Assuming you own your labor, how does that support initial acquisition of property using that labor?

[ThomasTheIdealist]

I have some problems with the concepts of self-ownership, but I'll assume that it's valid to assume a property relationship with your body and your labor.

 

Assuming that you own your labor, how do people deduce that they therefore own everything their labor interacts with, and subsequently own everything that that property interacts with, and so on? Or is this concept an axiom not necessarily derived from self-ownership?

[Guest Gee]

They own the labour that was infused, mixed, joined into the property. That the labour is inexorably linked to the property means that expressing ownership of the labour requires expressing ownership of the property.

Then someone else expressing ownership of the property is an expression of ownership of the labour is an expression of ownership of the person.

 

Say I find an apple tree in a state of nature and I pluck an apple from the tree. The property I own is the labour, work, energy required to move the apple from the state of nature into some more preferable state, say in my fruit bowl. Because the labour, work, energy I own is infused, mixed, joined with the apple in the fruit bowl we then say I own the apple, or, the apple is my property. 

A communist comes along and eats my apple. The communist has expressed ownership of the apple which is really an expression of ownership of the labour, work, energy I infused with the apple when I did work on the apple (to move it to a preferable state, in my bowl vs on the tree) which is then an expression of ownership of me. So we can then say the communist through expropriating my property has, in an indirect way, enslaved me. 

[st434u]

But they don't own "everything their labor interacts with".

 

You said you have a problem with self-ownership, so you should start there. If I don't own my own body, then who does?

 

Likewise, if the first person to put an unowned resource to use doesn't it own it, then who does? The second person to do it? The third?

[dsayers]

That which is not naturally occurring--a chair for example--is proof of invested labor.

[WasatchMan]

Land has no value until labor is added.  Your labor creates the value and since you own your labor you own the value created by the labor.

[GailG]

People live in a delusion is the answer to your question.  Just because your labor touches the land does not make the land yours.  It makes what you gather from the land - with none going to waste - that makes it private property. 

 

The entire concept of labor causing you to own what your labor produces arives from the idea that nature is commonly held.  So a stream is commonly held, but the water you draw from the stream is your property.  This has a built-in failsafe, where it would be ethically abhorrent to take more than you can use - not to mention stupid - because you have to carry your possesions with you as you travel about. 

 

You need to read John Locke's 2nd treatise on government.  I think the part you want to read is  chapter 5 - but I'm not sure.  It's not that long of complicated in any case