Property Refinement: Preponderance of Control

 To avoid defecting on cooperators, it's important to know exactly who owns what. There is indeed an absolute, objective way to determine ownership. It's a spiritual truth, not a lawyer debate; spiritual authority is absolute and indisputable. Thor owns the rain and storm because he is the rain and storm. What is a lawyer debate is mortal understanding of the spiritual truth, and here's my latest attempt.  Basically it's easy to control the things you own, and difficult for anyone else to control. 

 Ownership is defined by preponderance of control. If I pick a up a rock and hold it in my hand, it's not as if nobody can take it away from me. For them, controlling it takes effort, but for me, it doesn't. 

 Security increases preponderance of control. If I not only pick up the rock but take it behind a fence and lock it in a vault, then it's still not the case that nobody can take it from me, but at this point you spend more taking my rock than you can possibly gain by gaining a rock.

 Generally, security results from a reasonable expectation of control. I believe the vault will in fact lock up the rock, and nobody will waylay me on the way to the vault, and so on. Contrast trying to lock hydrogen in a latex balloon - no one would try this, because it doesn't work. Likewise if there's some mortal-action leak, I don't try it in the first place. If I cannot achieve preponderance of control, then I generally don't waste wealth by trying.

 I would like a Pope to determine what counts as [enough] security for practical everyday sociological praxis, but unfortunately, we have a logical quis custodiet. Who determines what the Pope owns? Whoops. Are we to try to determine the Pope's property by constantly attempting to take it away from him? Certainly that works scientifically, but it doesn't work in accounting. The knowledge isn't worth what we're paying for it. Something else has to be used. Likewise, a Pope can't determine what foreigners own; they (hopefully) have their own Pope, and if their Pope agreed with our Pope, we've contradicted the idea they're foreigners: they have the same Pope. Are we to avoid dealing with foreigners at all? Nonsense. 

 The definition of property transcends any society. As I said: it's a spiritual truth, not a mortal law. Knowing this absolute truth is critical.