Quote from: YarkoL on June 30, 2015, 08:19:29 AM

So you are saying that property is a social construct ? I think the notion of property is intrinsically linked with privacy [ ... ] This concept of natural ownership precedes governments.

Neither privacy nor property are "natural". Have a look at any of the hunter-gatherer people who still exist out there. Nothing is more alien to their culture than "privacy", not even of thir bodies. If they are nomadic, their material possessions are so scant that "property rights", even if they are present, play an insignificant role in their economy, and are restricted to the objects that they use and cannot be used by others at the same time. Most of those objects need to be remade periodically. The more settled tribes may have single family huts (without fences, walls, or locks), but many have instead big multi-family homes, and communal buildings where people spend most of their time indoors.

Most importantly, their "property rights" are not really rights, to the extent that there is no third party to enforce them. Suppose that a bully takes the bracelet or bow from a weaker tribesman, "because I am strong and you are a wimp". The victim will be unhappy, but so what? If the rest of the tribe forces the bully to return the object, there you have governmet and laws, even if unformalized and unwritten. If the others don't care, what would be the point of saying that the victim has "property rights" over the object?

Quote

a natural consequence of the fact that we are endowed with thoughts, aims and aspirations
that are not immediately visible to others.

Those tribes are proof that one thing does not lead to the other.

Quote

Whatever happens to Bitcoin, its greatest value is that it has demonstrated
that you can have transferable and divisible digital property without resort
to central authority that sanctions its use.

Bitcoin transfers "possession", not "property".

Quote

From now on, we have a realistic prospect of developing "smart" contracts
- like payment of a car for example -.that are enforced by algorithms and not by
"the side with more guns, more thugs", i.e. the government.

I would really like to see a smart contract work without backing of police, laws, and courts. (Note that contracts are like fire extinguishers: they are useful only when things fail to happen the way they were supposed to happen.)