Property Rights Ought Not Exist in the United States

I accept my opponent's definition with a single caveat: all four of the components of property rights must exist in order for property rights to exist. For example, if one does not have the right to use a good, then one cannot claim ownership over the good because one does not have a property right to the good. Prefer this interpretation because it stems directly from the definition that he provided for us in today's debate. The affirmative position is that property rights in the United States ought not exist/be recognized. As my opponent himself clarified, property rights depend upon "the right to use the good." Thus, the crux of my case will be that the people of the United States have no right to use the goods that the claim as their own. First, humans have no inherent right to claim ownership over objects on the Earth. A key feature of property rights theory is that an individual can claim ownership over an object if he or she has created it/ has spent time working on its creation. The problem with this analysis, however, is that proponents of property rights conveniently forget the fact that the raw materials on the Earth were neither created by humans nor conjured by any being for human consumption. Trees, for example, which are harvested for their wood to make furniture and homes, are independent organisms that possess lives of their own and self-interests of their own that are independent of human desires. This means that that humans have no right to claim ownership over terrestrial objects and thus have "no right to use the goods." If this is true, then property rights should not exist in the United States because nobody has the right to claim any of the Earth's resources as their own. Second, even if we assume that humans have some inherent right to claim ownership over terrestrial goods, this right still does not justify property rights because it implies communal, rather than individual, use. A key feature of property rights theory is the notion that distinct individuals ought to have the ability to seize control of specific resources and use them as they please; however, even if we pretend that humans have the right to use terrestrial resources for some undetermined reason, this right was given to humanity as a whole, and not to a particular individual. This would mean that this communal right would entitle humans to share the Earth's resources equally with all other humans because the Earth would be used for the betterment of all. This, in turn, indicates that an individual should have the right to seize control of specific resources or land areas and claim ownership over them to the exclusivity of other groups or individuals. Since the right to seize control cannot exist, the rights to use the good exclusively/use the good to earn income/transfer the good to others cannot exist, so property rights ought not exist in the United States. Third, even if we concede the first two points and claim that humans somehow have obtained the ability to individually divide land-based resources amongst themselves, in the United States specifically, the right to use these resources does not exist because the goods were wrested from the control of others. A key notion of property rights theory is that an individual does not gain the right to use a good through theft or force. To clarify, one can gain control of an object or possess an object through those means, but that does not mean that one has the right to use or own that object. For example, the United States government routinely punishes bank robbers who obtain the goods of others through force because it recognizes the fact that just because one has come to possess an object through force does not mean that one has the right to own that object. The United States government, however, has failed to account for the fact that it controls territory and lands that belonged to Native Americans and was either stolen from them, wrested from them through force (violence and biological targeting), or taken from them through trickery. Since property rights theory itself mandates that goods gained in such a fashion are truly not the goods of the possessors, almost every individual in the United States has no right to own the homes, houses, land plots, etc. that have sprung from the use of stolen goods. This means that even if we ignore the previous two contentions, property rights should still not exist in the United States because the U.S. government and U.S. citizens do not have the right to use the land and resources that they are using. Note that the age of a crime does not render the crime defunct; for example, the U.S. just seized gold coins that were stolen from a mint almost a century ago by a private collector because it claimed that even if the crime was old, the stolen property still does not belong to any member of the public and thus must be returned to its proper owners. This means that my opponent cannot attempt to squeeze his way out of this last contention by claiming that the crime is "old." Finally, note that economic impacts have no import in today's round because the "right to earn income from the good" first depends on the "right to use the good", meaning that before we can even take economic and business impacts in consideration in today's debate, we must first establish that the individuals benefiting from U.S. property have the right to own and use that property. Thus, I strongly urge an affirmation of today's resolution. Thank you.