What are the features of a property-right? Many accounts include the right to possess (even in absentia), use, consume, transfer, profit from, and even waste one's property. Less prominent are discussions of the responsibilities that accompany ownership, including (on some accounts) to share it with the needy, preserve it on behalf of future owners, use it productively, and avoid acquiring more than you can make good use of.
What is the origin of property, and how (if at all) does this inform our normative understanding of contemporary arrangements?
Can a right of private property be justified at all? If so, how does such a justification work, and what are its limits?
Are there alternatives to private ownership on the one hand and government control on the other?
In what ways is ownership dependent on, or independent of, the social relationships and institutions that make its exercise possible?
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I would agree with most of the popular conceptions of a property-right, including the right to possess,use, consume, transfer, and profit from. I'm not sure what may qualify as wasting property however, and for the gtime being I would reserve my judgement of that.
The right of private property is justified by the legal acquisition of the property. The lawful transaction or trade agreement that takes place between two or more parties justifies the party who acquired property to privately own it. There are limits to such justification in my opinion however. One such limist is that, as previously mentioned, the acquistion of property must be encated in a lawful manner for all parties involved, pertaining to their respective governments and societies. Another limit of private property is the forfeiture of such property when the society is in need of it. The private property owner should be in that case fairly compensated, however, for the loss of their property.
A possible alternative to private property or government-owned property is community property. An example of such an idea would be the common land designated for peasant farming in 17th century England. The peasants would work upon farms owned by aristocrats and they in turn would grow their own food in a public area known as the commons. The commons was free for all commoners to use. It was neither owned by any one person, nor controlled by the local government. The commoners would decide, as a community, how the land would be used.
Some good ideas here, Bretticus, though it might be late to foment an uprising of the serfs.
One thought about the conventional view that property acquisition is justified by legal acquisition: philosophers will want to get behind such protocols and ask whether and how property can be justified at all -- that is, whether the laws themselves are just.
I think much of the difficulty the theory of property presents arises because it's so hard to think outside our legal boxes.
A viable alternative to both private and government owned property is a co-operative business or (a co-op). A co-op is a member owned business, democratically controlled by its members. These can be for profit or non-profit organizations or legal entities. Some of the core principles of a co-op are equality among its members, autonomous control, social responsibility, communal economic participation, self-responsibility, and a concern for others in the community and beyond. Two local cooperatives that provide an excellent working model are Wild Oats in Williamstown, and Greylock Federal Credit Union.
That is one model of a middle ground between private and government ownership (worker-ownership is another, as are commons trusts), though of course it assumes and does not challenge the basic structure of property as conventionally understood, which we will try to articulate this week.
I'm not completely sure that a co-op is not simply another form of private ownership. Although the co-op maybe controlled by its members, and thus the control of such an enterprise is diffused amongst a multitude of people, those people still have private ownership over the business.
This is approximately what I had in mind in saying that coops may presuppose, and not challenge fundamentally, the institution of private property.
On the other hand, the differences are not trivial in the way a cooperative relates to profit and social responsibility. There are inherent incentives for serving community, for example, in this ownership structure that in a conventional sole proprietorship are left to the whim of the owner, and in a publicly traded company are only allowable if self-serving.
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