royls@telus.net wrote in news:48860f7b.12457580@news.telus.net:

Ah, my. Still addled by the beguiling myth of the Organic Fallacy.
"Societies," not being persons but merely arbitrarily defined collections
of them (e.g., all the persons occupying Australia, all persons inhabiting
Europe, etc.) , do not "recognize" anything (nor do they tie their shoes,
contemplate their navels, or love their mothers). If any "recognizing" is
being done, it is being done by some of the persons making up that society.
You need to stop anthropomorphizing (and then idolizing) this collection
and try to focus on the relevant entities.

You are right, of course, that there is no such thing as ownership "in the
absence of a society." That is because ownership, property, rights, and
related concepts are defined only for social contexts --- settings where
there are multiple agents capable of interacting. The sole inhabitant of an
island has no need for those concepts. Only when a second agent appears do
questions about "what is mine and what is thine" arise. We then have a
social context.

If Alfie and Bruno are the two inhabitants, then clearly, a claim that
"society recognizes Alfie's rights" can only mean that Bruno recognizes
them. But what if there are 1000 other people on the island? What would
"society recognizes Alfie's rights" mean, if not that most of those people,
or at least a large fraction of them, are able to recognize Alfie's
property as not being their own, and therefore refrain from stealing it?

As for "society" securing Alfie's rights, perhaps you can explain how these
1001 people accomplish that, prior to the creation of some formal machinery
for the purpose. If someone steals Alfie's cow, most of the few who knew
about it would say, "That's Alfie's problem" (just as they do today). A few
--- his friends and relatives --- might help him get it back. As far as
Alfie is concerned, "society" (most of that 1001 persons) is as useless as
boots to a snake, at least for this purpose.

You gotta scrap that mythological history of yours and acquaint yourself
with real history. Where some sort of government exists --- if only a self-
appointed warlord with an ample number of loyal troops --- there will
usually be some sort of mechanism for adjudicating private disputes and
punishing wrongdoers. Those mechanisms, however, are not created to protect
anyone's rights. They are provided only to keep the peace and minimize
threats to the regime (such as Rome's Praetorian Guard). In ancient Athens
the state established courts for hearing such disputes, but investigating
offenses, identifying and locating offenders, locating any stolen property,
and often apprehending the offender fell to the complaining party. Only the
determination of guilt or innocence, and imposition of punishment, was left
to the State (and in other places, not even the latter).

See *Policing Athens: Social Control in the Attic Lawsuits, 420-320 B.C*,
Virginia J. Hunter, esp. Ch's 4 & 5. Brief excerpt here:

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=103017930

Simliar institutions prevailed in feudal England. The Lord would conduct a
trial and impose punishment, but investigating the crime and locating the
offender was up to the victim. If the complainant could identify an
offender and show probable cause, the Sheriff would summon him to court.
(Until the 12th century there was no distinction between civil and criminal
law; all offenses except treason were private. In the 12th century Henry I
declared arson, robbery, murder, false coinage, and crimes of violence to
be offenses against the "king's peace," i.e., the state).

Traditional Japan:

http://books.google.com/books?id=SJ9GjorvJGkC&pg=PA139
&dq=law+enforcement+athens&lr=&ei=q6qGSPOQE4yQtgOJ4ryXBg&sig=ACfU3U1FTO3jts
mdVeV9qbalX_M8zrHXHw#PPA15,M1

A society (a number of interacting persons) is a precondition for the
notions of rights, property, et al, but public enforcement of those rights
is a recent development. The first police department in the modern sense
--- charged with investigating offenses against private citizens and
apprehending offenders --- was not created until 1829, in London.

"The middle ages either had no system of law enforcement or one of two
systems, depending upon what part of the world you were in. Where law
enforcement existed, it was most likely a variety of the watch system -- a
system premised on the importance of voluntarily patrolling the streets and
guarding cities from sunset to sunrise ("2 A.M. and all's well"). The
predominant function of policing became class control (keeping watch on
vagrants, vagabonds, immigrants, gypsies, tramps, thieves, and outsiders in
general). Despite some innovations during this time period (the Magna Carta
of 1215 being a notable example), most of this era was characterized by
lawlessness and corruption. By the 1500s, there was no country in the world
with more robbers, thieves, and prostitutes than England. Other countries,
too, experienced lawlessness to such a degree that citizen groups, known as
vigilantes, sprang up to combat crime."

http://www.realpolice.net/police-history.shtml

Despite this lack of enforcement the concepts of property and rights were
understood perfectly well.