The moral concept of ownership rests upon belief.  I believe I own something because I paid for it - or because it was given to me - or because I found it, and could find no other owner.  Others believe I own something because I tell them, or based on some other subjective evidence that in some manner documents that ownership.

The only knowledge of what is owned is my own first-hand knowledge of what I own.  In reality, I am truly in ignorance respecting the properties actually owned by others.  I can only have belief in whether or not they have proper ownership of a property, based on what they have perhaps told me, or based on other subjective evidence of that ownership.

Civilization is fundamentally built upon this system of belief.  It is called "trust".

Without this trust, there is no civilization.  There can be no trade, and no employment.  Without it, we are back in pre-moral history.

From the standpoint of reality, when a moral system has been generally accepted, things get worse and not better when exceptions are made and a double-standard of behavior substituted.

For example, it is readily apparent that individuals and groups acting as governments will freely and brazenly engage in behaviors and acts in the name of government, for which a private person would be prosecuted and jailed, if not worse.   You only have to consider the endless cases of financial book-cooking, political mis-representation, or the confiscation of private wealth through taxation, to know that this is true.

The marketplace itself cannot exist without the subjective moral concept of trust.  Civilization along with the concept of ownership upon which that civilization rests will vanish if the belief in ownership and the trust thus engendered are corrupted or abandoned.

This is not an oversimplification.  Far from it.  Think about it - in virtually all of the countries and cultures and peoples of the world, very nearly the only kind of conduct that is universally frowned upon is the violation of the property rights of an owner.

Ideas may vary as to what is property, what constitutes ownership, and who (or what) owns the property, but everything we think of as a "crime" is nothing more or less than a violation in some way of the concept of ownership.

Go to next lesson ... >>