
Interest Property Theory
[Full Text]
—Basic Property through Interests—
Imagine you find a stick on the ground. You pick it up and play with it, but unknown to you, the stick is actually an incredibly rare kind of wood, that is extremely fragile, and then it breaks. A collector walks up to you and is furious because that was their stick, and it was worth a lot of money.
Now imagine you find a stick on the ground, the stick does not belong to anyone, you pick it up and play with it, and it breaks. You walk away, and that's it.
In the second circumstance, messing with the stick affected nobody else. More than that, if someone walked up to you and tried to take the stick from you, they would be frustrating against your interests. In the first circumstance, if the collector tried to take the stick from you, it would have been justified as your interest in playing with their stick would be an inherently frustrating interest, and thus interest transgression against them.
In the second circumstance, you can do what you like with the stick as long as it affects nobody else, and nobody else can take the stick from you because that inherently frustrates against you. In this sense, your preferences are wrapped up in the stick, the stick has become a conduit of your interests themselves; the fulfillment of specific interests of yours are dependent on the state of the stick.
Thus, relative to Interests as a value, while messing with the stick until it is abandoned, you have ownership over the stick.
—Interest Property—
The Lockean theory of property, asserts that individuals gain ownership of resources by mixing their labor with them. This matches up with Interests.
If you build a birdhouse, from unowned wood, your preferences become wrapped up in, and dependant on, the birdhouse. If the birdhouse is destroyed, a whole set of rational interests you have in relation to the birdhouse, are all inherently frustrated.
From this grants a basic right to Personal Property. This grants a justification for the idea that you own what you make, and are ethically justified in defending your own property, as you are simply defending the conduit of your rational interests.
—Self-Ownership—
Your Body and Mind are both also conduits of your rational interests. Your mind is the conduit of all of your preferences, of all kinds. In the sense described previously, your rational interests, and irrational interests, all preferences you have, are wrapped up in your mind, dependant on it.
Your ability to fulfill most interests are wrapped up in your body.
Thus, any attack on your body or mind, any frustrating against your interests relevant to your body or mind, any violation of your bodily autonomy, is an inherent frustration against your interests to an even greater extent than a violation against your personal property.
This grants a basic sense of "Self-Ownership". Except, what does ownership mean exactly?
—What Constitutes "Ownership"?—
What does ownership mean exactly? People may own their bodies, their minds, and personal goods that are relevant inherently only to themselves; but in what way? What does it mean to 'own' something?
--Absolutist View of Ownership--
Is ownership of some entity, the same thing as saying you can do whatever you want with that entity, so long as it does not violate other people's ownership rights?
--Anti-Abuse Principle contradicts this Absolutism--
According to the Anti-Abuse Principle, inherent frustration against others interests, and enforcement of misaligned interests causing frustration, "Abuse", is illegitimate, based on the normative value of interests themselves.
This contradicts the Absolutist View of Ownership, because if the basis of ownership is building a thing and using it, it is still possible to abuse your control over that thing, in a way that contradicts others interests, including their rational inherent interests.
--Unsafe Food Example--
Imagine a simple example: A business that has a monopoly on food production. This business then decides to start using cancerous chemicals in the food, and rolls back their safety standards, for profits. The business does list their additional ingredients on the food, so customers can read the ingredients.
Yet, even though the customers are able to be informed, even if they are, the business will likely recieve sales anyway, and consumers who want and buy the products, will do so even if they themselves would rather the business not use cancerous chemicals in the food.
This is the free market at work, and nobody's property rights are being violated here. Yet, it is an inherent frustration against the consumer, done by the business. The business is in the wrong, since the fact that the consumers bought the product, doesn't mean they actually have an interest in cancerous food. It is that interest that is in-fact, being actively violated.
How exactly a monopoly of this sort comes to be, is irrelevant to the fact that the business' decision to add cancerous ingredients to their food, against their customer's wishes, was still inherently frustrating against their customer's interests.
—Abuse Violates Consent—
This idea can be taken farther, obliterating the Absolutist View of Ownership. If someone goes to the store and buys apples, and the apples are contaminated, and the person gets sick and dies due to a lapse in safety protocol by the food producer, that is inherently frustrating against them, even if they were informed previously of the food producer's safety protocols.
