Every human being alive in this world depends on property. Human life depends on it. In
fact, all forms of life depend on it. You and I can't live unless we are in a position
where we can dominate our environment to some degree and extract from that environment the
substances and the comforts and conveniences that we need in order to stay alive. Property
can exist in three conditions. It can be owned, it can be unowned, and it could be in a state
of conflict. What is property? I would like to describe it as anything that is subject
to ownership. And I would like to make it clearly understood that property is one thing
and that the ownership of property is something else entirely, and I am going to take up ownership
at a later time. First, let's talk about property and the various classes in which property falls.
The first property that we think of, the basic property that we all have, is the property of
the person and all of the attributes of the person. That is, the mental ability, the energy that you
have, your talents and abilities, your time. All of these things relate to your physical being
and this you own. You control yourself, you are responsible for yourself, you own yourself.
All additional properties, whatever else you may own, is merely an extension of your person.
Now, in considering the extensions of the person, we have first of all property that
we would classify as belonging to the natural order. That is to say, the things that nature
has provided the natural resources, the land, the water, the air, the metals, the minerals,
the growing things such as plants, animals, all of the things that exist in this world,
the world itself, could be viewed as a great big ball of property that can be owned.
Now there are certain requirements, of course, before any part of it could be owned, but
But the whole thing is capable of ownership, and hence it is property, whether it is owned
or not at a given time.
In addition to the natural order, we have what we would call the man-made order.
The man-made order would consist of buildings, furniture, vehicles, clothing, food, tools,
various comforts and conveniences that human beings have manufactured.
We have, of course, in all these cases, gone to nature first. We have reached out into
the world about us and picked up properties that exist in nature, and then we have converted
them to our very special requirements, and these too are a kind of property. This includes
all of the various improvements that we might make to land, for example. In fact, as we
When we consider property, we usually don't classify it in terms of the natural order
and the man-made order. Rather, we classify it in terms of real property or personal property.
Now, real property would be the land and all the appurtenances to land, whether natural
or man-made. Thus, real estate, so-called, would include land, which nature has provided,
and Buildings, which men have provided, and all of the things in between, such as walks
and driveways and wells and mines and growing crops, things that we have cultivated and
put in ourselves, all of these that are attached to the land, that are immovable and become
a part of the land, even though we may have provided them ourselves, we think of those
as real property or real estate.
Other properties that are movable we call personality or personal property, and this
of course would include anything that is movable that is not fastened to the real estate one
way or another such as of course furniture, clothing, vehicles of various sorts, and the
other things that we use in everyday living including food and soft goods such as clothing.
We have various ways of classifying property, but in the end, however we classify it, the
same general conditions pertain, that is to say, we as human beings depend on it.
We have to be able to dominate it and control it for our own consumption, or we cannot stay
alive.
Now there are certain special classifications of property that are very interesting.
For instance we have the ownership of intangibles.
Now that provides a very difficult kind of ownership but it can be attained.
It is of course any time that you own anything the ownership is dependent upon the nature
of what it is that you're trying to own.
You cannot contravene the nature of the thing itself.
For example, if you own an animal, even though you have ownership of it, you would probably
have to also have a cage, especially if it's a wild animal, you'd have to have a place
to contain it because if you didn't, you couldn't control it.
It would get away from you and it wouldn't do you any good to own, say, one of the lions
in Africa at the present time unless you had some way of having access to that particular
and some means of controlling that lion in your own favor.
So that is another element we'll get to later.
I merely mention that in the control or in the ownership of intangibles we have such
things as air, for instance.
Now air is a tangible thing in one sense, but it's sort of intangible when we think
in terms of ownership.
Actually, in order to own air, what we do is we package it in containers. They're usually
called tanks. It's a particular type of container. And when we put the air in a tank, we can
work with it as a property. Now if we don't have the air in the container, it's pretty
hard to think of it as a property because it's just available for anybody. Now the same
One thing would relate to other types of intangibles, such as odors or sounds. We usually call odors
perfume and we call sounds music. These are things that can be owned. But there are special
characteristics here that would have to be applied if they are to be owned. You can even
own an idea. Again, it's very hard to but it could be done. And there are such things
Another very special classification of property is the property of a contract or an agreement.
