Property rights regimes vary
For decades I've noticed how often people talk as if some set of proper property rights laws were innate in nature. It seems to me pretty clear that this is incorrect, though clearly a common human habit of thought.
Among animals, some are territorial and some are not. Some animals live communally and some largely as solitaries. Some engage more than others in cooperation.
Among humans, there have been and are many different property rights regimes. For several days I'll talk about different property rights systems and individual property rights-- because I'm hoping that anyone reading this can think more flexibly about property rights and property rights systems rather than going into shock all the time.
In the Incan empire, for instance, there was next to no private property: all property and production was adminsitered by the Inca, who assessed taxes in labor time (corvee labor). That labor not only wove cloth and planted for the Inca's household, and formed his army. Corvee labor built roads that were traveled by corvee messengers and corvee labor taking fish and guano from coast to mountains, meat and produce from one area to another. Nearly all transfer of product was at the Inca's command, though surely there were some village markets for local exchange.
A curiosity of Incan society that was surely an outgrowth of this property rights system is that it lacked money-- that is, a trade token. Such exchange as occurred must have been barter.
For centuries, agricultural land and livestock were what people thought about when they thought about wealth. There were crops and animal husbandry for the production of new value, and for storing it as a form of wealth, or warfare to take property, and those were by far the most important professions.
Under feudalism, the monarch owned all land, and permitted others to hold and cultivate them and maintain workforces on them, in exchange for shares of agricultural and animal production, monarchical rights to use that land for hunting and such, and the lesser lord's obligation to supply military labor at request. (Higher lords also pledged defense of tenants should attack against them occur.) Those lesser lords permitted other more minor lords to use portions of the land on similar bases. Monarch and lords also tended to take administrative responsibility for legal disputes among tenants, and to take some resonsibiity for maintaining tenants in hard times.
Fundamentally, not owning the and one works can tend to lead to degradation of the soil. If you don't own it, you're not going to get the benefits of improved soil through selling the land or even necessarily by improved future crops- and manure could be sold instead, so there's an opportunity cost to fertilizing. And fertilizing is an investment-- a costly addition to enduring productive resources.
Feudal lords did not face much problem from soil-mining tenants, though, because tenancies could be expected to last for generations. They did't have to, but they usually did. Actual lords might be attainted and lose the land they used, though that wasn't common-- but peasants were very, very seldom evicted.
A common was a common part of a feudal estate. I'll talk about commons next time.
Facebook posts incorporated:
Animals and Incans
Feudalism and incentive to invest
Among animals, some are territorial and some are not. Some animals live communally and some largely as solitaries. Some engage more than others in cooperation.
Among humans, there have been and are many different property rights regimes. For several days I'll talk about different property rights systems and individual property rights-- because I'm hoping that anyone reading this can think more flexibly about property rights and property rights systems rather than going into shock all the time.
In the Incan empire, for instance, there was next to no private property: all property and production was adminsitered by the Inca, who assessed taxes in labor time (corvee labor). That labor not only wove cloth and planted for the Inca's household, and formed his army. Corvee labor built roads that were traveled by corvee messengers and corvee labor taking fish and guano from coast to mountains, meat and produce from one area to another. Nearly all transfer of product was at the Inca's command, though surely there were some village markets for local exchange.
A curiosity of Incan society that was surely an outgrowth of this property rights system is that it lacked money-- that is, a trade token. Such exchange as occurred must have been barter.
For centuries, agricultural land and livestock were what people thought about when they thought about wealth. There were crops and animal husbandry for the production of new value, and for storing it as a form of wealth, or warfare to take property, and those were by far the most important professions.
Under feudalism, the monarch owned all land, and permitted others to hold and cultivate them and maintain workforces on them, in exchange for shares of agricultural and animal production, monarchical rights to use that land for hunting and such, and the lesser lord's obligation to supply military labor at request. (Higher lords also pledged defense of tenants should attack against them occur.) Those lesser lords permitted other more minor lords to use portions of the land on similar bases. Monarch and lords also tended to take administrative responsibility for legal disputes among tenants, and to take some resonsibiity for maintaining tenants in hard times.
Fundamentally, not owning the and one works can tend to lead to degradation of the soil. If you don't own it, you're not going to get the benefits of improved soil through selling the land or even necessarily by improved future crops- and manure could be sold instead, so there's an opportunity cost to fertilizing. And fertilizing is an investment-- a costly addition to enduring productive resources.
Feudal lords did not face much problem from soil-mining tenants, though, because tenancies could be expected to last for generations. They did't have to, but they usually did. Actual lords might be attainted and lose the land they used, though that wasn't common-- but peasants were very, very seldom evicted.
A common was a common part of a feudal estate. I'll talk about commons next time.
Facebook posts incorporated:
Animals and Incans
Feudalism and incentive to invest