Conflict in Ownership
In thinking of the various ways that human beings own property, we discover that property
can be owned, it can be unowned, and it can be in a state of conflict. And it's extremely
important if we're going to maximize human well-being, which I think that's something
we would all like to do, it's extremely important, it seems to me, that we begin avoiding or
Or at least minimizing the areas of conflict. And one of the most important things here,
it seems to me, would be to remove as much as possible types of ownership which automatically
are going to lead into conflict of one sort or another. Now let's get into these various
In these areas, there are really four types of procedures that we can enter into in relation
to property, which will predictably lead into conflict. The first of these is very, very
ancient. It's one that we have practiced, and I'm sorry to say we've practiced with
is some diligence for many, many centuries. It's the practice of slavery. What happens
here is that we have a property owner who decides that he has a right to own another
property owner. Now, that is bound to create conflict, because nature has ordained that
each one of these property owners, in fact, controls himself. Human energy operates under
The control of human energy is always individual. Each person can and does control himself.
Now he may not control himself the way other people want him to, but the fact is that whatever
control exists on him, he imposes. That is a fact of life. Each person controls himself.
So when we create a condition of slavery, we are creating an artificial condition that
is not sustained by nature. One man here is acting as though he could control another man.
Now, the only way he can possibly even act out that part is with the other man's consent,
because if the other man refuses to act like a slave, although he may die, he doesn't have
have to obey the slave master. So in point of fact, every slave consents as a preferential
choice to death. Now that's not much of a choice, I'll grant you. Choosing between
dying or being a slave, well under certain conditions I think I would prefer death than
to be a slave. But in any case, we have to recognize that the nature of man is such that
that the ultimate consent for his behavior does reside in the slave, not just the slave
master. The slave consents to be a slave or he is not made one. I might point out that
there was at one time a particular tribe of blacks in Africa that were being enslaved
and brought over to this country. This was back in the early days of the slave trade.
And not a single one of this tribe ever became a slave. You could kill them, but you could
not make them a slave. And the result was that there was so much resistance put up by
the members of this particular tribe that the orders went out to the slave-runners,
just never bring us any more of these people because you can't make them slaves. I could
point out that much the same situation occurred with the American Indian. Don't think the
The effort wasn't made to convert the American Indian into a slave. It was made. But you
couldn't have any success with it. The Indians simply wouldn't submit to slavery.
Now it's important that you have in mind what slavery really is. Slavery, you know,
is not imprisonment. Many people suppose that it is, and they sort of automatically make
that assumption. A slave is viewed as an economic asset by the slave master. The purpose in
and Having a Slave is to have a piece of productive human property, the profits of which you can get for yourself.
So the more slaves you have, the more you can get people to work that you don't have to pay. That's the theory.
So a slave isn't a prisoner. A prisoner would be an economic liability.
A slave is viewed as an economic asset. You've got him and you make him work.
And then you get the products of his labor. That's the idea.
Of course, again to show you how contrary to nature this is, it is not possible for a slave master
to take the full productive level from a slave, because the slave also has to be maintained.
He has to eat, he has to have clothing, comforts, housing, medical attention, etc., and that costs.
So, with any kind of productive equipment that you have, whether it be a slave or a
machine, there is a cost, and nothing is for free. So, the concept of slavery is contrary
to nature. It isn't possible for you to own another man and control him. If you do
own him—and this would of course be a complete legal fiction, but assuming you have such
Now, we could debate the niceties of this for a long time, but the fact remains that when you have a condition of slavery, you've got a built-in condition for conflict.
It is an unhappy, a degraded, an undesirable, a negative, vicious practice.
We frown upon slavery and rightly so. It is not good. We should do our best to see that it doesn't occur.
And what does it mean? It means that at no time should anyone ever be coerced
into sharing a part of what he has produced at no cost with someone else by force. That's what it
Means. If you are compelled to provide forced labor and you don't get paid for it, that's slavery.
Now, if this takes up all of your productive energy, then you're 100% enslaved.
If it takes up half of your productive energy, then you're 50% enslaved. If it takes up 10% of
your productive energy, then you're 10% enslaved. You don't have to be totally enslaved
to be enslaved. Now, if we believe in freedom and the rights of man, we cannot believe in slavery.
Slavery is antithetical, obviously. But here we have a condition, and we've done a lot with it,
let me tell you, through the history of man. We've had a lot of slavery. I might point out,
in the event that there is any feeling of racial superiority, let me point out that white men
have tended to make the best slaves that have ever existed. And there have been more instances
of white enslavement and white people enslaving others than in any other race. That's an
interesting thing. So don't get any idea of whatever race you are that there's something
superior or inferior about you as a result of your race. Uh-uh. It just isn't so.
