[bradDonniger]

Where’s the objectivity in letting well financed private power “own” natural resources.

There is no being objective when the conversation starts in such an intentionally spread artificial obligation to consider. Their claims of ownership are not backed by immutable physical evidence but mutable spoken social norms.

Your skepticism alone is insufficient objection to curtail conversation that may rustle Jimmie’s but otherwise does no quantitative damage; it’s not as if mere conversation magically alters the status quo. Rest assured Nestle will be ok tomorrow.

[lo_zamoyski]

That something isn't accessible to the methods of physical science doesn't mean it has no objective reality. (The methods of physical science themselves are not objects of physical science.)

In any case, that doesn't mean that the liberal notion of private property escapes criticism. Indeed, that is very much the problem. According to the liberal view, radically individualist and absolutist as it is, property is first and foremost private; the common good is conceived of as something resulting from the voluntary cession of private property.

But this is backwards and this notion is not at all the traditional view of property. According to the traditional view, human beings are social animals, not atomized individuals, and this means there there exists a common good. Furthermore, private property exists for the sake of the common good. That private property exist at all is because it enables the common good. It enables human beings to pursue the good; its absence would frustrate it by introducing conflict, an unjust distribution of goods, and so on.

This imposes a limit on private ownership because if private ownership exists for the sake of the common good, then it cannot be the case that the private ownership of something is harmful to the common good. If I bought up all the arable land in the world and in this way prevented the possibility of farming and food production, I would indeed be harming the common good. Water is similar.

[gruez]

>This imposes a limit on private ownership because if private ownership exists for the sake of the common good, then it cannot be the case that the private ownership of something is harmful to the common good. If I bought up all the arable land in the world and in this way prevented the possibility of farming and food production, I would indeed be harming the common good. Water is similar.

But nobody is actually buying up land so nobody can grow food, nor is nestle buying up water so nobody can drink it. In fact they're doing the opposite. They're taking water from the ground and selling it so people can access it. I don't see how this is any different than a farmer growing food from the ground and selling it to people.