Difference between revisions of "What Is Property?"
From Critiques Of Libertarianism
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==The Nature of Property== | ==The Nature of Property== | ||
| − | Property is a set of coercively enforced rights. Without coercive enforcement, there are no rights, there are only claims. Property is only as strong and secure as its enforcement, which is why property enforcement is generally by coercive social organizations such as governments, clans, feudal systems, etc. Individuals generally cannot create and maintain property because they are not nearly as powerful as social organizations. Thus, in modern nations, governments create and maintain property. | + | Property is a set of coercively enforced rights. Without coercive enforcement, there are no rights, there are only claims. Property is only as strong and secure as its enforcement, which is why property enforcement is generally by coercive social organizations such as governments, clans, feudal systems, etc. Individuals generally cannot create and maintain property because they are not nearly as powerful as social organizations. Thus, in modern nations, governments create and maintain property. All property reduces liberty of all others by creating enforced duties to respect the property. This is a tradeoff, between the benefits of property and the reduction of liberty by duties. |
For a general overview of the nature of rights, see: [[What Are Rights?]] | For a general overview of the nature of rights, see: [[What Are Rights?]] | ||
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==What are the component rights of property?== | ==What are the component rights of property?== | ||
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| + | ==What are full liberal rights?== | ||
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| + | In law, liberal property rights are considered to be bundles of rights because very often these component rights have different owners. Tony Honoré, in his book [[Making Law Bind: Essays Legal and Philosophical]] p. 165, lists the component rights of ownership of property:: | ||
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| + | # the right to possess | ||
| + | # the right to use | ||
| + | # the right to manage | ||
| + | # the right to the income of the thing | ||
| + | # the right to the capital | ||
| + | # the right to security | ||
| + | # the right of transmissibility | ||
| + | # the right of absence of term | ||
| + | # the duty to prevent harm | ||
| + | # liability to execution and | ||
| + | # the incident of residuarity | ||
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| + | According to Honoré, for full ownership in a thing to be recognised, an individual must hold most (but not necessarily all) of these elements regarding that thing. | ||
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| + | Schlager and Ostrom (1992) identify five property rights that are most relevant | ||
| + | for the use of common-pool resources, including access, withdrawal, management, | ||
| + | exclusion, and alienation. These are defined as: | ||
| + | ;Access | ||
| + | :The right to enter a defined physical area and enjoy nonsubtractive benefits (e.g., hike, canoe, sit in the sun). | ||
| + | ;Withdrawal | ||
| + | :The right to obtain resource units or products of a resource system (e.g., catch fish, divert water). | ||
| + | ;Management | ||
| + | :The right to regulate internal use patterns and transform the resource by making improvements. | ||
| + | ;Exclusion | ||
| + | :The right to determine who will have an access right, and how that right may be transferred. | ||
| + | ;Alienation | ||
| + | : The right to sell or lease management and exclusion rights. | ||
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| + | ==Why don't we have full liberal rights?== | ||
| + | The property relationship enforced by society is NEVER the full liberal rights desired by libertarians because (a) society retains the [[Hohfeld’s typology of rights|Hohfeldian POWER]] to change the deal however desired and (b) some of the pre-existing rights and externalities of rights can be very expensive (c) enforcement of rights is costly: both directly due to costs of enforcement and due to the injustice of violating the Lockean Proviso of "leaving enough and as good for everyone else." | ||
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| + | For (a), if government is paying for rights enforcement, it gets to make the rights it wants. That can include rights to enter with a warrent, for example. For (b), existing commonlaw rights may lead to easements and limitations due to nuisance. For (c), enforcing rights is costly, and the more perfect the enforcement the more costly. Intellectual property is enforced through private lawsuits to prevent the cost of the enforcement of those rights unless it is profitable. | ||
==What about self-ownership?== | ==What about self-ownership?== | ||
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| + | ==What about Intellectual Property such as Patents and Copyrights?== | ||
| + | Libertarians disagree on intellectual property. Objectivist and some other minarchist libertarians insist they are valid rights to the product of our minds. Most other libertarians view them as obvious grants of special rights by government that infringe on freedoms to reproduce writings and inventions. | ||
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| + | Intellectual property is genuine property because it is based on claims that are enforced. All property (and all rights) reduce liberty by creating enforced duties to respect the property. | ||
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| + | There are many reasons libertarians might dislike intellectual property: | ||
| + | * Patents and copyrights are for a limited time, unlike the libertarian desire for eternal absolute property. | ||
| + | * Patents and copyrights did not significantly exist without demon government to create them. | ||
| + | * Intellectual property might give people the accurate idea that government is responsible for the system of stable property we enjoy. | ||
