Leave me alone. I want to consume this, and I don't need your help. And this is the way we act as consumers. Now when we get to production, we have an entirely different way of looking at things.

8:58And curiously, the concept of production and the manner in which production is learned takes it completely out of the area of any possible instinctive or instinctoid background. Production is a learned skill. You and I may be born hungry, but we are not born with a big drive to get out and put the pieces together to make something. We acquire this. This is something that we may learn from our teachers or we may get part of it from our environment, but fundamentally we become producers because we are such avid consumers. There just isn't enough around for us to get our hands on to consume, and so in order to take up this slack, this lack of things that we want, we figure out ways and means of putting the pieces together so there will be more to consume.

9:54It is our desire as a consumer that finally impels us to become producers. But here we have, as I have indicated, an entirely different way of approaching it because when we act as consumers we are very conscious of our dependency on other people. As a consumer I'm very egocentric. I don't need you except to get out of my way. But as a producer, I need you. In fact, I need you in inverse ratio to our similarities. The more like me you are, the less I need you. The more different you are, the more I've got to depend on you. Now, obviously, I do a lot of talking for a living. Supposing you did the same kind of talking. Well, believe me then, I don't need you because you're just my competitor and if you weren't around I'd like it better. But the reason I like to have you around is because you can do something I don't do, you see. I don't know what it is, but I've got to have somebody around that can plant the potatoes

11:07and make the automobiles and manufacture the typewriters and prepare the paper that I'm going to I'm going to put in my typewriter and prepare these microphones and equipment and all the other stuff that I've got to use. I can't do that. I don't know how to do it. I'm over my head the minute I get into something of this sort. I use my jaws and talk. So the more different you are, the more I value you. So here when we get into the area of production, I've got to look around and find people who can do things I can't do. and the more things they can do that I can't do, the more I value them. Now, isn't this odd? Because basically, if they're different from me, I tend to distrust them.

11:53You see, I'm so caught up with the idea of freedom that when I'm thinking in terms of freedom, I would like to have everybody free that's like me and anybody that's different. I don't know whether he ought to be free or not, because if he's different, then he's a danger to me. But now when we're talking in terms of production, he jolly well better be different from me, otherwise I don't need him. I need him because he's different, because he can do the things that are necessary. And this shows how important freedom is in a productive context. Because if we're going to produce, we've got to be free to produce, and yet we tend not to think of producers that way, we tend to think of them in another way, and that inhibits production.

12:42So we have some problems here in this area of production. We've got to correct our thinking here if we're going to maximize human well-being and get to the kind of social arrangement that will tend to minimize frustration and aggression and lead us toward what we hope would be a more moral, a happier, a more satisfying world. And that's what we want to do. So we have these differences here. In other words, when I'm acting as a consumer, I'm very self-centered, very interested in what's going to happen to me and what am I going to get out of it. But when I'm going to produce something, then I would like to to have you come in and work with me so we can exchange, so I don't have to do all the work.

13:29I know I've talked to some people who say, well, now, wait a minute. When it comes to production, you really don't have to have cooperation. And then they usually tell me about the prototype of the early caveman who could sit on the ledge in front of his cave and chip out Flint arrow points, and he didn't need any help. And I usually point out that this atypical caveman, although he's a very good man at chipping out arrow points, does need help, even under such primitive conditions. Because if he's going to acquire proficiency as a flint point maker, he's going to have to have somebody else doing his hunting for him. Because if he's going to devote his time and attention to knocking out these flint points. He's going to get awfully hungry. Somebody else is going to have to be doing something else while he's doing that. Otherwise he's going to confine himself to making half a dozen, fitting them onto shafts, and then going out

