Comment on Rent is theft
MrMetaKopos@slrpnk.net 2 days agoRenting objects on the other hand is rooted in mutual benefit. Tool creation and use being separate skills creates a natural opportunity for cooperation.
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.
MrMetaKopos@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
I’m not exactly sure what you’re saying other than land ownership started as violent and tools were shared in small tribal collectives. This seems muddied to me. I don’t think small tribal bands protecting territory or sharing tools with their own tribe translates to a modern rental contract. There is no reason to believe that the origins of those behaviors should trump the reality of how these systems function today.
Today, object ownership allows a person to claim authority over an object that is in someone else’s hands. An ISP can remotely disable a modem. Or a manufacturer software-locks a tractor. This is territorial dominance.
In primitive societies, everyone had access to the tools that allowed them to function and survive. Today, you can be excluded from those tools. The exclusion is the violence.
Renting an object grants someone else the legal right to “mark territory”. This is not like a person letting another tribe member use the communal tool they just finished with. Those tools were communal and not private property. Renting an object is part of a fleet of tools you don’t use or plan to use. They protect that profit stream like a pack of chimpanzees patrolling their territory and evicting intruders with violence. modern owners can rip a tool from your hands by locking you out remotely by executing a script.
Are you making this argument? Should I spend time addressing it?