Periodically, people ask me this.
Sometimes, they portray property rights as similar to political authority – if you don’t accept the latter, why would you accept property rights? I guess the idea is that owning property is like having authority over those specific goods. (https://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2013/08/on-the-problematic-political-authority-of-property-rights-how-huemer-proves-too-much/) Property really isn’t puzzling in the way that political authority is, though. The idea of authority inherently places some people above others, with special rights and exemptions that don’t apply to anyone else. There would have to be an answer to what was special about those people. The idea of property rights isn’t like that. (https://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2013/08/michael-huemer-responds-to-critics-part1/)
But you might nevertheless wonder why we should have property rights. The right to property crucially includes a right to exclude other people, by force if necessary, from making use of a valuable resource. On the face of it, that seems coercively harmful. Why should you get to do that? You could say that it’s not really coercive or harmful because the resources are yours, but that just raises the question of why anything counts as “yours” in that sense.
I want to say three things on behalf of property: an appeal to intuition, an appeal to rule utilitarianism, and an appeal to agreement.
1. Property Intuitions
You’re in a remote wilderness location outside the jurisdiction of any government. You happen upon a rude hut occupied by a hermit, who appears to have made the hut as well as a few crude tools. You decide it would be fun to move in there for a few weeks. You ignore the hermit’s strenuous objections since (you figure) he has no right to exclude you, and you move into “his” hut, start using the tools you find there, and eat the food that you see there. You spray-paint graffiti all over the hut. When you leave a few weeks later, you take most of the tools with you. Q: Did you do anything objectionable?
Those who deny that there are property rights, or who think property rights are created by government or law or society, must say “no”. The hermit had no rights over any of those goods, so you had just as much right to do those things as he did. No normal person would think this was okay, though.
That’s the basic property-rights intuition. This doesn’t answer all questions about property. It doesn’t answer whether there is ‘intellectual’ property, it doesn’t answer how far our property rights extend, it doesn’t address eminent domain or adverse possession, etc. But none of those things was the starting question. The starting question was, why believe in any property rights at all?
2. Rule Utilitarianism
There is a traditional sort of rule-utilitarian rationale for property. The fundamental problem it addresses is this:
There are various resources in the world (stuff that may be used for desirable purposes). Many people have conflicting desires regarding these resources – i.e., people would like to use a resource in a way that would prevent others from using the resources in their preferred ways. E.g., there’s an apple that you and I would each like to eat, but if I eat it, you cannot.
Some solution to that is required. An institution of private property is one solution, but there are others. Here are some alternatives:
1. We fight over resources; to the victor go the spoils. In the absence of any generally established social rule, this is what happens by default. This is a terrible “solution”. The fighting causes enormous harm; plus, none but the best fighters will bother to create anything of value, since they would immediately lose it.
2. Anyone gets to use any resource that he can access that no one is currently using (but no attacking other people’s bodies). This is better than #1 but still terrible. If you see something of value, you try to immediately use it up, because it won’t be there the next time you come by (the Tragedy of the Commons). If you have something of value, you don’t dare put it down because someone will swiftly take it. Similarly, you don’t bother making anything of great value, because it will be wasted effort given that you can’t carry it with you at all times.
More generally: Some resources require some kind of short-term sacrifice (e.g., work or delayed gratification) to maximize their value. Self-interested people will not make that sacrifice if the benefit will go to others.
3. Each time you want to use some resource, you call a meeting of your society at which your proposal is debated and voted on. Problems: Every waking hour is devoted to meetings. Again, no one makes things of value because they would just end up getting used in ways that the maker didn’t want.
3a. Like #3, except that the government forces people to work to make things of value. Problem: Everyone is oppressed by the government, in addition to living in poverty.
4. Each member of society takes turns using each resource. On the first day, person #1 gets to use the good; the next day, person #2 gets it; etc. Problem: There won’t be any left by the time you get to person #4, or possibly even #2.
5. Everyone is a utilitarian, and they all just agree on what the utility-maximizing use for each resource is, so they all go along with that use. Problem: This is not possible on this Earth.
6. For each resource, a specific decision-maker is assigned according to some publicly known rules. That agent decides what uses to make of the resource.
Can you think of any other alternatives?
#6 is the only solution I can think of that isn’t obviously completely terrible or ridiculous. #6 is the “property rights” solution. To own a piece of property is to be the decision-maker for it according to the standard rules.
There is more to be said about what should be the rules by which such decision-makers are assigned. E.g., one key principle is that the person responsible for making something of value should decide on its use; else, people will not make such things. Another key principle is that property rights can be transferred by mutual consent; otherwise, we would miss out on the benefits of trade. The more you think about the actual social rules governing property, the more they make sense from a (rule) utilitarian perspective.
3. You Already Agree with Me
A simpler thing to say in response to “why have an institution of property?” is “what’s the alternative view?” There is no serious alternative view. Every society has resolved the core problem in essentially the same way – every society has people who own stuff and so get to decide what to do with that stuff.
Sometimes, you hear about societies that didn’t have property rights, say, in land. This would be because land wasn’t scarce enough for them to have frequent conflicts over the use of a particular piece of land. These societies would still assign property rights, however, to goods that were scarce and that people would have conflicting uses for.
You sometimes hear that communists or socialists “reject private property”. But they don’t really. (They just use the words “private property” in a weird way.) Socialists do not think, for example, that every time you want to put on a shirt in the morning you should have to petition the government, or some democratic assembly, for permission. No, every socialist society has allowed you to own your own shirt. This is what the socialists call “personal property”.
What is it that the socialists reject? They reject private ownership of capital – i.e., they think that the means for producing goods for sale should be controlled by the state, or by worker cooperatives (there are 2 versions of socialism). This isn’t a rejection of property rights. It’s not even a rejection of property rights over capital; they just think that the property rights should be assigned in a particular way – to the state or to associations of workers.
So that’s compatible with my main point, that we need an institution of property. Of course, I don’t think the socialists are right about the best way to distribute property. Socialism solves the basic problem of conflict over resources, but it’s an inferior solution to the capitalist approach, basically because neither the state nor worker cooperatives are typically the best decision-makers. But that’s a topic for another time.