Writing Feedback / Property ownership - justification essay [6]

I know this is quite a long essay to check.. but my exam is in six days and this is really important to me. Could somebody read the question and my essay and tell me what I can do to improve my skills for exams like this? Thank you!

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Both of the passages talk about whether people have rights to own, and if they do, how they achieve the right to own. The first passage talks about a man and acorns and apples. Locke suggests that he can be the rightful owner of the acorns and apples since nobody can deny the ownership of the nourishments from the nature. On the other hand, the second passage delivers a rather more active and point and underscores that the earth is for everybody; therefore, one can claim that something is his or hers as long as it does not affect the ownership of another entity. It even dubs the earth a great theater for the mankind, and maintains that one can claim the ownership of something as long as doing so does not hurt anybody.

Owning a property is a quintessential part of human culture. To make a bald claim, it is now taken for granted that one wants to and is supposed to acquire ownership of properties, whether it is physical or not. The example provided in the first passage is of a rather simplistic nature, where an individual or entity with desire for ownership of apples and acorns can simply achieve his or her goal by picking them up. There is not much to debate about in this situation, because it involves a setting where there is rarely any competition for the acorns and the apples. As John Stuart Mill has said before, one should be able to do whatever he or she wants to do as long as it does not involve harming anybody. If there is any competition about some apples and acorns, one can simple move to another part of the nature unless he or she has some fixation about the exact shapes of apples or acorns. Compared to the first passage, the second passage provides a rather biblical idea of ownership of property. First, it claims that the earth is given to men for the purposes of life. Then, it claims something that renders itself rather conspicuous throughout the entire analysis of ownership. It claims that anyone can be entitled to own something on the earth, but, it adds one condition, which is the power and understanding of men. As both of the passages claimed, the earth, despite the fact that every part of the earth is increasingly being privatized and owned by global entities, is for human. That is not to say that humans can ruthlessly expropriate the earth, but that humans can acquire resources from the earth for his or her needs for happiness and survival. Then the problem is that the earth is becoming global at an accelerated rate, and that means that there will be more conflicts among humans who will claim ownership. That brings us to the topic of ownership of residual property, and it will be examined in details in the following

The ownership of residual property is an essential part of economics, politics, and so on. As clarified the assumption with a man in the nature picking up acorns and apples and the idea of an ancient man going to a theater and occupying an empty seat, claiming ownership of something that is unoccupied is considered proper with a condition that doing so won't hurt others. Then what about a situation where one already has enough for himself or herself and he or she wants to own more? Should that be considered moral and taken for granted, or is it imperative to shed some more light on it and deal with it with a different perspective? The latter seems more proper, for the nature of the two circumstances aforementioned differ greatly from each other. To be able to criticize the unequal ownership of residual property, one first needs to recognize the cause of existence of such inequality. The inequality rises from the arbitrary interpretation of the conditions under which one can claim something as his or hers. For example, the author of the first passage asks a rhetorical question of whether needs the consent of all mankind to be acknowledged as the rightful owner of the acorns and apples. It was quite obvious that the question was simply rhetorical and the opposite was what the author wanted to claim. With such mentality or interpretation, mixed with the inherent human needs for dominance and acquisition, it is only a matter of time before some people claim the ownership of more than what he or she needs. As mentioned in the second passage, men with more power and better understanding of the social system are considered to be entitled for ownership of the residual property. Such phenomenon might seem harmless since the whole debate is about "residual" property, not something that other people already owned. As mentioned in the second passage, those who advocate being able to claim residual property might claim that doing so does not really harm anybody because it is still unoccupied. But the uncomfortable fact here is that just like there are some people with stronger power and better understanding of the social system, there are bound to be some others with less power and weaker understanding of the social system. Therefore, while there are some people who claim ownership of more than they need, there must be some others that claim, if they do, less than what they would need for their needs for survival and happiness. Therefore, we need to make sure that there are a plenty of residual property preserved for those who are slow at claiming the ownership of what they need. Quoting the circumstance mentioned in the second passage, just because there are some empty seats available before the performance started, that does not mean that those who are already at the theater can claim the rest of the empty seats for themselves, because there could be some latecomers.

In conclusion, the ownership of property can be justified using the ideas presented in the two passages; people are entitled to claim ownership of something for their survival and happiness, just like the man in the forest picking up unclaimed acorns and apples. Despite that, more careful approach should be taken when it comes to verifying the validity of claiming ownership of residual property. In spite of its seemingly simplistic nature, the idea of being able to claim something without hurting anybody is more restrictive than it looks. For example, claiming an empty seat at a theater and then claiming other seats in the theater might seem harmless at the moment, but it could do great harm to others in the long term; some people might come late and claim those seats later. Therefore, the ownership of residual property should be shunned and only be allowed in a situation where it is certain that doing so won't cause harm to anybody.