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helix
Idealist Thinker Musician Lover


Registered: 09/13/10
Posts: 409
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tackling the problems that come out of private property
#14405518 - 05/05/11 02:19 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Today I got super-frustrated in a class where we were talking about street art. There were students who were attacking people scribbling their grafitti on businesses, and i brought up the idea that it's absurd to me how much people value property so preciously and consider abuse on property almost a violent crime. The teacher brought up the fact that the city will fine you if you don't clean up the grafitti in some cases which costs the business owner money which made the criticism be more about policing states, which i was way more comfortable with,
But i still felt frustrated at not being able to voice exactly what i wanted to say about property so I did some searching and found this article that i really dig and am on board with in terms of ideas. Discuss? Do you agree? criticisms? comments? additions?
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC08/Gilman1.htm
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helix
Idealist Thinker Musician Lover


Registered: 09/13/10
Posts: 409
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Re: tackling the problems that come out of private property [Re: helix]
#14405554 - 05/05/11 02:25 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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a discussion me and a friend had about it:
Him: People value land in different ways. Some people value common property and treat it well, but many people want to know that the time and effort they invest in a given parcel will benefit them long term and will be theirs no matter what. By allowing people to own the land they use or live on, they have an incentive to keep the property up or improve it. Of course there are exceptions, like investors or people who value property in a way that's destructive, like to extract mineral resources or clear cutting forests. But I think that's more an issue of excessive and concentrated wealth and lack or regulation, then the ability to own land itself. There is also the issue of the tragedy of the commons which is outlined in the above article.
Me: "many people want to know that the time and effort they invest in a given parcel will benefit them long term and will be theirs no matter what" - there's plenty of projects to put this rather ego-driven motivation into other than land, and there's already much more primary incentives to keep land up beyond just this motivation, the biggest of which is long term survival. Other guiding principles such as justice, human empowerment and economic efficiency are good for the public BEFORE the individual. Taking control of public land as one's own to satisfy this desire you bring up doesn't seem ethical to me, unless it's serving the PUBLIC as well because land isn't anyone's originally. Tribal and earliest agricultural societies exhibited this understanding that there are legitimate interests for EVERYONE involved (immediate user of the land - household or business, the local community, the planetary community, future generations, etc) when it comes to messing with land
"Of course there are exceptions, like investors or people who value property in a way that's destructive, like to extract mineral resources or clear cutting forests. But I think that's more an issue of excessive and concentrated wealth and lack or regulation, then the ability to own land itself." How then, can we bring about the change necessary to increase regulation without giving the government too much power? I agree we don't regulate enough and I'd love to hear possible solutions that are within our current governmental paradigm, but at my current understanding, it seems to me that vast concentrations of wealth and land are inevitable in any system that operates on the common understanding of private ownership like we do
The direction that this article points out, to rethink WHO should have what rights when it comes to property seems way more promising to me than increasing regulation to any centralized government (since the problem is concentration of power, that's just concentrating power still! and to people who are so far removed from whatever community in question, that decisions that are made tend to take on different, more questionable interests (profit, politics) than those of the people they actually affect). If you read on in the article it lists those interests and discusses community land trusts
as for the tragedy of commons... "The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest" - INDEPENDENTLY and SELF-INTEREST is the thing that has to be given, and once again, that's exactly a product of our current understanding of private property and the things that this article suggests solutions for
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NetDiver
Wandering Mindfuck


Registered: 08/24/09
Posts: 6,024
Loc: Everywhere and Nowhere
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Re: tackling the problems that come out of private property [Re: helix]
#14405589 - 05/05/11 02:32 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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I think graffiti should be allowed on public property (i.e. subway walls, parks, road-sides, etc.) but not on businesses or other property owned by individuals.
The reason being that if everybody's tax money goes to pay for a surface, then we all have the right to decide what we want to see on it. If I take the time and money to put up a piece of street art, on a surface I helped pay for, then somebody who doesn't want it there should take it down themselves.
There's just no reason why blank walls should be the default.
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helix
Idealist Thinker Musician Lover


Registered: 09/13/10
Posts: 409
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Re: tackling the problems that come out of private property [Re: NetDiver]
#14405771 - 05/05/11 03:12 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
Samurai Drifter said: I think graffiti should be allowed on public property (i.e. subway walls, parks, road-sides, etc.) but not on businesses or other property owned by individuals.
The reason being that if everybody's tax money goes to pay for a surface, then we all have the right to decide what we want to see on it. If I take the time and money to put up a piece of street art, on a surface I helped pay for, then somebody who doesn't want it there should take it down themselves.
There's just no reason why blank walls should be the default. 
I agree with this completely! People get super offended sadly when their works are taken down or scribbled on by other grafitti artists. See gang wars over taggers, etc. but that's the beauty of cameras. Nothing physical is forever anyway!
Edited by helix (05/05/11 03:13 PM)
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helix
Idealist Thinker Musician Lover


Registered: 09/13/10
Posts: 409
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Re: tackling the problems that come out of private property [Re: helix]
#14405794 - 05/05/11 03:18 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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But the bigger topic that i started getting into is alternatives to what we consider we have a right to when it comes to property and especially land. If somebody owns a business and everyone in that neighborhood says "we want grafitti on that business" it seems to me they should be given more of a say than the business owner, for example...
grafitti is one thing, but something much bigger like sustainability and stopping imbalanced concentrations of wealth, land and power are what i started thinking of as that article explains^
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