So anyway, it's a bad practice. We don't want it. We want to see it eliminated totally.
But you know, we have traces of it even today. We have practices of slavery right in this
country. Anybody who is required to perform a particular service and doesn't get paid
for it and yet can't get out of performing the service is being exploited and enslaved
to that degree.
Example, if a man who is imprisoned in a penitentiary or jail is compelled to work
and he is not paid for his work, he is a slave to the degree that he is so compelled.
Any businessman who is required to make out forms for the government and to collect taxes
for the government and isn't paid for doing it is a slave to the government.
Absolutely.
It doesn't make any difference where it occurs or who is involved. Anyone who is compelled
against his will to perform a service and isn't recompensed in a manner satisfactory
to him and yet he can't get out of it, he's a slave to that degree. And certainly you've
got conflict. Now the next area where conflict can occur is when we attempt to try to own
on a piece of property, and we don't take the time to accurately establish the boundaries.
This is particularly vital, of course, when we're dealing with real estate and properties
of this sort. I can't begin to think of how many conflicts have arisen over either improperly
drawn boundaries in land, or even if they were properly drawn, conflicts as to where
where they should have been drawn. Most—well, I can't say most, but certainly a great many
of the conflicts that we human beings have had all center around the division of land,
who is going to get what and where the boundary marks are. So we can fight over that, and
we've had just hundreds of thousands of fights, both locally between individuals and
on grand scales between massed armies and between collective nations over where the
boundaries are and where they ought to be. So a question of boundary is a vital concern.
If we're going to start minimizing conflict, we're certainly going to have to recognize
the significance of boundary and find out who owns what and draw the line and recognize
A third type of conflict that arises is the type of conflict that occurs when two individuals
lay claim to precisely the same property, each one contending that the property is his.
This can happen inadvertently in such practices as joint ownership, where you would have two
persons like say a husband and wife who jointly own say a house and lot.
Now if there isn't any line of demarcation as to who is going to control the house and
and the lot, and how much of the house and lot belong to each, if it is merely said conveniently,
well it belongs to both of them equally, you've got a good base for a conflict.
That's one way you can have it.
So I recommend always that whenever you get into a joint ownership situation, that you
establish in advance where the boundaries are and be sure that they're there, and especially
the boundary in relation to control.
Now when I was married, actually before I was married, my wife and I realized that this
was a very sensitive area and that we'd have to understand this, so we worked it out in
advance and that way it has tended to minimize conflict that might otherwise have arisen.
We agreed in our household that she would make all of the day-to-day decisions.
She would decide what we would eat at the various meals that would be served and she
We would arrange the furniture in the house and take care of the day-to-day decisions that have to be made.
This would be none of my business. We drew that kind of a line.
Now, in the more important areas, such as foreign affairs and things of this sort, that was going to be my area.
And we've been married now for a great many years. I don't dare tell you how many, but it's a long time, and nothing of importance has come up.
So, you see, it has tended to minimize conflict by having made this arrangement in advance.
I'm joking, of course, but the fact remains that it illustrates how important it is that
we do not have conflicting claims that we draw accurate and acceptable boundaries, including
the one as to who is going to control how much of what, and we establish that in advance.
That's a good way of minimizing conflict.
But another way that conflict appears right here is through an act of theft.
Any kind of theft is nothing more than the attempt to establish conflicting claims over
a given piece of property.
I'm wearing a wristwatch.
Let's suppose somebody stole it from me.
I take a look at the watch on his wrist and I say, gee whiz, that looks very much like
my watch and my watch was just recently stolen.
I wonder if that's mine. And I say to him, Is that my watch? He says, No, it's mine.
But what if it really is mine and not his? How do we find out? I don't know. You see,
there's a very interesting thing here. The ownership of property is always vulnerable.
Anything that you own can be stolen. And if the thief is a skillful dissembler and can
put on a good front he might even be able to convince all your neighbors that you're trying to
pull a fast one on him and that the property in question is really his and not yours.
You can't tell by looking at a person what he owns, and you can't tell by looking at a property
who owns it. I couldn't even tell that this watch is mine even though my name might be inscribed on it
Because people's watches that have names inscribed on them are often sold, or given away, or bequeathed.
So suppose my name is on this, and someone steals it, and I say, well, that's mine, and it has my name on it.
