I’d say that capitalists use property ownership to exploit the cost of producing redundancy. They would capture a good or capital and prevent their use unless a ransom is paid. If consumers don’t wish to pay it, then they can re-produce the captured good in order to fulfill the same amount of demand. Re-producing the same good while the captured good remains unused is producing redundancy.
For example, a landlord purchases a home to transform into a rental property and asks for a compensation for its access. Consumers can decide not to pay, but if the house was built to fulfill a demand and its capture prevents its access, an additional house has to be built to fulfill the same amount of demand. Building 2 houses to only be able to use one is twice the cost of a house, which is a way higher cost than the price of the ransom the landlord asks for. This exploitation of the cost of producing redundancy is what gives the landlord his bargaining power. No one would otherwise need to pay the landlord to not produce anything.
So, the problem with exploiting the cost of producing redundancy is that it lacks a reasonable justification. A redundant good or capital is something that semantically doesn’t have a function. You can’t reasonably justify paying a cost, like the cost of labor or expending resources, to produce something that doesn’t have the function of fulfilling a demand.
And here’s the important part. To receive or ask for a payment, a reasonable justification is required by law. Here’s a criminal code article from Canada:
346 (1) Every one commits extortion who, without reasonable justification or excuse and with intent to obtain anything, by threats, accusations, menaces or violence induces or attempts to induce any person, whether or not he is the person threatened, accused or menaced or to whom violence is shown, to do anything or cause anything to be done.
After reading the definition, you might think that, yeah, there might not be a reasonable justification to exploiting the cost of producing redundancy, but it’s not done under threats, menace, accusations or violence. But you’d be wrong. The production of redundancy, which is synonym with the waste of resources, is itself a menace. Wasting resources leads to a reduction of wealth, not something anyone would want. The production of redundancy or the payment of the ransom are also forced through violence. If consumers don’t want to either pay the ransom or produce redundancy, the only option is to use the captured good or capital without paying the unjustified portion of the asked price. If consumers do that, they subject themselves to threats by law enforcement since it will be understood as theft. So there’s is two different sources of threats, menace, accusations or violence that forces the payment of the ransom, the menace of having to produce redundancy and the threats of being arrested for theft.
So in conclusion, it becomes apparent that generating profits from sole ownerships of goods or capital is literal extortion, a criminal act.
If that’s the case, fixing capitalism could be rather easy. Compensations for prejudices could be sought after, or citizen’s arrests could be made against law enforcement or the judiciary. We could then eliminate compensations for the sole ownership of stuff.
If consumers don’t pay the unjustified portion of the price, but still use the captured good or capital, that will be understood as theft since the owner has the right to property. The problem is that the property is owned solely to commit the crime of extortion rather than, say, fulfill the owner 's demand. The unjustified portion of the asked price doesn’t have to be paid because a reasonable justification has to exist for payment to be legal. So the protection of the extortionists ’ rights to property is a mistake by law enforcement and the judiciary. This protection is also itself part of the extortion act because the acts committed by them is violence, menaces, threats and accusations, such as arresting, imprisoning, etc.
From the perspective of the owner, the property is owned to fulfill the owner’s demand for a second stream of income by terms that are agreeable to both owner and the renter. So, it’s not owned solely to commit the crime of extortion, because the property would be rented when a renter that agrees to the arrangement shows up.
What is the justified ask price, anyway? It’s like you’re referring to another concept without naming it. What’s the criteria for determining it?
Obviously, you can’t say I can do this action that will give me wealth because I want to be given wealth. The action can’t be used as an argument to justify itself. It’s a simple circular reasoning fallacy.
Other than a few rare cases of natural occurrences, wealth exists exclusively because it’s produced. To have a reasonable justification to be compensated with wealth, you need to produce it. Either you produce your own personal wealth, or in a system of division of labor, you produce wealth you don’t necessarily need and trade for an equivalent amount. The value of price of wealth is simply determined by consensus. There are no other ways.
A sole ownership isn’t a production of wealth. An ownership of wealth will never reasonably justify a compensation in wealth, no matter how the bargaining power is obtained.
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