Naturally, the characteristic here is that a contract or agreement is never owned by
one person.
There must always be two or more, because that's the nature of the property.
And an interesting thing to keep in mind here is that you never own the contracting party.
You have a property in the contract itself, but that's all.
This is a point, incidentally, that needs some elaboration, I suppose.
Many husbands, for example, look at their wives as though they own the wife.
In fact, our language sort of lends to this assumption.
We speak of my wife or my husband.
And may I say that the wives are just as good at making this error as the husbands are.
We look at the opposing spouse and we say, well, that's mine, as though it was a property.
Actually, the property is in the agreement or the contract that exists between them.
And although this may come as a shock to some, may I assure you that you do not own your
spouse.
You have a property in the contract or the relationship that exists between you, but
you do not have a property in the opposing party.
I could point out that this is also a problem that often appears in employment situations
where sometimes employers act as if they owned their employees.
They don't.
The only property involved is an employment agreement in which the two parties involved
have contracted mutually, one to exchange money or some other recompense for so much
time and energy and service or brain power, whatever it is, and the property is in an
An expectation of this exchange occurring, and it is not, in the person of the opposing
party.
The same thing works in reverse.
Many employees think that they own their jobs, or maybe that they own their employers.
Actually, they do not.
All that they have is the property interest in the contract or the agreement that has
brought them together.
This could even be extended to the family situation where we have children.
Many times parents act and think that they own their children.
They do not.
The children own themselves.
Even from tiny tots, they own themselves.
And all that we have here is a relationship that is a property, but you don't own the
other party.
And I think it's probably true that many children, notably young people growing up, sometimes
Sometimes think that they have ownership of at least a part of dad's income, or maybe
they think that they own their parents. Actually, they don't. Again, the property exists at
the level of the contract or the level of the agreement or the relationship, and it
is not the ownership of the other party as such. So that's a very special thing to keep
in mind when we are thinking and talking in terms of property and who can own it.
By the way, who can own property?
Well, any human being we view as a property owner.
In fact, we would state that thinking in terms of rights, the basic right that we have is
the right of each person to be a property owner.
Often we've had a kind of an argument between the people who say, well, the trouble is that
A lot of people go around talking all the time about property rights, but they never consider
human rights. Actually, the only right that exists is the human right. Property has no
rights at all. It's human beings that have rights, but every human right is a right to
a property. And that's really what we're talking about there. So anyone who has a right
has a right to own property and this would be any human being in the world. Beginning
with the tiniest infant at birth, he can own property. He definitely can, although maybe
he doesn't understand the concept. It is entirely possible. In fact, I have known of cases where
infants at birth inherited large fortunes. They are the owners of the property. Clearly
they don't know how to manage it or even that they have the property and yet they are
are the owners, and they're very real owners, not just in a legal sense, but in a moral
sense, they are the owners of the property. Any human being can own property. Therefore,
it follows that on the basis that we're setting this up, no human being could rightfully own
another human being. You can contract with another human being, but you don't own the
other member of the same species. In this connection, it might be a good thing to point
find out that property is so necessary that even other species undoubtedly make use of
it and have, possibly instinctively, a manner of dealing with property.
It's very interesting, but recently studies have been done in this area, and I'm particularly
impressed with a work by Robert Ardrey entitled African Genesis, and then a subsequent work
of Money, the Territorial Imperative, in which he takes up the property behavior of various
types of animals, birds, fish, and even insects. And here he establishes that all living entities
do have a kind of territory over which they exert dominion, and this is essential for
As a matter of fact, in this connection, always the property concept seems to inhere within
a given species. For example, I have a dog. In my judgment, the dog is my dog. I'll let
you in on a secret. I don't think my dog agrees with me. I think my dog thinks he
I think he thinks I'm his property.
Have you ever watched a dog's behavior?
Right around the eye there is a little gland that secretes something that has a very sharp
odor to another dog.
You and I don't detect it with our noses, but the dogs do.
And when a dog wants to demonstrate that he owns someone, he marks him.
Have you ever had a dog come up and rub his eyes on you?
