Comment on Rent is theft
mason@partychickens.net 2 days ago
@zedgeist How about rent of things, as opposed to rent of living space? I'm specifically thinking of the hardware I'm renting for this Fediverse server. A network connection, power, and cooling come with it. In my view this is more acceptable than having to rent a house or car. (Related topic: is having a car moral? Related to that: Is there a moral argument to be made for our against living away from a population center? And related to that: why the Hell do people refuse to wear masks during a pandemic?)
Is my renting that hardware more paying for a service than straight rent? There's certainly the aspect of my not being able to afford the hardware cost up-front and just renting space, network, and power.
Ideally I'd just run the server in my cellar, but I live in the woods and trees fall on the power lines all too often. (Loop to the question of the morality of living away from population centers.)
MrMetaKopos@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
Rental of land is unique because land ownership is made by drwing line on a map and drawing up a contract with the state. Equipment rental is the product of labor that has transformed natural resources into something people can use.
Canconda@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Land ownership is fundamentally a violent act in that paper agreements are a surrogate for establishing territorial dominance. End of the day land ownership is enforced though force.
Renting objects on the other hand is rooted in mutual benefit. Tool creation and use being separate skills creates a natural opportunity for cooperation.
MrMetaKopos@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
Up to a point. If I rent a modem from my ISP, I eventually meet and then exceed the value of the modem. If you rent a $60 modem for $15 a month, you have fully compensated the ISP for the tool by the fourth month. Every payment after that is no longer a trade for someone’s labor; it is a fee because someone else holds the title to the hardware. A mutual arrangement would recognize that once your payments cover the cost of the tool and its maintenance, the ownership should shift to you. , This stops being cooperation.
Canconda@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
TBF One could also argue that in your example the value of the modem also consists of the skills to build it both the modem and the materials it consists of. Obviously it would cost you personally significantly more than $60 to produce the same device, assuming that’s even possible for you.
But I digress.
I don’t deny that coercive relationships exist… but I’m talking about “roots” like tool usage and cooperation in communal animals such as primates. It relates to the context of property ownership because animals mark their territory and use violence to enforce it. Hence why property as a concept is fundamentally violent.
Object ownership isn’t as fundamentally violent the way I see it.
NotAnonymousAtAll@feddit.org 2 days ago
All ownership is inherently backed by violence. If someone wants to take away your things without giving anything back you either give up ownership or use (the threat of) violence to defend your ownership. That threat of violence might be deferred and abstracted to a legal system, but in the end it is all rooted in violence.
AnotherUsername@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
Someone created the house. The house didn’t grow there organically…
Canconda@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Can’t argue with that. Or connect it to the current topic. Care to elaborate?