On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, Matt Cramer wrote:
> Please bear with me for a moment. Complete abolishment of private
> property? That is desireable?
>
> My problem here is that in a world of limited resources, you CAN'T
> completely abolish private property. Until we reach a point of
> technological advance where we have unlimited energy and resources, there
> are always going to be people who, through luck or force, control those
> resources.
>
This is the thing that bugs me about libertarians: they see social arrangements in a given sociohistorical moment and feel compelled to make grandoise claims about how things always have to be.
Your generalization is empirically incorrect. For most of our existence on this planet, human beings have not "owned" property. The typical hunting and gathering society has no concept of resources owned by individuals. Given the fact that this mode of social life was dominant for most of our existence as a species on this planet, and said planet has always had limited resources, I don't really understand why you make the above claim.
Miles