So that he sort of marks your trousers or your stockings or maybe your furniture or
something with his face?
That's what he's doing.
He's putting a scent mark on you.
He does it sometimes to infuriate another dog.
For instance, if I, who have a dog, and I'm sure my dog has marked me, but my dog marks
me all the time because I've got a little boxer and she comes up and just tells me every
day that she owns me.
She demonstrates this and she looks to me for her subsistence, of course, but in process
I'm hers. If I call on a friend who happens to have another dog, then this dog marks me
too so that when I return and my dog gets to sniff of my trousers, well, my dog just
bristles because clearly there's been a property violation. Another dog has put in a conflicting
claim on me and my dog doesn't like that. He resents it very much.
And curiously, you know, just how this works out, I don't know, just how rational animals
may be and how they figure these things, I'm not able to determine.
But perhaps you've noticed this, Audrey comments on it, and I myself have seen it.
I used to have a poodle, a cute little fellow, and actually I'm sure it was the butt of all
the jokes of the other dogs in the neighborhood.
I'm sure they used to talk about my poodle and joke about it because it was completely
incapable of defending itself.
And my poodle would trot out sometimes away from my yard and then confront a larger dog.
And immediately this other dog would just chase my poodle and it would come tearing
back just to get on my own property again.
And the minute it crossed the line, the boundary line of my property, a curious change would
come over it.
It would turn around, now filled with courage and bristling with indignation, and confront
this larger dog who at this point seemed to sense that my poodle, in crossing the boundary,
had now gotten into a superior moral position.
And so the bigger dog would just pretend indifference, probably never saw my poodle before, and would
trot off and take care of its business, and my poodle would be just as brave as one could
imagine.
And this occurred simply through passing a boundary, through crossing an invisible barrier,
apparently my poodle gained some kind of superiority.
Now the interesting thing is, Ardrey mentions this, various animals seem to have this idea
or this way of behavior, and you know we human beings do too.
This has been even commented upon by men who work with wild animals such as lions and tigers
and so on. They will say that if you go into a cage with a lion, you can behave pretty
much as you wish. The lion will watch you, but he will not feel that you are a danger
to him until you get within a certain radius of him. Now just where that is I don't know
to property wherein we respect one another willy-nilly because we have to, you see.
Now, an interesting thing, and again I'm referring to Ardrey, whom I think is very
interesting here.
He tells of the behavior, say, of such things as crabs operating underwater who will possibly
DIG A LITTLE HOLE THAT WILL BECOME THEIR HOME AND THEN OTHER CRABS IN THE VISCINITY WILL
HAVE OTHER HOLES NEARBY.
AND THESE TWO CRABS IN OPPOSING HOLES WILL THEN EXPERIMENT.
THEY WILL SORT OF TRESPACE ON EACH OTHER'S PROPERTY BUT THEN THEY'LL DRIVE EACH OTHER
BACK AND THEN THEY'LL DRIVE EACH OTHER FORTH AGAIN AND THEY GO BACK AND FORTH UNTIL THEY
HAVE FIGURED OUT THE PRECISE HALFWAY MARK BETWEEN THEIR RESPECTIVE DWELLINGS.
And then that becomes the boundary, although they don't make any marks on it.
They know where that is.
And then they seem to respect the boundary of the other party and they know, well, if
they go over there, they're in the wrong.
But as long as they stay on their own side of the line, everything is all right.
Now that seems to be a practice with human beings.
It seems to be a practice with so many living species that it is surely more than coincidental.
Actually, what it means is that life depends on property. It means that if we are to survive,
you and I have to be unmolested as consumers, because otherwise we can't make it. Our life
depends upon our ability to consume. Man is this peculiar creature who not only consumes
but produces and so we have to be very conscious and very aware of what all of this property
business means and the very important factor of property boundaries.
Now turning back to the idea of rights again, I've mentioned that the only right that exists
is a human right and every human right is a right to a property of some sort.
That's all that rights are.
Now in the old days, when the idea of rights were first being talked about, the concept
was that one, that is, that the owner has the rights.
But in these days, it was thought that the only one that had any rights was the king.