14:31and doing his own hunting. Well, then he isn't going to be a flint arrow point maker. He's going to just be a jack of all trades. He's going to have to be. Now what we found about men is that when they have a division of labor, it works out better. And here we have Og, who can sit in front of his cave and chip out flint points and that's all he has to do because Og is out hunting and Ogpoo, or whoever, is out making bows and somebody else is out curing the meat and somebody else is figuring out a way to take care of the hides, and you've got all these people engaged in special chores, and then they exchange with one another, and they're all better off. Because each one now has the benefit of the skills of the other party, and they can really concentrate in their own area and really become skillful in that one area, and thus everybody would like to exchange with them because they

15:36Because they can do that one chore better than any of the other people. And this is the way we have learned to get along in the world beginning from very primitive times. We discovered the viability of division of labor. So we start in and we do what we have to do because we figured out how to get along with the other fellow. We depend on him primarily because he does things we can't do. That's the nature of production. Production is a cooperative endeavor, even in primitive times, in a time such as our own, with a dynamic, volatile economy, such as the one we have. We have one where we're so completely interdependent that all you have to have is something like a blown fuse in New York, and the city goes black for three days and nobody can do anything.

16:33Because everybody is dependent on other people who are doing something that they don't know how to do. So the more involved the economy becomes, the more we tend to interrelate, the more dependent we are on other people and their specialties. And that's what I mean by production. Production is an area of cooperation, and consumption is an area of individuality. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if we really knew all the facts in the matter. But what that little characteristic here is perhaps at the very root of almost all the psychological problems we have. Because this characteristic causes us to behave in widely varied patterns of behavior and we don't always know exactly which pattern of behavior to have.

17:30Now if we were simply chimpanzees or lions or some other mammal or life form, we wouldn't have that psychological conflict. We wouldn't have these intellectual dilemmas that confront us as human beings. You see, in my relationship to you, I have a problem. If my relationship with you is productive, then I want to work very closely with you. So I'm saying, as As a producer, fine, come closer to me, let me learn what you do, I want you to learn what I do, so we can exchange and mutually benefit. But when I'm thinking as a consumer, I'm saying, get away, leave me alone, I don't need you. So I'm engaged constantly in saying, get away, closer, get away, closer, get away, closer. Now that can drive a man out of his mind, because he doesn't know just which to do at which time.

18:23Here's where we get into trouble. You see, if we're really going to maximize human well-being

18:58non-molestation in which the individual is free to consume and at the same time can voluntarily win the support he needs in order to produce. It's got to be done within a context of freedom if we're going to maximize the whole thing. And that's what we're trying to work out. So you can see the peculiarities here. Now man, of course, is the only species that tends Sometimes they have nervous breakdowns, so far as we know, and ends up sometimes in the booby-hatch. And I suppose it comes right out of this thing, that we just don't know quite how to behave with each other, because some of the time when we ought to be saying, gee, I'm glad to see you, come in and help me produce, instead we are thinking as consumers and we're engaged in trying to drive the other fellow away, the very fellow we need to Depend on. Now, let me show you what this leads to. We tend to try to pass laws in order

20:00to help us. That's why laws are passed. We go to the government and we say, you know, the consumers aren't getting a square break here. They're not getting a square deal. They need a break. They need something done because somebody's taking advantage of them. And you know what that leads to? This leads to the idea that consumers are a special group You see, the cost of a place is the cost of a group of people over here, and producers are another group of people. But the funny thing is, we're both in both places. All of us are both consumers and producers. So if we take and pass laws to benefit consumers, at the expense of producers, we're not helping anybody.

20:45We may be helping ourselves as consumers, but we're injuring ourselves as producers, because we're producers too. We're just dislocating the natural order in an effort to benefit ourselves during certain hours, but we'll end up hurting ourselves during other hours. Now where's the benefit? There isn't any. Or if you do it in reverse, let's say the producers are having a tough time. So let's pass a law to help producers. Why? That's going to hurt us as consumers, and we're consumers too. So the minute you try to distort the natural order of working together, you may create a benefit to a particular person at a specific time, but then you'll have to pay for that benefit later on in the day. Well, what's the advantage? There's no advantage at all.

