Week 5- Post 1: Private Property

Source: Justice course on EdX by HarvardX

Lecture 7: John Locke- the right to private property

Learnings from the first short video: One of the things Locke argued was that private property exists where someone mixes their labor with something not yet owned by anyone else. So if someone were to clear out an area in the woods, plant crops, make a home, then it is going to be considered their property now. Now we think about if Locke's idea helps us think about a controversy that arises each winter in Boston after snowstorms. (or just situations similar to this). Basically, in boston a bunch of people park their cars on the street near their homes, but after a snow storm the cars get buried in snow and its a lot of work to dig out. And once you do dig it out, to prevent someone parking in that dug out spot, people place cones and stuff. Which raises the question of whether this should be permitted. Or should anyone be allowed to park in the public parking spot space even if someone else worked hard to clear it.

• Turning to the question of consent (Locke's second biggest idea)
• consent is an obvious and familiar idea in moral and pollitical phiosophy
• What does a legitamate government look like according to Locke's beliefs?
• Everyone is the executor of the state of nature. If someone violates the law of nature then they are an aggressor and you can punish them. You dont have to soften it, you can kill them if you want to in the state of nature. Everyone can do the punishing
• You can punish a thief tryign to steal your goods because that counts as an aggression
• If someone has stolen from a third party you can go after them.
• ALL of this is because any violations of the law of nature are considered an act of aggression
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• no police force, no judges, or juries. so everyone is the judge in his/her own case
• locke observes that when people are the judges of their own cases, they tend to get carried away. This gives rise to the INCONVENIENCE IN THE STATE OF NATURE.
• Inconvenience in the state of nature
• people over shoot the mark. theres aggression, theres punishment. 
• before you know it everyone is insecure in the enjoyment of his/her inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property.
• so what starts out looking very benign, once you look closer is pretty fierce and filled with violence making people want to leave.
• (where consent comes in) but the only way to escape from the state of nature is to undertake an act of consent where you agree to give up the enforcement power. and to create a government for a community where there will be a legislator to make law and everyone who enters agrees to abide by whatever the majority decides. question is what can the majority decide? 
• gets tricky for locke bc you rememeber there are the natural rights, the law of nature, these unalienable rights. they dont dissapear when people join together to create a civil society. so even when the majority is in charge, they cant violate your inalienable rights
• Property is natural in one sense but conventional in another
• natural in the sense that: we have a fundametal unaliaenable right that there be property. that the institution of property exist and be respected by the government. so an arbritrary taking of property would be a violation of the law of nature. 
• conventional aspect: but its a further question what counts as property, how its defined, and what counts as taking property, and thats up to the government.
• so, (coming back tot he question what is the work of consent) what it takes for taxation to be legitimate is that it needs collective consent.
• looks like consent is doing a whole lot and the limited government, that consent creates, isnt all that limited
• According to Locke, the only limit on the government’s taking property and life is that it may not arbitrarily ask citizens to give up property/lives; however, if there is a general law such that the government’s choice is non-arbitrary, it does not amount to a violation of people’s natural right to life, liberty, property.