And they can come back and say, well, that's the name of my grandfather, and it was given to me.
You see the difficulty. We take all the precautions that we can take, but in the end, if we have a conflict here, it will be because two persons or more are claiming the same property, each one contending that his claim is a valid claim.
Now that's of course a conflict. Any conflict over who owns a given property is undesirable.
It is of course the kind of thing that we run into because we have today the government,
for example, taxing people. Now you'd be surprised how many people who find themselves
taxed feel that the money taken away from them is theirs. They've earned it and they've
got the notion that it's theirs. So when the government takes it, they resent it. They
work for it. As far as they're concerned, it's their property. Well, the government
says, no, we have a right to take so much of your property from you. You've got a conflict.
We learn to live with these conflicts, but these conflicts do not take and advance the
human well-being that we're talking about. This tends to create frustration. Here's
Here's a fellow that's gone out and worked very, very hard because he has ideas of an
investment he wants to make, something he wants to do with his money, and he works and
he earns the money. And then he finds that 30 percent of it is taken from him. So he
didn't really earn it. And it takes him that much longer to earn what it was that he needed
in order to do what it was that he wanted to do. And by the time he really does get
it, he finds that that costs more, too, than it was when he started. So he's frustrated
all up and down the line. And the next thing you know, he's going to be aggressive somewhere.
And we've got all kinds of problems. And stemming from what? From a double claim on
a single dollar. The fellow who earned it says it's his. The government says it's his.
Now what are you going to do? Well, I'm suggesting that if you want to minimize human conflict,
You want to minimize that type of behavior. Have as little of that as possible. Hopefully,
get rid of it. But if you can't get rid of it, at least reduce it as far as possible
so there won't be these conflicting claims.
Now the fourth type of conflict, beyond the conflict obviously instituted by theft, would
be the conflict that we would find in collective ownership. Where you have a case of collective
Ownership, you have a given property where it is said that you own it in concert with
a great many other people who also own it. And now you've got a conflict for sure because
you can't figure out who the responsible party is. Responsibility and authority in this
case are divided and you don't know who is responsible and you don't know where the
All of these areas of conflict are to be avoided as much as possible if we are going to attempt
to maximize human well-being. Now, let me point out how you can correctly own property.
Instead of owning property in conflict, which would be to try to own other people, or to
to try to own property where boundaries are not clearly defined, or to try to own property
that other people own, or to try to own property in concert with others where nobody knows
how much of what is owned by whom.
Instead of doing those things, how about trying individual ownership?
Now that's a very simple thing.
You get something, you buy it, it becomes yours, and then you make the decisions over
over it, and you'd be surprised how quickly all conflict over that property tends to be
minimized or even vanishes. It's been a long time, for example, since anybody objected
to my watch. It's mine. We don't fight over it. Everybody knows it's mine. I'm wearing
it and nobody's uptight about it. So there it is.
And the same thing is true with my clothing and with other things which I obviously own.
Very few people fight me about that. They just accept that it's mine. And I accept
that what they have is theirs, and we get along fine. You'd be surprised how quickly
individual ownership solves these problems. I would contend that individual ownership
is the best. However, it isn't the only way. Joint ownership is a perfectly valid way of
owning property. This is where two or more get together on a given piece of property,
Especially if it's a large property and maybe it's too costly for one person to manage.
So he brings in one or more partners, or a man and wife go into partnership by virtue
of their marriage, and they own something jointly.
No problem, providing in so doing they clearly draw the line of demarcation so each one knows
where his authority is and what his interests are.
And when that's understood in advance, you just don't have the problems that you get otherwise.
And of course the same thing goes with corporate ownership.
There are other things relating to corporate ownership that we might question.
But the fact remains that from the standpoint of establishing who owns how much of what,
you can do it.
Because the owners of the corporate body are the stockholders and each stockholder knows
It shows precisely how many shares he owns, and he can do as he pleases with the shares.
He can keep them, sell them, give them away, burn them up, do as he pleases, they are his.
Now it's where you get into these areas that you get into confusion.
For example, there's a big hue and cry.
