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Inverse View
It is not the case that When a person labors on a previously unowned object, subject to certain provisos, that object becomes the person's private property.
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Reasons For
2 perspectives
Reason for 1 of 2
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1.
Mixing something owned with something unowned does not straightforwardly transfer ownership to the unowned thing.
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2.
If I pour my can of tomato juice into the ocean, I lose my juice rather than gain the ocean — ownership does not aggregate by mixture.
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3.
Locke's labor-mixing metaphor is an evocative image, not a principled criterion for how property rights arise from physical contact.
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Reason for 2 of 2
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1.
Original appropriation of unowned resources worsens the situation of others by excluding them from what was previously open to all.
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2.
Locke's own proviso — that appropriation is legitimate only if 'enough and as good' is left for others — is systematically violated in a world of finite and fully claimed resources.
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3.
A proviso that cannot be satisfied in practice undermines rather than licenses the broader theory of property acquisition it was meant to constrain.
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Reasons Against
1 perspective
Reason against
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1.
A person owns their own labor.
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2.
Laboring on an unowned object mixes one's labor with that object.
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3.
When one's owned labor is mixed with something unowned, the unowned thing becomes owned.
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