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Is ownership a claim to a geometrical three-dimensional space

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Jeremiah Dyke Posted: Wed, Nov 4 2009 7:15 PM

Is ownership a claim to a geometrical three-dimensional space (a specific longitude, latitude and altitude)?

 

Though it may be superficial, has anyone ever explored the notion of property ownership outside of our three dimensional space?

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David Z replied on Wed, Nov 4 2009 7:40 PM

Like four-dimensional ownership (i.e., time)?

I don't know enough (ok, I don't know anything) about other dimensions to really get the ball rolling on this one, I have to admit.

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Jeremiah Dyke:

Is ownership a claim to a geometrical three-dimensional space (a specific longitude, latitude and altitude)?

 

Though it may be superficial, has anyone ever explored the notion of property ownership outside of our three dimensional space?

Awesome questions. I am really embarrassed that I cannot answer this. This looks like a good project to study over the weekend.

"I cannot prove, but am prepared to affirm, that if you take care of clarity in reasoning, most good causes will take care of themselves, while some bad ones are taken care of as a matter of course." -Anthony de Jasay

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this video may help for the thought experiment (here)

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Jeremiah Dyke:
Is ownership a claim to a geometrical three-dimensional space (a specific longitude, latitude and altitude)? 

 

Though it may be superficial, has anyone ever explored the notion of property ownership outside of our three dimensional space?

Obviously, as noted, there's a temporal component. But what does it mean to be outside space-time? Ontologically, it's meaningless.

 

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I know many individuals hate thought experiments of this nature, but I tend to enjoy them

 

What if we expand on the theme?

 

Duration is what can be most easily used to describe the forth dimension. Yet, since we live in moment by moment in the third dimension time seems like a straight line. Therefore, if there is no true frame of reference for time (otherwise known as time does not truly exist) where does this leave property ownership?

  

Now, my thoughts are this.

 

In order to have ownership you must have space (as in distance between two objects). For example, think of ownership within a neutron star whereas all atoms are stripped of their electrons and protons. There could be no ownership because there is no space to separate the neutrons  

 

Distance of time however is not needed because ownership can exist within a moment of time. Thus, time (as it exists in a continuum) itself is irrelevant to ownership   

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Yet isn't instantaneous time still 3-dimensional?

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Knight_of_BAAWA:

Jeremiah Dyke:
Is ownership a claim to a geometrical three-dimensional space (a specific longitude, latitude and altitude)? 

 

Though it may be superficial, has anyone ever explored the notion of property ownership outside of our three dimensional space?

Obviously, as noted, there's a temporal component. But what does it mean to be outside space-time? Ontologically, it's meaningless.

 

 

My thoughts are this.

If space is what’s needed for ownership, and space increases as a function of dimensions, then as dimensions increases space approaches infinity and thus ownership approaches infinity

 

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Jeremiah Dyke:
Duration is what can be most easily used to describe the forth dimension. Yet, since we live in moment by moment in the third dimension time seems like a straight line. Therefore, if there is no true frame of reference for time (otherwise known as time does not truly exist) where does this leave property ownership?

  Now, my thoughts are this. 

 

In order to have ownership you must have space (as in distance between two objects). For example, think of ownership within a neutron star whereas all atoms are stripped of their electrons and protons. There could be no ownership because there is no space to separate the neutrons  

 

Distance of time however is not needed because ownership can exist within a moment of time. Thus, time (as it exists in a continuum) itself is irrelevant to ownership  

But when you own something, you own it for a specific period of time. We exist in spacetime, so it is relevant.

 

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property:

my advice when trying to identify it; its scarce, is what you are looking at scarce?. (not in the everyday sense, but in the economic)

Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid

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Knight_of_BAAWA:

Jeremiah Dyke:
Duration is what can be most easily used to describe the forth dimension. Yet, since we live in moment by moment in the third dimension time seems like a straight line. Therefore, if there is no true frame of reference for time (otherwise known as time does not truly exist) where does this leave property ownership?

  Now, my thoughts are this. 

