OPINION/COMMENTARY

The Ethics and Economics of Private Property

In the history of social and political thought, various proposals have been advanced as a solution to the problem of social order, and this variety of mutually inconsistent proposals has contributed to the fact that today’s search for a single “correct” solution is frequently deemed illusory. Yet as I will try to demonstrate, a correct solution exists; hence, there is no reason to succumb to moral relativism. The solution has been known for hundreds of years, if not for much longer. [1] In modern times this old and simple solution was formulated most clearly and convincingly by Murray N. Rothbard. [2] Let me begin by formulating the solution – first for the special case represented by the Garden of Eden and subsequently for the general case represented by the “real” world of all-around scarcity – and then proceed to the explanation of why this solution, and no other, is correct. In the Garden of Eden, the solution is provided by the simple rule stipulating that everyone may place or move his own body wherever he pleases, provided only that no one else is already standing there and occupying the same space. And outside of the Garden of Eden, in the realm of all-around scarcity the solution is provided by this rule: Everyone is the proper owner of his own physical body as well as of all places and nature-given goods that he occupies and puts to use by means of his body, provided that no one else has already occupied or used the same places and goods before him. This ownership of “originally appropriated” places and goods by a person implies his right to use and transform these places and goods in any way he sees fit, provided that he does not thereby forcibly change the physical integrity of places and goods originally appropriated by another person. In particular, once a place or good has been first appropriated, in John Locke’s words, by “mixing one’s labor” with it, ownership in such places and goods can be acquired only by means of a voluntary – contractual – transfer of its property title from a previous to a later owner....