Does private property increase common property
Interesting quote picked up by Kevin Carson and Roderick T. Long, which argues that the increased productivity which is the result from private property, ineroxably leads to an increase in common property.
The author is Frederic Bastiat, in the 1850 book Economic Harmonies.
Excerpt:
“Wealth (taking this word in its generally accepted sense) stems from the combination of two kinds of operations, those of Nature and those of man. The former are free of charge and common to all, by divine gift, and never cease to be so. The latter alone possess [economic] value, and consequently they alone can be claimed as private property. But in the course of the development of human intelligence and the progress of civilization, the action of Nature plays a larger and larger role in the creation of any given utility, and the action of man, a proportionately smaller one. Hence, it follows that the area of gratuitous and common utility constantly increases among men at the expense of the area of value and private property. …
[T]hat portion of utility which, as a result of progress, ceases to be onerous, ceases to have value, but does not on that account cease to be utility, and falls eventually within the domain called common to all and free of charge ….
What is free of effort is held in common, for all men enjoy it and are permitted to enjoy it unconditionally. … What is acquired by effort is private property, because taking pains is prerequisite to its satisfaction, just as the satisfaction is the reason for taking the pains. …
This recourse to pains implies the idea of an obstacle. We may then say that the result sought comes closer and closer to the condition of being gratis and common to all in proportion as the intervening obstacle is reduced, since, according to our premise, the complete absence of obstacles would imply a condition of being completely gratis and common to all.
Now, since human nature is dynamic in its drive toward progress and perfection, an obstacle can never be considered as a fixed and absolute quantity. It is reduced. Hence, the pains it entails are reduced along with it …. But the utility remains constant. Hence, what is free of charge and common to all is increased at the expense of what formerly required effort and was private property. …
[I]t is characteristic of progress (and, indeed, this is what we mean by progress) to transform onerous utility into gratuitous utility … and to enable all men, for fewer pains or at smaller cost, to obtain the same satisfactions. Thus, the total number of things owned in common is constantly increased; and their enjoyment, distributed more uniformly to all, gradually eliminates inequalities resulting from differences in the amount of property owned. … A greater amount of gratuitous utility implies a partial realization of common ownership.”
