There can be no such thing as equal rights when any of those rights include "the right to gain power over others."

That's what property rights include in our current society.

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We look back at the founders and say haha can you believe they bought the idea that only land-owners should vote??

Well today we think that only land-owners should have full rights to security, sovereignty, building design, and the ability to set boundaries in the place they sleep.

It's terrifying!

We're not just in an increasing rent economy. We're in a society where our core rights come down to rent.

Will you have enough money (units of power) to rent your rights back once the monopolies really kick in?

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I think people SHOULD have a place where what they say goes (within limits). Where we live should be sacred space, where we can say who gets to be here, where we put our personal things that are protected from theft or destruction, where we can sleep soundly. Where we can build and rearrange and paint and plant and do whatever we want to fit our needs and aesthetics.

In our society, this freedom or right is attached to the concept of property. Which is why some people get very upset at the idea of taking that away. Every man needs his castle, but it isn't the castle he wants so much as a little place to rule.

Freedom ultimately is that, right? A sovereign, self-ruled little place. Power distributed equally amongst everyone, each person inside their own place of sovereign boundaryship.

But we've tied that right to ownership of land.

So they can just buy that right up.

And now where have your rights gone?

The slogan is wrong. Property isn't "theft." It's a separation of you from you liberty. It's an alienation of every person from our inherent rights.

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#deconstruction #decolonization #AbuseCulture #QuestionEverything

Like money, property becomes an abstraction layer for the language of power, and isn't much different from fuedalism of old. "Property" is merely a justification for why the lord gets to tell everyone forced onto it what to do.

But at least then, serfs could keep a much larger portion of their labor than we do. They had clean air to breathe and wholesome food they knew where it came from and what was in it.

Moreover, at least then lords had a sacred duty to protect those who lived on their land.

We've got all the noblesse without the oblige.

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#deconstruction #decolonization #AbuseCulture #QuestionEverything

So unpacking a little further: The concept of land-property is an abstraction of a type of micro- warfare and empire put into terms that make it feel ok.

It's disturbing to me to dig this deep, because I'm a former libertarian who likes the idea of property, a type of order within freedom, where I am theoretically able to earn a square of land that is mine, where I are nearly completely free to do with it and on it whatever I like.

But zoom out. Consider the rent economy. Not scary when it's just an elderly couple with an extra house or a duplex with which they make supplemental money.

That becomes an empire when it becomes a sky rise. Or a corporation buying up every cheap property in a town and jacking up prices for shelter.

It is land upon which they can do whatever they want and set whatever rules. Lots and lots of land. In some cases, all the land as far as the eye can see.

They are Kings of vast segments of area that they didn't (themselves) raise a sword to gain. But don't let that fool you into thinking it wasn't conquest. They spent their units of power (money), that when traced back far enough, the methods of its "earning" were, in fact, quite violent in nature. In order to gain enough units of power to buy a kingdom, violence was surely done. Freedoms were surely taken.

And once they have purchased enough land, they are effectively lords, and no one has any freedom but they.

Viewed through this lens, property is antithetical to core libertarian values. Property is a form of tyranny and empire. An instrument of theft and inherently a fraud.

I hate it. But that's what's under the curtain.

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#deconstruction #decolonization #AbuseCulture #QuestionEverything

The point of unpacking these concepts is exactly the same as unpacking the cult doctrines ones has been raised with. A word like "money" or "property" are thought-terminating clichés that get us to skip over all the good questions that we might have asked in childhood but now everything is too "obvious" to revisit. We save on cognitive load that way, but everything we take for granted is really a puzzle.

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