A Definition of Property Rights

Here is one definition of property rights from an online dictionary:

The conditions of ownership of an asset, the rights to own, use and sell.

That's the simplest definition I could find. Here is another one that I found online:

A property right is the exclusive authority to determine how a resource is used, whether that resource is owned by government or by individuals. All economic goods have a property rights attribute. This attribute has three broad components.

1. The right to use the good.
2. The right to earn income from the good.
3. The right to transfer the good to others.

That gets into a bit more detail about what ownership actually means. An owner can use something for himself, make a profit or income from it, and give or sell it to others. What neither definition of property rights even hints at, is how we gain such a right to something. We started to look at that in the first part of this essay, using a child's sand castle to understand one basis for ownership.

At the simplest level, we all intuitively understand the concept of property rights. We all want to keep what we call ours, and we all feel that there is something wrong with others taking our things (or money). We also feel it is only fair that we decide how to dispose of what we own, whether by giving it away or selling it. We feel that we own our labor as well, as demonstrated by the fact that we feel violated if forced to work or if we are not fairly paid for our work.

Seen from the perspective of this simple and universal sense of ownership, we can understand that property rights start from the right to one's own life. If we have a right to life we must have a right to that which sustains our lives, which is our own work and the fruits of that labor. These are such basic and evident principles that arguing them (at this level) seems almost pointless - but nonetheless, for clarity, one more example follows.

Find the most communistic person you know and tell him you're going to take all the things he calls his and share them with others - and start with his favorite jacket and the money in his pocket. See how he reacts, and you'll see that we all understand the most basic kind of property rights. To own things is part of our most basic human right to life and to maintain our lives.

This basic concept of "mine" that we all share suggests that governments should recognize property rights to some degree if they exists to serve what we all see as our own interests. On the other hand, property rights are not an absolute. They serve the purpose of survival at the most basic level (how do you farm if anyone can take your tools?), but what about when they don't do that?

The Limitations of Principles

There is truth in this world, and we may plainly see the truth of the value of letting people own things. But truth is often lost when we take what principles we see, formulate them in words, and then by logic extend those principles to apply to any extreme. This happens in the case of the principles of property rights just as it does in all areas.

For example, we have decided that people have a right to own things and to protect those things from others who might want to take them. What we call theft or stealing inherently assumes ownership by the one stolen from. The logical extension of our previously discovered principles says that any such taking of things owned by others is wrong.

The result is that a child can starve while the leftover food of rich man's banquet lays rotting in the sun just a few feet away, on the other side of a wall, and people can claim it is wrong to take some of that food to save the child. Yet, from an immediate intuitive sense of the greater good, we might feel that if the man has excess wealth, it is right to take it to feed the child. This is correct, in my view. If the right to life is the basis of property rights, then why wouldn't life take precedence over any particular definition of property rights we have invented?

Being a capitalist-leaning believer in freedom, free markets, and property rights, this may be one of the more socialistic-sounding ideas you'll see in my writing, but I think that it is right to take from those who have excess to help those who are in extreme poverty, even if this must be accomplished outside the legal system by way of what we call theft. The poor should steal from the wealthy if that is the only way to feed themselves and their children. It is a moral obligation in my mind - especially if the alternative is to allow one's child or oneself to die.

This does not suggest that we equalize incomes or assets among all people. There is no problem with some people being very wealthy. As long as the essential necessities of life are there for all, why would it matter if some have more than others? In fact, although it is a subject for another essay, the ability of some people to accumulate large amounts of capital - in the form of money or other things of value - is one of the ways whole societies get richer, and so this process can help alleviate poverty.

Here is my own definition of property rights:

The right of a person to benefit from and control that which he or she creates or obtains honestly through mental or physical labor, but limited by the rights of others to take unneeded excess for higher purposes.

I know many of my libertarian friends would recoil at such a definition of property rights. The terms "unneeded excess" and "higher purposes" are so vague. But they have to be, if they are to fit the context of each unique situation. And before you reject this definition, let me show you how you may already have accepted the idea of social utility or "higher purposes" as part of how we rightfully limit property rights.

Imagine a man who pioneers the use of the only running water for fifty miles in any direction: a natural spring. He spends his money, time and effort to put to use what was unused before. He lays pipes to deliver the water here and there. In time a whole community grows around him, buying their water from him. He has provided a real service to all, and makes a good profit from it - as he should.

Now imagine if, under the justification that it is his property, he caps the spring and shuts off the only water supply the community has. Perhaps he is angry with the town for some reason. The people face a choice: recognize the owners absolute property right to that spring and lose everything as the town is destroyed before their eyes, or force him to turn the water back on again. And by the way, the same essential choice would have to be made if instead of shutting off the water, the man simply charged a hundred times as much as he did previously, making survival impossible for the people.

Even most who accept that it's perfectly okay to make a profit from the water (I do) would probably feel that the people are justified in saving their town by violating the "right" of the owner of that water. If you feel that way, then you do recognize the limitations of ownership. The survival of the town is a "higher purpose" than the preservation of the man's property rights, and if you think it's okay to force him to charge reasonable prices and provide the water, you accept that they can rightfully take or limit his "unneeded excess" of profits in order to serve that higher purpose.

You might just agree with my definition of property rights after all.