----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 
 
Replying to Michael Perelman, who said: 
 
"I would be inclined to reverse the causality, James. Private property is secure when the
poor have viable alternatives to theft. Just last night I was glancing at an article about
the Zulu in National Geographic. One of the young people in the piece asked what
alternative they had to car jacking. Rationalization? Maybe, but probably not entirely
so."
    
Michael, what makes you unhappy about that poor old causality? 
    
It is not necessary to go as far as Prudhon to imagine that all private property
originates in theft, but I see no reason to relax the guard over private property, because
all unguarded property may culminate in theft. The suspicion arises from the biological
predisposition of animals to eat more than they need to survive the moment. They
accumulate fat when food is plentiful.
 
The biological predisposition to accumulate fat transmutes into the endless appetite for
profit and wealth. Unguarded property invites the finder-keeper, even if he is not hungry.
 
My understanding is that when the pastoral people first began to invest labor in raising
cattle, the hunter-gatherers just would not understand how one could lay claim on the cow
as private property. It had to be protected by the pastoral investor, because the other
party did not acknowledge its ownership.
 
My belief is that the bulk of the theft occurs in the hands of the super rich, who are so
powerful that they can ignore the victims of theft. In Bangladesh, a few guys stole so
much from the nation's banking system that all the petty thieves together in all their
lives could not possibly steal what these super rich did in one single day.
    
Here in America, I am sure Michael Milken had a good alternative to car-jacking. So had
most of the rich guys now under cloud. I have trouble believing that Enron bosses had no
viable alternative to theft. They did what smart people may do: take unguarded stuff.
    
Please let causality live in peace. And let the thieves also live in peace, inside the
prison.
    
Mohammad Gani 
 
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