The reason for this, is that it violates Consent, and thus violates Interests.
--Consent--
Consent is a continuous, preferably enthusiastic, explicit, and relevantly-informed, acceptance of an agreement, contract, or activity.
--Getting sick from Contaminated Food is a violation of Consent--
Someone getting sick from apples and dying, still had their consent violated to some extent, because they did not consent to die, nor get sick, and they did not have a reasonable expectation that it would happen in the first place.
Even if they were technically informed, in the real world people informed or no will buy sometimes risky products if no better options are available. Reluctantly buying a product due to a lack of options, is not consent.
The person who got sick and died from contamination, did not consent to eating contaminated food. They did not explicitly agree, they did not give enthusiastic consent, they did not accept "you might die" as a term. None of that is what they "signed up for".
--Abuse violates Consent as it is Anti-Interest--
The problem with Abuse, of the enforcement of misaligned interests, either through poor safety protocols being pushed on the public against their interests, or through lay-offs of workers for profit-driven reasons when alternatives to lay-offs are available, or through changes in contracts and ongoing agreements; is that it is contrary to the interests of those involved, as a side-effect of the misalignment of interests, and contrary to what the people involved actually signed up for.
Thus, abuse as defined and agreements made through interest misalignment, violates Consent.
—Ownership is Consent—
If abuse, agreements made through interest misalignment, and inherent frustration, violate the consent of those affected, this also comes into conflict with the point of Ownership.
If you own yourself, and a store sells food that went through poor safety protocols, and thus violates your consent, then suddenly that is in violation of your ownership of yourself.
This follows, because ownership of yourself means some protection over the conduit of interests that is your Body and Mind; and that protection requires consent.
--Loosely Voluntary is not the same as Consent--
The Absolutist View of Ownership thus creates a problem, what counts as a violation of another's ownership rights? It depends on how you define it in the first place.
Absolutist Property Rights are usually argued for on behalf of the idea that any agreement made voluntarily is valid, where "voluntary" simply means "the person trying to get you to do something isn't threatening you with violence as an aggressor to make you do it".
This is not the same as Consent. What that description of voluntary is really describing, is a 'loosely voluntary' exchange that can include anything from being coerced into doing someone by the threat of eviction, or loss of some deal, misalignment of interests, inherent frustration, etc.
--Ownership is Consent Based--
That is not the same as an enthusiastic, mutual agreement, enthusiastic meaning all sides of a deal agree with most terms of the contract, and that the process of deciding the terms is fair.
This has Interest Alignment written all over it, so Absolutist Property Rights in the sense of 'loosely voluntary' transaction, is fundamentally Anti-Consent and Anti-Interests.
Therefore, if people really own their own bodies and minds, they should own them with respect to the ownership of their own interests and preferences, in a way enforced by rule of Consent.
—Conclusion—
If Ownership, relative to Interests, should be based on Consent, then what determines Property Ownership? An answer can be arrived at in a way consistent with what has been said, through Justification Ethics.
Justification Ethics, the assertion that actions should be rationally justifiable based on the relevant interests of those involved in an ongoing interaction, paraphrased here, allows the pinpointing of the circumstance where the rational justification of exclusive property is valid, and where it is not.
The Anti-Abuse Principle states that interference with non-abusive fulfillment of interests is illegitimate. This can be used to craft the following theory:
—Interest Property Theory—
Definition of Ownership: A right to exclusive, non-abusive control over a particular object or entity, due to the right over interests the entity acts as a conduit of.
You own your Interests, and Preferences, through the normative value of Interests.
You thus also own your Body and Mind, as they are the primary conduit of your interests.
If you build, craft, or otherwise create something, or possess and use something, your interests get wrapped up in your new property, and a set of your interests become dependant on your property.
Your property is a conduit to your interests, granting you the right to use your property as you wish, as long as your use is non-abusive and does not inherently frustrate against the interests of others.
Interference in the non-abusive use of your property, thus constitutes inherent frustration or abuse against you and your interests.