Because you see, the concept was that God owned everything, and the king was the special
Do you remember the old saying that was common in the Middle Ages and in the
In the Dark Ages, the king can do no wrong. Of course the king could do no wrong. How
could he do wrong? He owned everything. You can't do wrong with something you own, and
the king, it was conceived, owned the realm and everything and everybody in it. So how
could he be wrong? He couldn't be any more wrong than I would be if I had a sandwich
It's my sandwich, and I can destroy it if I like. And if the king owns the realm, then he can do what he pleases with it, and he can do what he pleases with all of the people in it, because they're his too.
In fact, in those days, when the king wanted to please someone, and wanted to honor him some way, he would make him a baron, or a lordling of some sort, and then he would grant to this baron, or lordling, some kind of property, which the baron would hold in what was called fee simple, or it became called as fee simple.
In the early days it was called fealty, and that's where the term fee simple comes from.
The baron would hold the land as though he were an owner, providing he gave total fealty
to the king.
That is to say, he had to be willing to kneel before the king and place his head in a position
of subservience before the king, so that if the king wanted to, the king could cut the
head off.
And that meant total fealty.
This is where the idea of divine rights came from, the idea that the king owned the whole
shebang and he got that ability to own from the Lord himself.
Now, when we got started with this country, we came up with a fascinating idea.
That was that kings weren't a particularly bright or special group of people at all.
They were just ordinary guys, and as a matter of fact, a lot of them were sort of sub-normal.
They weren't any better than others, they often were worse.
And therefore, how in the world could they have any special rights?
We came up with the idea that if it is possible for one man to have rights, that is, to be
able to act without asking permission of anyone, that that same prerogative should belong to
everybody.
And therefore we came up with the idea that if it is possible for one man to have a right,
then it is equally possible for all men to have rights, and that means that every man
can be an owner.
And so that was the idea that we had, that all men are owners and there is no such thing
as divine rights.
Now an interesting thing, we took that concept at the beginning of this country.
We had the idea of equal rights and yet in a very strange way we kept on with the old
idea of the divine right of kings. We call it today eminent domain. It's a very interesting
carryover from monarchial times. You see, eminent domain means the domain of his eminence
or the domain of the eminent authority and what it means is that the king or whoever
is acting for him, can repossess any property for the good of the realm.
And so you'll find that same practice, which is a medieval practice, being exercised in
this country today in violation of property rights, as we see them on the other hand.
In other words, we say in this country that we have private property, but not if the government
wants the property.
If the government wants the property, then it exercises eminent domain and it can take
your property away from you on the theory that dates way back, you see, into medieval
times that if the king really wants it, it really is his.
Of course he has to pay for it, but he pays at a fee that he decides.
And so we still carry that out today even though we profess to believe in private ownership
of Property and in the idea that your property is really sacred and nobody can take it from
Actually, we do both in this country.
We have a concept of private property and the sanctity of property and property ownership,
but then on the other hand we violate it and of course the state or the government is the
primary agent of the violation.
Now I want to get a little closer to the idea of ownership of property.
I asked the question, who can own property, and specified that any human being can own
property. But there are various ways in which property can be owned. Property can be owned
by individuals. Property can be owned jointly. Property can be owned corporately. And property
Property can be owned collectively. Now these are four different ways of owning property.
When we have individual ownership, the conditions that pertain are simply these. An individual
will first of all value a property. He sees something that he values. I'm going to take
up the question of value and just what that means at a later time. Let me simply stay
Say now that he expresses a desire for value, for the property, he values it.
The next thing that he does, having valued it, he ascribes its boundary, that is he learns
what the limitations of that property are.
And all property is limited, beginning with the person.
You own yourself and you are limited.
You have a boundary that is comprised of your person.
And so all extensions of your person are limited. So if you want to be an owner of something,
you have to know what it is, how big it is. You have to precisely identify it. And so
the question of boundary becomes uppermost. You value it, and then you ascribe the boundary.
And then finally, once you have done this, then you take control of the property. There
There are two ways of taking control of property, and I'm going to talk about that later on.
This area of property and its importance can hardly be overemphasized. It's a very important
area and we're going to have to spend a little time studying it because of its importance.
Thanks very much.