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Comment by JumpCrisscross

8 hours ago

> since they really are monopolies granted by the government

This is property.

There are multiple usages of the word.

One of them refers to tangible things, was first codified more than 5000 years ago, and is almost entirely uncontroversial.

The other was popular in 1700's France re: their system of privileges, and the people found it so onerous that they embarked on a campaign of executing nobility until it seemed like the concept was good and dead.

We can use the word however we like, it's just a word, but if we conduct ourselves as if they're the same sort of thing, which France was doing at that time, we're in for the same sort of pain.

So what I'm saying is that its a bad idea for us to let data be property.

  • > One of them refers to tangible things, was first codified more than 5000 years ago, and is almost entirely uncontroversial

    Which definition are you referring to?

    Debts, wholly intangible legal fictions, have been treated as property for thousands of years.

    • I was thinking of the code of Hammurabi as the settled one, and membership in a trade guild--which you had to buy from the government--as the controversial one.

      I wouldn't classify debt as an uncontroversial kind of property. In medieval Europe, Christians were prohibited from owning debt by their religions (Jews weren't, so they ended up being the lenders, which is probably why the stereotypes exist today).

      I'd argue that the fungibility/resale of debt is a bad idea because it takes on weird properties when too much of it accumulates in one place.

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