• Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          11 months ago

          Personal property is like your toothbrush or your clothes: you own and use them directly and as a general rule nobody else has a need for them unless their own is missing.

          Private property is more like bottling what would otherwise be tap water or commercial farmland: everyone needs food and water to live, but private ownership of both means that only people with the required amount of money or, failing that, willingness/ability to go into debt get those essential resources.

          • Mango@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            11 months ago

            Okay, that’s a nice thing to distinguish, but can we have some better words for it? This is really easy to miscommunicate.

            • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              11 months ago

              I wish lol. I agree that it’s super impractical to use two words that are most often thought of as synonymous.

              That’s probably why corporate PR people came up with “private”: to make the incurious think that it’s the same thing as personal property and thus as inviolable.

              It’s pretty much perfectly in line with their general conflation of personhood and business…