Probably it's subsiding a little more now than it was around recently, but the reason
for the Subsiding, relates to the apparent intention now on the part of our government
to withdraw from the current war in Vietnam. But there was a big hue and cry about burning
draft cards. And I've often asked people, you know, everybody is concerned here and
some people have very profound opinions. Students should be thrown into jail if they burn their
Draft Cards. Or, on the other hand, if you listen to the other side, why every student
has a right to burn his draft card and he ought to do it. Well, what's the fact? Well,
what you want to find out is who owns the draft card. If the draft card belongs to the
student, he can do as he pleases with it. If the draft card belongs to the government,
then it's the government's property. And here you are, you see. If you can establish
who owns something, then you can establish where authority is over it. And that's the
I would like to point out one additional thing here in respect to conflict that can arise
over ownership. The only rightful authority in the world is the authority of the owner
over His Property. That's it. Any other type of authority that is expressed is a usurpation.
Any other. You and I, as property owners, are the ultimate decision-makers over ourselves
and over those things which we own. And that is what could be called rightful authority.
Any attempt on the part of any other person or group to intervene with our decision-making
ability and the exercise of our authority over what is ours is a violation of our rights
in the matter and is a wrong in itself. I might point out in conjunction with this that the
only crime in the world is nothing more than the violation of a property boundary against
Against the Will of the Owner.
Think for a moment of all the words that we have indicating conflict and crime.
Murder, arson, rape, robbery, burglary, fraud, extortion, muggery.
We're good at it, you see.
We can have conflict.
Boy, we've got lots of fancy names for it.
But take a look at every one of those words and what do they involve.
In every single instance, there is the violation of a property boundary against the will of
the owner. That's what crime is all about. There isn't a single crime, there isn't
a single thing that you can think of that is morally improper, that doesn't begin
and end with the violation of a boundary against the will of the owner. Now that puts it on
and a very, very simple base. As a matter of fact, this is so broadly recognized that
it would be a base for the mores of all people everywhere in the world. They would differ
as to what property is. With some people, for instance, there are certain primitive
tribes that would view the tribal ritual as a property and possibly the only property
they have. And if you violated that property, it would be the grossest type of criminal
action as far as their view is concerned, because that's the only property that concerns
them. With other people, there would be other types of things that are property. With us
who live in a relatively modern, advanced, dynamic culture, we have many types of property.
But wherever you run into crime, you run into a violation of a property boundary.
If you are going to maximize human well-being, you are going to have to recognize that the
only way we can get along with each other is to operate in a world where we respect
one another's boundaries.
This is so basically true that in five languages, including English and Latin, the root stem
of the word that means property is also the same root that we use for the word that means
correct behavior. For instance, in the Latin and in English, we use the word propair. Propair
is the stem for propaire t, the item owned, and propaire li, the correct way of behavior.
Correct behavior is behavior that is based upon propaire t, or property, and it is the kind of
behavior that recognizes property boundaries. I remember that when I was just a very young lad
And I had my first date with a girl. My dad took me aside and explained to me, he said,
Now, young man, when you go out this evening, I want you to keep in mind all of the proprieties.
I'd never heard that before. And I said, What are the proprieties? Well, he explained to me
a very interesting way. He said, The girl you're going with owns herself. Don't trespass.
This is a cute way of saying it. Anyway, that is a way of expressing the proprietary position
of the owner. The owner of the property has the right to say yes or no, if you want to
put it bluntly, and the other party hasn't any rights at all. The only right that you
have is the right that you have over what is yours, and you are the proprietor there.
But beyond that you don't have any rights at all and so you become a person who operates
under a privilege if you can obtain it and that's the way that works. So if you want
to avoid crime and molestation and friction and frustration and aggression you begin recognizing
the proprietary boundaries that surround us. They surround all of us. This is true even
When we learn to respect one another, irrespective of our opinions or our color or our nationality
or our language or our condition in life or whatever it is, we recognize the basic fact
of life. And the right of the other party to operate within his boundaries, whether
we like the way he operates within his boundaries or not, is none of our business. As long as
As he stays within his boundaries and operates there, he can do as he pleases because he
is not hurting us. Oh, he may offend our sensitivities. He may look in such a way that we don't like
his looks. Or he may have habits that offend us. Well, fine. Leave him alone. Turn your
back on him. Go someplace else. Maybe he talks in a way that you don't like. Or maybe his
His appearance offends. So what? He has a right to operate over himself any way he wants
to, providing in so doing he doesn't trespass your boundaries. And your boundaries don't
include him. You can't own him. That's slavery. You can't rightfully control him.
The only person you can rightfully control is yourself. And the extension of yourself,
Your Property. If you want to eliminate or at least reduce the area of human conflict,
let's begin recognizing that and realizing that we are going to operate much more salubriously
—that's a good word—in a situation in which we have respect for each other and don't
violate one another's property. Thanks very much.