Addressing The Owned Machinery Argument Against Free Labor
Recently a Steemian stated that he/she believes that if one borrows his machinery (a lawn mower) he is due a payment. In this post I will address why this is morally wrong.
Wastefulness Hurts Humanity
Humanity has only so many resources at its disposal. Morally humanity should not waste resources while some of its members are without access to them.
The United States was founded on the morals that each human has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now most of humanity has adopted these ideals. This means that they morally have the right to the resources they need to live, to be free, and to pursue happiness. This is impossible if people are starving or put in an economic situation they can not escape, for example, three hundred million people in India have no electricity. Having no electricity can lead to death, unfairly limits their possible choices in life, and not allow them to watch Doctor Who..... which means there is no happiness possible.
An Access of Lawn Mowers
Most people who own their own house also have a lawn mower. This lawn mower is only usually used once a week at most. Imagine that it only takes 2 hours to transport the lawn mower and mow the average lawn. This lawn mower could easily be used for 10 hours a day total. This means 5 different houses each day for all 7 days of the week could use this single lawn mower. This saves us 34 lawn mowers or more than 97% of the resources used to make the lawn mowers. These resources could also go to making a better lawn mower that can mow better and faster. This would save even more time and resources for everybody.
This means that in a communal world (which the comment was addressing), owning a lawn mower and not letting anybody else use it is morally wrong because it wastes resources. This is because owning your own lawn mower has nearly no benefit.
(You can mod it and have a slightly more flexible schedule..... But is that really worth it to a society?)
What if Somebody is Doing it for Money
This means the lawn mower lands on the line between what would be considered personal versus common property in a leftist society. Common property is former private property that anybody is free to labor with. (Private property is something you own that somebody else labors with, personal property is something that is both owned and used by someone.) This means that unless you are currently using it, it would be considered common property by that society.
You have no need of it while somebody else does. This person would be simply pursuing happiness and as long as the lawn mower is returned unharmed they did not hurt you in any way. This means that forcing him to give up some of his labor to you, for using an object you don’t even need, is morally wrong.
So if I understand it correctly you can not have a lawn mower as private property BUT you can not have it as personal property either. Unless your a full time 24/7/365 lawnmowerperson then and only then it's personal property.
Because when you have a lawnmower and you don't use it 24/7, someone else makes it their personal "property" for say 1 hour, and then it's someone else's personal property again, meaning you can call it personal property till someone else come's and gets it and the is theirs for hour etc. rinse repeat.
So the mower is in end effect from nobody, who do you think will do the maintenance. Oh and who's gonna provide the fuel. And who's gonna provide a new one when the old one is dead? The person who had the mower in the first place? I don't think he or she is gonna take the responsibility for a new one, what do you think?
If you start a voluntarily in a commune and everyone is there voluntarily too it could work you could buy and maintain the thing together.
But you can not force the whole world to live your way. Well of course you can do that you can force anybody to live the way you want them to live but then you and your mob, are then the new ruler(s). You become then the rulers, you say you want to get rid off.
Edit;Can you link me the post in or under which you had that conversation? Or is that complicated?
it would just stay common property
how each separate society works is up to them m8 this is just theoretical
who provides the fuel? Society would do so as it is required for labor
Society would. Who is society? What is society? When is society? Whatever you want to define it by, Great points wordsword:
The lawnmower has no incentive of being built and being bought to begin with.
The society would just have the incentive to built it, to run it and to maintain it, just like they would have the incentive to make a whole new one or 10 or 100, because society demands them. And where are the individuals? Nowhere.