Property
Eric Mack
Refers both to (a) a normative relationship be tween agents and things and (b) the things that stand in that normative relationship to agents. In the paradigm case of property, an individual is related to some physical object (e.g., a sheep or a knife) by having an exclusive right to use, control, transform, consume, and exchange or donate that object as he chooses. In virtue of that property relationship, that object is the property of that agent. It is his to do with as he sees fit. In the paradigm case, the property holder’s right of disposition is only subject to the constraint that he not dispose of his property in ways that violate others’ rights. The owner of the knife may not thrust it into anyone else’s chest or sheep. However, many instances of property diverge in one or more respects from this basic paradigm. An agent’s property need not be a physical object, but can instead be a more abstract thing such as a flow of water, a segment of the electromagnetic spectrum, an industrial process, or a number of shares in corporation X. Distinct agents may have property in different aspects of the same thing; for example, one may have the usual land ownership rights while another may hold the subsurface mineral rights. And distinct agents may jointly own particular things (e.g., the ‘‘community’’ property of married couples).
The paradigm presented and its variants are all cases of private property. Yet it is often claimed that property can be communal, state (i.e., public), or private and that no one of these is the privileged form of property. What is classified as communal property exists when numerous individuals are each free to use and consume some common resource. For example, each hunter in the tribe is free to reconnoiter the tribal territory and take what game she finds – as long as that game is not already being taken by another hunter. What is classified as state property exists when the use, control, transformation, and consumption of certain things is governed by explicit political decisions about public schemes of use, control, etc., or about who shall be charged with formulating such schemes. While communal ‘‘property’’ and state ‘‘property’’ do share with private property the feature that non owners (e.g., members of other tribes or other states) are excluded, it is plausible to view all these relations as property relations only if one insists on classifying every set of norms which govern the use, control, etc., of things in a given society as property rules. Such an insistence tends to obscure the special character of property rules and of societies in which property rules largely govern the disposition of things.
The distinctive character of genuine (i.e. private) property regimes can be illustrated by means of a case discussed by Harold Demsetz (1967). Demsetz describes the emergence of property rights in beaver hunting areas among a number of Indian tribes in Eastern Canada during the eighteenth century. Prior to the advent of the beaver pelt trade, the hunting territory of each tribe and the beaver it contained was communal ‘‘property.’’ Each hunter had the right to hunt anywhere within that territory and to take any beaver he first found. However, when European demand for beaver pelts caused a vast increase in the value of these pelts, a continuation of this communal system would have led to the destruction of the beaver population. For each hunter then had a strong incentive to take as much as possible from the commons and had very little incentive to bear costs to conserve or enhance the beaver population. Any hunter’s efforts to conserve or enhance the population would immediately be exploited by some other hunter.
One solution which might have been at tempted to avert a tragedy of the commons would have been the conversion of the beaver and their habitat to public ‘‘property’’ to which a politically determined scheme of conservation and exploitation would be applied. This would have required widely shared and articulated knowledge of the whole habitat, of the best methods and schedules for harvesting beaver furs throughout it, and of the human and non human resources available for effective use in the public scheme of beaver exploitation. It would also have required effective mechanisms to enforce the rulings of the Beaver Production Council. However, the actual solution which emerged was a system of family owned, private rights to beaver producing subregions. This allowed particular hunters to reap the rewards of their own conservation and enhancement of the beaver populations within their own protected domains and to attune their hunting of the beavers to the special conditions they individually faced. No collective decision had to be reached about any comprehensive scheme, and enforcement costs were limited to ensuring that neighboring property holders did not trespass on one another’s domains.
Unlike the public ‘‘property’’ solution to communal ‘‘property’’ problems, this private rights solution displays the essential features of a property scheme. Decision making is radically decentralized because distinct agents enjoy secure discretionary control over particular things. This allows them to reap the benefits of their own investments in attention, effort, and resources and requires them to suffer the costs of their own failures of investment. Eco nomic coordination among agents arises not from any collectively adopted or imposed plan, but rather through multiple, interconnecting, bilateral, market and contractual accommodations.
Is private property morally justified? The tale of the beavers and like narratives suggest a consequentialist vindication, namely that private property facilitates rational economic decisions (see consequentialism). But many have op posed private property regimes precisely be cause they undercut communal or public life. Many others charge that such regimes, unless augmented by redistributive programs, yield grave distributive injustices. On the other hand, defenders of private property argue that property is a fundamental right, that private holdings which emerge from peaceful acquisition, production, and trade are, for that very reason, just, and often even deserved.
See also economic liberty
Bibliography
Demsetz, H. (1967). Toward a theory of property rights. American Economic Review, 57, 347 59.
Epstein, R. (1985). Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Honor, A. M. (1961). Ownership. In A. G. Guest (ed.), Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 107 47.
Munzer, S. (1990). A Theory of Property. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Paul, E. (ed.) (1990). The Monist, Issue on Property Rights, 73 (4).
Pennock, J. R. and Chapman, J. W. (1980). NOMOS XXII: Property. New York: New York University Press.
Waldron, J. (1988). The Right of Private Property. Oxford: Clarendon Press.