The Lockean Proviso

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What is it? What does it mean? I don’t understand the wikipedia article at *all*, please help

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3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

John Locke was a political philosopher who wrote about moral behavior. One of his most popular ideas was that private property is just; and that private property comes about when an individual exerts labor on natural resources. So, by picking an apple from a tree, you have converted the apple from public property into private property in a way which is morally okay.

This is extrapolated to say that claiming *land* as your own private property is morally okay, because you are exploiting the natural resources of the land via your labor. However, the **Lockean Proviso** is where Locke goes on to say that it is *only* okay so long as there is enough good land for others to claim themselves.

So to loop it back to our apple tree: It’s fine for you to pick an apple off a wild, un-owned tree for yourself. It’s even okay for you to pick several apples and sell them to others, because by putting in the labor to pick them, you have converted that public property into private property. But the Lockean Proviso says that it’s *not* okay for you to pick every single apple off that public tree, because you are robbing others of the right to private property by claiming it all for yourself.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It is a feature of John Locke’s labour theory of property, and it basically means that while it is ok to exploit natural resources to build for yourself, you must leave enough for others.

For example:
You want to build a house. To do this, you must chop down 10 trees.
In area 1, there are only 10 trees. Building your house would take away all available trees in this area, so no one else would be able to build a house in this area. According to the Provisio, this is wrong.
In area 2, there are 30 trees. Building your house would leave 20 trees, enough for other people to build their house in this area as well. Therefore, according to the Provisio, building your house here is ok.

Basically, it means “Don’t be greedy!”

Anonymous 0 Comments

This comes from philosopher John Locke when discussing ownership derived from common goods.

The idea is you are free to, claim ownership of unowned property by utilizing it with your labor, but only so long as enough remains for others and that it is of similar quality. That last portion is the proviso. Otherwise, society as a whole has an interest in that property and can limit how it is used.