Huang- Blog 1

January 28th Blog 1

In Locke’s chapter on property, he explains the justification for legitimately owning property through one’s labor with two provisos: scarcity and spoilage. Locke argues that the land itself is abundant and belongs to everyone, but once someone exerts labor on land, the fruit of those efforts are his property (paragraph 31). The natural limits to this are ensuring that there is still land for others and harvested goods do not go to waste (paragraph 30 and 32). Are these the only natural limits to man’s right to property? And are there other values that I don’t elaborate on that should also place limits on property?

At first glance Locke’s argument is reasonable, but upon closer examination it is unconvincing for two reasons. First, Locke highlights that humans are ordained with the right to “having dominion” over nature (paragraph 34). However, this ignores the idea that nature, separate from humans, has inherent value in its awesomeness (the literal and not vernacular use of the word). As an environmentalist, I must ascribe to the part of Transcendental philosophy that particularly values nature because it puts man in “the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime” (Emerson, Nature). Thus, nature’s inherent value refutes Locke’s belief that God ordains man to as much as land as, according to him, man can legitimately labor over. In fact, this failure to appreciate nature and aesthetics by only considering people entering into a contract with each other, is the very attitude that fuels the degradation of the environment. Second, even if this “tree hugger” argument is not convincing, Locke’s argument necessitates the assumption that resources are infinite—that there will always be more land for people to take and use; however, especially with present-day environmental and climate concerns, this is obviously false. Resources are finite, and the overuse of land, waste of water, and contributions to air pollution all cause injury to other people and living beings. 

In this section, though, Locke writes about legitimately owning property in two parts: before and after the invention of money. The invention of money gave people the opportunity to enlarge their owned property because money, unlike physical goods, is not inevitably doomed to spoil. However, Locke’s argument wavers because uneven distributions of the accumulation of money can lead to spoilage. Even if Locke is correct that the invention of money allows people to accumulate more resources and people overall have more net available resources than previously, the distribution of wealth can be harshly uneven, and this inequality can lead to spoiled goods. For example, in April last year, due to COVID-19 tens of millions of gallons of milk were dumped, thousands of pounds of fresh produce were thrown away WHILE millions of Americans are unemployed and/or unable to purchase food in grocery stores (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/business/coronavirus-destroying-food.html). Locke’s optimistic perspective on the invention of money and the Earth’s infinite resources are at best circumstantially outdated—and fatal to the existence of human life on Earth at worst.