Re:'Right to roam' movement fights to give the commons back ...
by hgomersall on Wednesday May 22, 2024 @02:53PM
(#40444710)
There's no ambiguity here and it's clear what is meant. At some point in the past, someone powerful enclosed a chunk of land and enforced that enclosure with violence. Hundreds of years of systematic enclosure of the commons in the UK denied many people the vital resources they needed to live and Right to Roam is the attempt to reverse some of that elitist legacy.
Theft, by definition, is the forceful transfer of property from the owner to a non-owner, therefore infringing upon the owner's rights.
If "society" is "all of us" and "all of us" owns "all property" then the idea that recognizing and protecting an individual's rights to claim property is a contradiction. When I say "right" I mean a moral principle defining and sanctioning an individual’s freedom of action in a social context. So if "society" is sanctioning the freedom to acquire and maintain property, the "society" cannot have been "stolen from" as a result of "society" itself recognizing that right.