The Thieves Among Us

“Property is theft,” it’s been said. Well, owning something does mean excluding someone else from having it, and that’s essentially what stealing is, isn’t it? It’s may not be quite specified who is losing something and if it is, that person was not necessarily very attached to the “stolen” item, but the fact remains that whatever you possess it would have belonged to someone else if it wasn’t for you.

What ultimate right do you have to your property? Sure, the law gives you the right, no doubt about that, but the law stipulates a lot of rules that are just meant to regulate society as efficiently as possible; most laws make no claim to being ultimately correct. If you are required to pay say twenty percent of your income in taxes, that’s an arbitrary amount. It could have been more or it could have been less, and no amount would be absolutely right.

Simply the fact that the government sees it fit to tax your property, indicates that property is not seen as something absolute and inalienable. If a twenty percent tax is suitable, why not a hundred percent? It’s just a matter of degree.

 If you stole your property in the first place, it would seem quite just if the government chose to confiscate at least some of it? Well, did you? You deny that, don’t you? You say you’ve worked hard for every penny and every Porsche.

I’m sure you have worked, but what you got out of it was dependent of what share you possessed in the first place; your original position in society and your society’s position in the world. That you didn’t own; it was given to you and you took it.

We continue to steal as we conserve our goods and accumulate. No one has ever appropriated anything entirely on his own. We are all thieves.