Artikli https://dialoogid2.blogspot.com/2025/08/vara-ja-voim.html tõlge
Property and Power
Karmo Talts
In this work, I examine the relationship between property and power. To do this, I analyze how actions of other individuals can be affected with property, how they influence us do use our property to affect them whether mutual affecting each ohter with property is fair, how property and political power are related, and finally I focus on how reducing the power that can be achieved with property affects power relations.
Let's examine property. In a society where private property exists, property gives power - with the help of money, we can quite easily make other individuals give us something and, even more, we can change their beliefs about who the transferred thing belongs to or make them act for us, either in the short term, as an employee works for us when we pay them or whose employers company we visit as customers, or in the long term, we make them work for us paying them salary. It is sometimes possible to get other people to give us money by using other assets, whether we sell them those assets or offer our assets as collateral for a loan to them, etc.
Let us now examine the reciprocity of this power. Other individuals, in turn, have the power to use their assets to make us influence them with our assets. A servant who is his own employer and a wage earner have a different kind of power—they can get us to use our assets to influence them simply by being willing to serve us or work for us.*
Let us now examine whether the reciprocity of this power ensures the fairness of this power. In all these relationships, each party loses what gives them power over the other party. If we look at a purchase transaction, for example, one party loses products that they have owned that they themselves have not used and that may be difficult to resell, while the other party loses money, which in a stable economic situation is easier to exchange for other assets than non-monetary assets.
In the case of a purchase transaction, the total assets of the parties come into play. If the parties have unequal assets, then in most transactions the wealthier party loses a negligible part of their assets and therefore a small part of the power that their assets give them.
Let us now examine the relationship between assets and political power. Legitimate political power is provided by assets only in societies where the financing of politicians is considered legitimate. However, since legitimate power is not the only power, wealthy people can influence politics by both legal and illegal means.
Let us now examine political ideologies. Existing political ideologies are not innate knowledge, but in order to learn about them, information about them must be obtained. All possible political ideologies have probably not yet been created, so after they are created, they must be introduced to other people, and the current form of political ideologies may not be final, which means that their changed form must also be introduced to those people who knew the previous form of a given ideology. This means that, under conditions of freedom of speech, the property necessary for the dissemination of ideologies provides an indirect legal opportunity to influence politics.
Finally, we will look at how reducing the power that can be achieved through property would change power relations. Power relations that doesn't are not influenced by property would remain, because of the complexity of society, changing society can create completely new power relations, and reducing the power of wealthy individuals does not in itself mean that a tacit agreement would not be concluded between wealthy people and political power, which leaves wealthy individuals a part of their power if they do not bite the hand of the rulers.
In this work, I studied the relationship between property and power. I found that we can use property to get other people to provide us with products and services, but this power is reciprocal, because most often the provider of products and services influences us, either directly or indirectly - through paying salaries to service providers, etc. - with their property to buy these products and services. I found that this power does not always work fairly, because in a stable economic situation, money is usually preferable to other, more difficult-to-exchange assets, and wealthier people have more economic power and lose a small part of this power in the event of small property surrender. Regarding the relationship between political power and property, I found that democracy gives wealthy individuals the opportunity to influence politics through property in both corrupt and in legal ways. In addition, the presence of the assets necessary for the spread of ideologies provides an indirect legal opportunity to influence politics under conditions of freedom of speech. Regarding the reduction of power achieved through property, I found that this is not a final panacea for achieving justice, because some power relations depend little on property, the reorganization of society can create new power relations, and rulers can agree with wealthy people on how much their power can be limited in order for them to maintain loyalty to the rulers.
*A salaried service worker is a link in a chain where their employer indirectly influences us to use our assets to get the service worker to serve us.