 

In order to have ownership you must have space (as in distance between two objects). For example, think of ownership within a neutron star whereas all atoms are stripped of their electrons and protons. There could be no ownership because there is no space to separate the neutrons  

 

Distance of time however is not needed because ownership can exist within a moment of time. Thus, time (as it exists in a continuum) itself is irrelevant to ownership  

But when you own something, you own it for a specific period of time. We exist in spacetime, so it is relevant.

 

 

Is true. Yet we are not referencing the existence of ownership or duration of ownership but instead defining ownership. And ownership can be defined with reference to instantaneous time, or in other words a moment

 

Now, can ownership exist without volume?

 

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In case this post becomes lost in the abyss of forms. If anyone furthers the question or wishes to further it contact me

[email protected]

 

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Jeremiah Dyke:
Is true. Yet we are not referencing the existence of ownership or duration of ownership but instead defining ownership. And ownership can be defined with reference to instantaneous time, or in other words a moment
Moment = time.

As for ownership without volume--that would be 2D. We don't live there.

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Jeremiah Dyke:

Is ownership a claim to a geometrical three-dimensional space (a specific longitude, latitude and altitude)?

 

Though it may be superficial, has anyone ever explored the notion of property ownership outside of our three dimensional space?

 

I always thought of ownership as relating to material objects, not the space they reside in.  Especially considering that such spatial positions are enitrely relative and inconstant (though material objects are not perfectly stable, compared to the fabric of space they're pretty eternal).

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Stephen replied on Wed, Nov 4 2009 10:32 PM

Jeremiah Dyke:

Is ownership a claim to a geometrical three-dimensional space (a specific longitude, latitude and altitude)?

 

Though it may be superficial, has anyone ever explored the notion of property ownership outside of our three dimensional space?

What are the dimensions to a share of microsoft, radio frequency, or labour service?

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Though true that radio waves, like light waves have zero mass and thus is composed only of energy this doesn’t infringe on ownership since we own the source of the waves. If I own a flash light, I control the light though the source but I wouldn’t claim that I own the light wave since it is merely energy. The same would hold true for a sound wave and thus we own the source of our voice but not the wave.

 

A share of a corporation is harder to reference. For example, can we even prove the legitimacy of a corporation as an entity of its own liability? Depending on this a corporate stock may be an abstraction. However, a stock is simply a claim to ownership of which ownership was transferred via prior homesteading. So the question than becomes, what is the dimensions of a contract (which is what a stock essentially is).  

 

Not sure I understand labor service.

 

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Angurse replied on Wed, Nov 4 2009 11:19 PM

Jeremiah Dyke:

Is ownership a claim to a geometrical three-dimensional space (a specific longitude, latitude and altitude)?

 

Though it may be superficial, has anyone ever explored the notion of property ownership outside of our three dimensional space?

Obviously yes if you count time as a dimension. Beyond that, no, as there isn't any point.

 

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Stranger replied on Wed, Nov 4 2009 11:20 PM

Property based on euclidean geometry was introduced in the 19th century. Prior to that in customary law, property boundaries were delimited by naturally occurring features. If you look at the morphology of land in Europe and America east of Ohio, it is very natural and organic, often with very intricate, complicated borders and regional limits. The American west, on the other hand, was centrally planned on a very rigid grid.

It is a matter of opinion which property system works best.

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Stranger:

Property based on euclidean geometry was introduced in the 19th century. Prior to that in customary law, property boundaries were delimited by naturally occurring features. If you look at the morphology of land in Europe and America east of Ohio, it is very natural and organic, often with very intricate, complicated borders and regional limits. The American west, on the other hand, was centrally planned on a very rigid grid.

It is a matter of opinion which property system works best.

Would you explain a bit more about your first sentence please?

The case of imperial territory claims in Africa after the Berlin Treaty ought to be of great interest to Austrian revisionists. Western rail grants in the couple decades preceding this period of the Long Depression have also been ignored best I know.

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E. R. Olovetto:
Would you explain a bit more about your first sentence please?

