by Laurent GUERBY
Wed Aug 30th, 2006 at 02:43:27 PM EST
After
James Boyle on property cognitive bias mainly centered on the bias physical property is having intellectual property, now there's
Stumbling and Mumbling on physical property bias:
[...] Indeed, where land is abundant, an efficient solution to the tragedy of the commons might not be private ownership or stinting, but just moving on, as nomadic tribes do.
In this book, Douglass C. North writes:
Because land commands little value in sub-Saharan Africa, private property rights in land have not become well established and therefore social stratification in rural communities based on land ownership has not evolved as it has in population-abundant land-scarce Asia (p75-76). [...]
And there's more:
This illuminating short paper (word doc) says:
For much of history - and for much of the world today - individual ownership is not the only type of property right one encounters. Often groups of individuals - a village, an extended family, a serf and a lord - may share rights to use a piece of property, as with common grazing land. Such group rights tend to prevail in a variety of situations: where agriculture makes extensive use of land, as with herding; where the cost of fencing or of registering title to land is high; where low land values reduce the benefits from establishing individual rights; and where groups maintain rights to property.
See the blog post for links to documents.
An interesting point of view on one of near-"universally" accepted points, it might well be very relative.
