Quote:
Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
Physical property exists even without government: locks still work even without government. With physical property, government can only enhance the powers you already have. Physical property is concrete, intellectual property is abstract.
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Locks work, but they aren't property. A criminal who barricades himself inside a house doesn't own the house because he's locked the door.
Land and physical items exist. That's not the same as property. "Property" is a collection of rights that exist with respect to land (and items).
The land I live on has been substantially unchanged since the glaciers receded 15,000 years ago; it has existed in some form or another for millions of years. However, it is the existence of property law, created by governments, that allow me to draw an imaginary 60'x128' rectangle around a random parcel of this land and proclaim that I "own" this "property." It's the law that gives me the right to exclude other people from the land, to sell or rent the land, and to do other things with the land without interference from others. (It's also the law that prohibits me from constructing an unlicensed nuclear reactor on the land, however).
People in other cultures, including certain American Indian tribes, would find the idea of demarcating a parcel of land like this and asserting "ownership" over it ridiculous and unnatural.
Of course, people have always been able to stand on a piece of property with their spear and chase others away, thereby possessing that parcel of land. But that's not really "property" because they can only hold on to the land as long as they can defend it: anyone strong enough to take it away can do so, and it's pointless to try and sell the land because another strong person can just take it away from that person despite the sale. If you have the ability to hold onto something, you can, of course, hold onto it - but there is no "right" to do anything with the item or land beyond what you can do physically.
And the kind of property laws governments enacted have differed wildly, of course: before the conquest, anglo-saxon tribes owned land, but individuals did not - they were assigned parcels of it to occupy by the tribe (sort of like the system developed by the USSR about 1000 years later). Even after the conquest, it took a long time for property rights to become more like what we expect today: for the first 100 years after the conquest, all of the land was owned by the king and he just let the big vassals live there for their lifetime. After about 100 years, the big vassals were allowed to live there, but their heirs would inherit it after their death; they couldn't sell it. Around 1300, some limited right to sell property developed. But it wasn't until the 1500's that landowners obtained the right to leave their land to someone else in a will: prior to that, the eldest male heir inherited the property automatically, and neither the landowner or anyone else had the right to change this.