Gah. Serious false dichotomy—almost all behavior is a mix of the two. Is charging a toll for the bridge you built OK? What if you used up the only good crossing spot, putting the ferry out of business and preventing any competing bridge being built? What if your great-grandparents claimed the crossing point from the natives, who considered it common property?
Who gets to decide how much of the value is morally directable to what participants? How far back do you go in determine what’s a “legitimate” property right on which to extract rents?
Serious false dichotomy—almost all behavior is a mix of the two.
While a single behavior or action can absolutely be a combination of the two, I think many behaviors lean to one side or the other. And establishing the difference still has value, even if we’re only establishing two ends of a spectrum.
Is charging a toll for the bridge you built OK?
Yes. This is why I discussed (briefly, I hope to return to this in another post) the difference between extracting value and capturing value. Charging a toll for the bridge you built is okay (within reason, there are ways to twist this beyond the pale) because you’re capturing a portion of the value you created. Charging a toll for a bridge you didn’t build is not okay; that’s pure extraction.
What if you used up the only good crossing spot, putting the ferry out of business and preventing any competing bridge being built?
This goes into “a valid concern, but too complex for the post”. The bridge is still a superior option to the ferry in the metaphor, and if there’s only one good crossing spot then there couldn’t be a competing bridge in the first place.
What if your great-grandparents claimed the crossing point from the natives, who considered it common property?
Out of scope, although I am sympathetic to the problem posed.
Who gets to decide how much of the value is morally directable to what participants? How far back do you go in determine what’s a “legitimate” property right on which to extract rents?
I don’t think there’s a way to precisely calculate how much value is morally directable anywhere, but surely we can agree that capturing some portion of value you created is morally acceptable, and extracting value you didn’t create is not morally acceptable.
At some point, you sort of have to bit the property-rights ownership bullet, because if you go back far enough the answer is always “because I said it’s mine, and I have more guns/a bigger stick than you.” But I hope to address that better in a later post.
I don’t think you can ignore property-rights origin/maintenance/enforcement on this topic. “who has the right to exclude people from using” is the fundamental question you’re trying to judge, and it’s intimately tied to validity of ownership.
-”Charging a toll for a bridge you didn’t build is not okay; that’s pure extraction.”
This is probably just a nitpick, but as worded this doesn’t take into account the scenario where the builder of the bridge sells the rights to charge a toll to another party, who can then legitimately charge the toll even though they didn’t build the bridge.
Gah. Serious false dichotomy—almost all behavior is a mix of the two. Is charging a toll for the bridge you built OK? What if you used up the only good crossing spot, putting the ferry out of business and preventing any competing bridge being built? What if your great-grandparents claimed the crossing point from the natives, who considered it common property?
Who gets to decide how much of the value is morally directable to what participants? How far back do you go in determine what’s a “legitimate” property right on which to extract rents?
While a single behavior or action can absolutely be a combination of the two, I think many behaviors lean to one side or the other. And establishing the difference still has value, even if we’re only establishing two ends of a spectrum.
Yes. This is why I discussed (briefly, I hope to return to this in another post) the difference between extracting value and capturing value. Charging a toll for the bridge you built is okay (within reason, there are ways to twist this beyond the pale) because you’re capturing a portion of the value you created. Charging a toll for a bridge you didn’t build is not okay; that’s pure extraction.
This goes into “a valid concern, but too complex for the post”. The bridge is still a superior option to the ferry in the metaphor, and if there’s only one good crossing spot then there couldn’t be a competing bridge in the first place.
Out of scope, although I am sympathetic to the problem posed.
I don’t think there’s a way to precisely calculate how much value is morally directable anywhere, but surely we can agree that capturing some portion of value you created is morally acceptable, and extracting value you didn’t create is not morally acceptable.
At some point, you sort of have to bit the property-rights ownership bullet, because if you go back far enough the answer is always “because I said it’s mine, and I have more guns/a bigger stick than you.” But I hope to address that better in a later post.
I don’t think you can ignore property-rights origin/maintenance/enforcement on this topic. “who has the right to exclude people from using” is the fundamental question you’re trying to judge, and it’s intimately tied to validity of ownership.
-”Charging a toll for a bridge you didn’t build is not okay; that’s pure extraction.”
This is probably just a nitpick, but as worded this doesn’t take into account the scenario where the builder of the bridge sells the rights to charge a toll to another party, who can then legitimately charge the toll even though they didn’t build the bridge.