I believe that VoiceOfRa is referring to the vote that (presumably) put the government in power that nationalised the fisheries, and is selling what it calls "shares" in them. If these are non-voting shares, as you imply, then the management and ownership of the fisheries remains in the government's hands. What you have described is a nationalised industry. The "shareholders" do not have a share in ownership, only a licence to fish, whatever is written on the piece of paper they received.

• The share is not in the fishing -industry-, but in the stock of fish.

I'm not clear about the details (what is meant by "conversion of these resources"? -- the phrase sounds like specialised jargon) but this looks like nationalisation of the means of production, a standard socialist policy. This is not to say that it cannot work (although the record of nationalised industries mostly does say that) but it does not resemble anything normally called "capitalism".

• Conversion is a specialized term referring to the process of changing goods from one form to another, usually from an unprocessed natural state to a processed or final consumption-ready state; in this case, it could mean taking coal from the ground and burning it to produce electricity.

And no, I wouldn't advocate nationalizing the means of production. Actually, what I proposed was, in its entirety, taxing people on land (not buildings or improvements, but land only) and intellectual property.

Mexican land trusts are a good example of a "lease" arrangement that behaves identically to ownership as we typically regard it.

the same situation could be described as taxing people on property they own or the government leasing property

I think that would require considerable violence to the words "own" and "lease".

This kind of claim is very popular on the left, and it always puzzles me, because it's so obviously false on so many levels.

• I'm a minarchist.

Firstly, land ownership long predates any government. In fact, it even seems to predate humans! It would be more historically true to say that land ownership created government than that government created land ownership.

• You and I have different working definitions of the word "government" if you think "government" is something which was invented, rather than recognized.

Secondly, just because the government recognises your property right in something, doesn't mean you own it in any meaningful way. You seem to picture an omnipotent government that could even enable ownership of the ocean, but if it tried it would find itself much more like Canute. Unless you can enforce ownership, it's meaningless. People simply don't pay royalties every time they sing Happy Birthday, regardless of its copyright status. And so on.

• You're arguing with what I "seem" to be rather than what I am.

Thirdly, just because the government doesn't recognise your property right in something, it doesn't mean you don't own it. Does Tony Montana own the cocaine he imports? He buys it, he sells it, he stores it, he makes use of it how he wants, other people accept that it is "his," no-one else can get hold of it except by his agreement. That's ownership. The fact that the government doesn't recognise his legal title is irrelevant, he has other methods of enforcing his claim.

• The agents enforcing his claim are -also- governments. If he enforces his own claim, he is, de facto, a government.

[Edited: Quoting mistake]

In summary, government recognition of title is neither necessary nor sufficient for ownership, nor is it the historic origin. I myself am the title-holder of a plot of land that I do not own in any meaningful sense, because the writs of the government that recognises my title do not run in that area. Instead, there are other people who are currently enjoying all the property rights of that land, using it, earning money from it, excluding others from it, maybe even transferring their ownership. Perhaps I should go there and tell them that because the government doesn't recognise their claim, they can't do any of that stuff. Something tells me they might not find the argument persuasive.

• I don't know if you noticed your own subtle shift from "the" government to "a" government when you wrote this sentence. If you didn't, pay attention. It matters.

At any rate, I think you are trying to fit what I am saying to a political agenda that doesn't match my own. I don't -have- a political agenda here. I'm asserting, as somebody who would be described as an extremist capitalist, that "capitalism" isn't an economic system. What people usually mean, when they say "capitalism", is either exactly the set of economic rules they think would work best, or exactly the set of economic rules they disagree with most.

By that reasoning, making people slaves isn't less capitalistic, either. The only reason you can or can't control your own life is that the government has asserted that you do or don't, and will protect either you or the slaveowner's claim by force.

• No, your reasoning requires treating capitalism as a system rather than a model, which my opening comment explicitly rejects. Something isn't "more" or "less" capitalistic.

Also, by that reasoning, you cannot ever assert that the government is violating someone's rights, since rights do not exist independently of whether the government sets the terms.

• And here you're extending the argument into an entirely different domain in which I have thus far made no claims whatsoever. In order for my claim to extend in this manner, two things would have to be true: First, there would have to be a good natural rights argument for land ownership. (There isn't, although there -are- very good natural rights arguments for ownership of other things, including farms and buildings sitting on that land - an important distinction.) Second, I'd have to have rejected natural rights, which I haven't done.