Property

Leonard has made an outstanding observation regarding snow removal, tight parking, and the nature and origins of the concept of property. He goes at some length into how people who park on the street in some cities will shovel themselves a spot, then reserve and defend it. It has become generally recognized that if you did the work, the spot is yours so long as the snow remains intact enough to justify it. Excellent post.

Within a day of seeing this post, which had followed my observation of the large amount of parking spot-reserving objects about after our recent excess of snow, the Boston TV stations covered the news that Mayor Tom Menino has ordered a crackdown on the practice of preserving and protecting the spot you cleared. Items left in shoveled spots will be removed by the trash removal guys, and the book will be thrown at people who vandalized parking spot thiefs.

How very commie of him. Not to mention unrealistic, unpragmatic, and out of touch with the people he lords it over represents.

Back to the original point. As I believe I have said before on my blog, there is nothing inherently valuable to anyone about a given item or place, except through the value we impart and perceive. In nomadic times and places, land was land, open to all, to reduce it to the simplest approximation.

Once you park your self in a spot, build a dwelling of any substance, improve the land, add crops to it, you create value and make the property yours by the act of holding, improving, defending, and valuing it. It's logical to surmise that is how the concept and common recognition of property developed, with conventions established by interactions over time among people in different areas. Governments may have arisen and taken on a role of framer and arbiter in property matters, but property exists without government.

I read an article once, perhaps in Reason (I may be remembering this article, at least in part), on the problems of property rights and economic progress in third world countries. In the United States, particularly as the west was settled, much of what we take for granted de jure grew out of de facto practices developed over time by the people. In some of these countries with backward government frameworks for property, and things like contracts, you miss what is happening dynamically and spontaneously on the streets if you look only at the government crust on things. That may be inadequate, or inappropriate and thus ignored, with the real people in the real economy doing what it takes.

Anyway, it's not "official," but because the people in the affected neighborhoods recognize the law of the street, which is - imagine! - logical, a spot you cleared for your car is and should well be a form of property. It's a microcosm of what property is and how it arose as a concept in the first place. Those who would say "sorry, that's tough you cleared a spot then someone else took it" are effectively communistic types. Or at least illogical, unintelligent, or out of touch with reality.