Okay. Until the 19th century, the system used for property boundaries in customary law was called metes and bounds, which is a flexible, contextual form of property delimitation based on agreed-upon property markers such as rivers, roads, landmarks, and so on. These features, given the nature of the environment, tend to move over time. After the revolutionary war, the new American government decided to fund itself by selling land west of the original colonies in blocks defined by the Land Ordinance of 1785, a method of subdividing property based on a Cartesian plan to which the features of the landscape were irrelevant, which eventually formed the basis for America's rectangular Public Land Survey System.

It was America's first instance of large-scale economic planning.

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nhaag replied on Mon, Nov 9 2009 10:00 AM

Jeremiah Dyke:

Is ownership a claim to a geometrical three-dimensional space (a specific longitude, latitude and altitude)?

Not necessarily. Ownership is gained by putting formerly unused resources to first use (homesteading) or by aquiering resources through buying or as a gift. One can not claim ownership without putting resources to use in some way. For examples the act of circling an area of 500 acres of unowned land, wouldn't make you the owner. Ownership means mixing resources with ones own labor, not just declaring a formerly unowned resource to belong to oneself.

In the begining there was nothing, and it exploded.

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Zavoi replied on Tue, Nov 10 2009 2:13 PM

Jeremiah Dyke:
Is ownership a claim to a geometrical three-dimensional space (a specific longitude, latitude and altitude)?

The concept of ownership arises out of a need to resolve conflicts: that is, situations where one person wants to do something, another person wants to do something else, and it is impossible for both people to do what they want. Ownership is a way of allocating the right-of-action to one person rather than to the other. Thus, most basically, what is owned is not space or physical objects, but the right to perform certain actions.

Now, it just so happens that the collection of actions pertaining to a particular object or place are often bundled together and traded as a single unit, so it's more convenient to say "I own this object/land" as shorthand for "I own the rights to all actions pertaining to this object/land." Still, there are cases where this neat rights-bundling doesn't occur, and to continue to speak of ownership in this way only leads to confusion.

For example, suppose I want to build a factory near your house, but the factory will produce noise during the daytime, and you currently own the right to live in your house noise-free. I can purchase a noise easement from you, giving me permission to produce 90dB of noise during the daytime. What, exactly, do I now own? The simplest answer is that I now own the right to produce 90dB of noise during the daytime. You might be able to fudge this into ownership of geometrical spaces, perhaps by saying, "I, the homeowner, give you ownership of the space surrounding each air molecule in my house, but the ownership shall transfer back to me if you vibrate them back and forth too intensely, or when it's nighttime..." but I don't think that's really helpful.

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nhaag:

Not necessarily. Ownership is gained by putting formerly unused resources to first use (homesteading) or by aquiering resources through buying or as a gift. One can not claim ownership without putting resources to use in some way. For examples the act of circling an area of 500 acres of unowned land, wouldn't make you the owner. Ownership means mixing resources with ones own labor, not just declaring a formerly unowned resource to belong to oneself.

 

Ownership is the physical control of a resource, property is resources held thereby in physical control. Legal property is property regarded as legitemit by the defacto enforcer(s) of dispute arbitrations.  What you are arguing for is a specific method of justifying property, property does not cease to be property (nor does an owner cease to own) simply because in your view he, in your view, does not have a legit. claim to said property.

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nhaag replied on Wed, Nov 11 2009 2:30 AM

Edmund Carlyle:

Ownership is the physical control of a resource, property is resources held thereby in physical control. Legal property is property regarded as legitemit by the defacto enforcer(s) of dispute arbitrations.  What you are arguing for is a specific method of justifying property, property does not cease to be property (nor does an owner cease to own) simply because in your view he, in your view, does not have a legit. claim to said property.

 

 

I agree, I should have been clearer in spelling out  this being a justification for proper legitimized ownership.

 

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nhaag:

Edmund Carlyle:

Ownership is the physical control of a resource, property is resources held thereby in physical control. Legal property is property regarded as legitemit by the defacto enforcer(s) of dispute arbitrations.  What you are arguing for is a specific method of justifying property, property does not cease to be property (nor does an owner cease to own) simply because in your view he, in your view, does not have a legit. claim to said property.

 

 

I agree, I should have been clearer in spelling out  this being a justification for proper legitimized ownership.

 

 

Likewise, I should try being less pedantic on occasion.

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