21:37We simply are engaged then in distorting the natural order one way or another for a benefit that in the end we're going to have to pay for. Well, that's a little idiotic, especially Only when you realize that every one of these distortions ends up costing everybody something, the only real benefit accrues to the fellow who is passing the law. There is no particular point in that. He is non-productive in the first place. So we take the productive people every place else and we assess them in order to make things better for them, and the only fellow that benefits is the non-productive person who sits over there and directs them Let's take a look at property itself. You know, in the early days when people were thinking about property, they looked at it as as pioneers do in any new intellectual area that comes along, and they tended to oversimplify.

22:53I think this is characteristic of all people exploring a new intellectual area. They tend to simplify. How could they see everything? No one sees it all now. So obviously, they would simplify. And what they tended to do at that time was to confuse the word property with the word ownership. In fact, they assumed that if something was a property, it must be Owned. Property is the item to be owned. Ownership is the act of owning. It is a relationship between an owner and an item of property. Property can exist in a condition where it It is owned, but it can also exist in a condition where it is unowned, and, and quite frequently, it can exist and does exist in a condition where there is a conflict over who owns it, or whether or not it is owned, or maybe even what it is. So we are very good at having conflicts, but we can have property in any one of three situations—owned, unowned, or in a State of Conflict.

24:15Now, what do we mean by property? Let me show you how this was confused. Many of the classical economists, for instance, when they began dealing with property, they used the word property to mean, as I say, both property and ownership, which, for instance, led to the writings of Karl Marx. You know, Marx was inspired by the classical economists. He was profoundly influenced, in fact, by a man named David Ricardo. And so it appears in Marx's Communist Manifesto and some of his other writings that the purpose of his movement was to abolish private property. Now this created the impression in the minds of people who didn't understand the context that Marx's objective was to burn up all the property in the world because he said he wanted to abolish private property. And that isn't what he meant. What he meant was he wanted to abolish private ownership of of Property, because he thought that by so doing there would be more property available for everybody. Now I think he's wrong on this, but the point is we have to understand

25:21what is meant here. And so when you read the early classicists and get the idea that when they talk about property and they talk about abolishing it, they're not mad men out with a torch. They're thinking in terms of ownership, although they don't use the word, they're They're talking in terms of ownership, but they call it property. So it's important that you distinguish here between property, the item to be owned, and ownership, which is the act of or the relationship involved in owning. Very well. Now what are the classes of property that can be owned? The very first property that we are aware of is the property of the person. Each person owns himself.

26:06You are the owner of you. You exercise dominion over yourself. You have control over yourself. You have a definite boundary. You don't own all people. You just own you, and that's it. So all of the attributes of you are your property, your time, your energy, your skills. Whatever it is that makes up you, that's yours. You own you. Now, all additional property of any kind or description is simply viewed as an extension of your ownership of your person. Whatever else you own, the concept is that you take the control that you have over yourself, over your person, and you simply extend it into this additional property, whatever it may be. If you have a dress or a suit of clothes, If you have an automobile, a house, whatever it may be, your ownership of that is presumed to be merely an extension of your ownership of yourself, of your person, very well.

27:14So that is your basic property, the property of the person and all of the attributes thereto. Now the next property that we have something to do with would be the property of natural Natural Resources, the world itself is a great ball of natural resources, and all of these things in the world can be owned. The land, the water, the soils, the minerals, the minerals, the growing things, the animals, everything in the world that is of the order of nature, this can be owned, and that's one type of property. Then there's what we could call the man-made order. These are things that men have put In addition, there could be special types of properties we could call contracts, which are types of property that we have that we've created between us. And then there could be intangible properties such as vapors, gases, odors, formula, things of this sort. All of these things comprise property. All of them are subject to ownership and we'll have to take and discuss that at a later time. It's a very interesting area and we'll be getting

28:33into it more deeply. Thanks very much.