Law Students

snoWTF and the labor theory of property

By Casebook Sherpa

On Sunday morning, I measured 25 inches of snow on my car. We’re allegedly supposed to get 10 more inches today and tomorrow. We’ll see.

While I remember some big snows early in life when my family lived in the Poconos, I don’t think I’ve seen a bigger snowfall where I live. I will say the 21 inches we got in Pennsylvania in 1994(?) yielded the most epic series of snow football games the Keystone State has ever, or will ever, see. We’re talking the 11-on-11, 5-hour, triple-overtime, smashmouth variety.

So anyway, Sunday morning. I spent a few hours shoveling out our cars. At our complex we get one reserved space and a permit to park in an unreserved guest spot. Upon shoveling out the guest space where I’d parked on Friday, I got this overwhelming fear that I never wanted to leave that space. Looking around, there were a bunch of empty guest spaces that yet to be shoveled at all. What if I left to pick some stuff up, and came back and my space was taken? Two-and-a-half hours of work wasted.

Of course, you can do this…

That’s obnoxious to me. But my sense of entitlement to the space I had cleared only grew. And placing a chair there only seemed more reasonable, the more I thought about it.

I realized that I was experiencing a mind meld with John Locke. His labor theory of property holds, poorly paraphrased, that a natural right to property flows to those who invest labor in improving it. That right includes the right to exclude others, those who did not participate in improving the property. This right creates a positive encouragement to engage in improving property which, in turn, has benefits (albeit somewhat minimal) to the community at large. The idea is that because man owns himself, he owns the product of his labor and it should not be taken from him by force or by sneaky, parking space stealing, good-for-nothing neighbors who should shovel out their own space and reserve it with their own lawn chair. (It seems I’m not the only one to point this out in the wake of the weekend’s snowstorm.)

By the authority of John Locke, therefore, I exert my natural rights over guest space #10 at our condominium complex.

Take that, you parking spot stealing bitches.

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Full post as published by Fight The Hypo on February 09, 2010 (boomark / email).