Earth and Property

On the first part of the journey
I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings
--America

Some argue that property ownership in unnatural because the earth's resources preceded human existence. As such, the bread we eat and the cars we drive must be collectively shared.

One problem with this argument is that the bread we eat and the cars we drive are not earthly resources in their natural form. Those resources have been converted into consumable forms by productive labor.

In their raw state, earthly resources do not reflect abundance if abundance is taken to mean wealth that can be consumed to advance prosperity. In their raw state, the natural state of earthly resources reflects scarcity. Unless labor is applied to them, these resources are capable of supporting only a tiny fraction of the people currently walking the earth.

Conditions are only alleviated through production--combining human effort with other factors of production to transform earthly resources into consumables.

If the argument is that the collective owns the bread and cars produced from this labor, then by extension the collective owns the labor itself.

Stated differently, the collective is a slave master.

Property rights naturally alleviate the slavery condition implied by collective ownership.