Jump to content

Property: Difference between revisions

From The Austrian Economics Wiki, the global repository of classical-liberal thought
← Older edit
Repoint 1 dead mises.org link to the archived original (automated; see Austrian Economics Wiki:Link repointing)
Rewrite in original prose: the previous text reproduced three passages of Waldron's Stanford Encyclopedia entry verbatim without quotation marks. Adds the calculation argument and the intellectual-property dispute
 
Line 1: Line 1:
'''Property''' (or '''property right''') is a general term for the rules that govern people's access to and control of things like land, natural resources, the means of [[production]], manufactured [[good]]s, and also (on some accounts) texts, ideas, inventions, and other [[Intellectual property|intellectual products]].<ref name="Waldron_Property">Waldron, Jeremy. [http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/property/ "Property and Ownership"], ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (Winter 2010 Edition). Referenced 2012-01-28.</ref> There is a close connection between [[property rights and human rights]]. [[Ludwig von Mises]] writes that the program of liberalism "if condensed into a single word, would have to read: ''property'', that is, private ownership of the means of production".<ref>{{cite book|title=Liberalism|author=Mises, Ludwig von|chapter=Property|url=https://mises.freecapitalists.org/liberal/ch1sec1.asp}}</ref>
'''Property''', or a '''property right''', is a rule assigning to some person the authority to decide how a particular scarce resource is used. The subject matter runs from land and raw materials through the means of [[production]] and finished [[good]]s, and on some accounts to inventions and texts as well, though that extension is disputed within the Austrian tradition.


==Property and scarcity==
Property is the institution Austrian economics is built on rather than one topic among many. [[Ludwig von Mises]] wrote that the programme of liberalism, condensed to a single word, would read "property", meaning private ownership of the means of production.<ref name="lib1">[[Ludwig von Mises]]. [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/liberal/ch1sec1.asp Property], ''[[Liberalism|Liberalism (book)]]''.</ref>
{{See also|Scarcity}}
{{See also|Intellectual property#Argument from scarcity}}
Some have suggested that property relations only make sense under conditions of scarcity. But other grounds of conflict are possible: there may be disagreements about how a given piece of land should be used, which stem from the history or symbolic significance ''of that piece of land'', whether land in general is scarce or not. This would imply though, that such a given piece of land, which has unique properties which people find relevant, is scarce.


[[Intellectual property]] provides an example of property rules that do not respond directly to scarcity; moreover unlike material objects, the objects of intellectual property are not crowdable, for their use by any one person does not preclude their use by any number of others.<ref name="Waldron_Property" />
==Property as the answer to conflict==


==Property and conflict==
The Austrian case begins from [[scarcity]]. Where a resource can serve two incompatible purposes and two people want it for different ones, some rule has to determine whose purpose prevails, or the matter is settled by force. A property rule is that determination. On this reading property rights are not an imposition on an otherwise harmonious world; they are the technique by which the conflict that scarcity implies is resolved without violence.
Property rights govern people's access to various things. Disagreements about their use are likely to be serious because resource-use matters to people. They are particularly serious where the objects in question are both scarce and necessary. Any society with an interest in avoiding conflict needs such a system of rules.<ref name="Waldron_Property" />


==Types of property rules==
The point generalises past physical shortage. Two parties can quarrel over a piece of land not because land in general is short but because ''that'' site has a history or a significance neither will trade away. Even then the question the property rule answers is the same one: who decides.
There are three species of property arrangement: common property, collective property, and private property.  


{{See also|Tragedy of the commons}}
[[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]] developed this into a systematic argument that norms governing scarce means are what any dispute presupposes, since the parties to an argument are already exercising exclusive control over their own bodies while they argue.<ref name="eepp">[[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/economics-and-ethics-of-private-property-studies-in-political-economy-and-philosophy-the/ ''The Economics and Ethics of Private Property''].</ref>
In a '''''common property''''' system, resources are governed by rules whose point is to make them available for use by all or any members of the society. A tract of common land, for example, may be used by everyone in a community for grazing cattle or gathering food. A park may be open to all for picnics, sports or recreation. The aim of any restrictions on use is simply to secure fair access for all and to prevent anyone from using the common resource in a way that would preclude its use by others.  


'''''Collective property''''' is a different idea: here the community as a whole determines how important resources are to be used. These determinations are made on the basis of the social interest through mechanisms of collective decision-making - anything from a leisurely debate among the elders of a tribe to the forming and implementing of a [[Soviet Union|Soviet]]-style ‘Five-Year Plan’.
==Property and calculation==


{{Main|Private property}}
The second Austrian argument is economic rather than ethical, and it is the one Mises regarded as decisive. Where the factors of production are owned and traded, they carry money [[price]]s, and those prices let a producer compare the many technically possible ways of making a thing and find which wastes least. Remove ownership of the factors and the prices go with it, leaving no way to make the comparison. Mises's argument against [[socialism]] is therefore an argument about property, and it holds against planners of any degree of diligence and good faith. See [[economic calculation problem]].
In a '''''private property''''' system, property rules are organized around the idea that various contested resources are assigned to the decisional authority of particular individuals (or families or firms). The person to whom a given object is assigned (e.g., the person who found it or made it) has control over the object: it is for her to decide what should be done with it. In exercising this authority, she is not understood to be acting as an agent or official of the society. She may act on her own initiative without giving anyone else an explanation, or she may enter into cooperative arrangements with others, just as she likes. She may even transfer this right of decision to someone else, in which case that person acquires the same rights she had. If Jennifer owns a steel factory, it is for her to decide (in her own interest) whether to close it or to keep the plant operating, even though a decision to close may have the gravest impact on her employees and on the prosperity of the local community.<ref name="Waldron_Property" />


==Creation of property==
==The three systems==
It is often assumed that property is created whenever [[labor]] yields a result, tangible or intangible. A possible reason why this assumption is made is because an important distinction is ignored: the distinction between the ''creation of'' property and the method of determining who owns what is ''already considered to be'' property. Most libertarians would argue that the first person to "mix their labor" with previously unowned or presently abandoned property is indeed its rightful owner, but this says nothing about how property is created, only how it is acquired.


"Why are tangible goods property? A little reflection will show that it is these goods’ [[scarcity]]—the fact that there can be conflict over these goods by multiple human [[Action|actors]]. The very possibility of conflict over a resource renders it scarce, giving rise to the need for ethical rules to govern its use. Thus, the fundamental social and ethical function of property rights is to prevent interpersonal conflict over scarce resources."<ref name="Stephan Kinsella">[[Stephan Kinsella]], ''[[Against Intellectual Property]]''.</ref>
Arrangements are conventionally sorted into three kinds, and the distinctions matter because the second and third are routinely confused.
 
* Under '''common property''' a resource is open to all comers, with no one entitled to exclude anyone. Grazing land held in common is the standard case, and the difficulty it runs into is that each user bears the whole benefit of taking more and only a fraction of the cost. See [[tragedy of the commons]].
* Under '''collective property''' use is directed by a body acting in the name of society. This is not the same as common property and often its opposite: the resource is closed to individual decision rather than open to it, and the decision passes to whoever speaks for the collective.
* Under '''[[private property]]''' a determinate owner decides, need account to no one for the decision, bears the consequences, and may transfer the authority to another who then holds it on the same terms.
 
==Where titles come from==
 
A theory of ownership needs an account of how anything came to be owned in the first place, since [[exchange]] and gift only move a title that already exists. Austrians in the Lockean line, above all [[Murray N. Rothbard]], hold that unowned resources are appropriated by being brought into use, and that the resulting title is then transferable.<ref name="ethics">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-ethics-of-liberty/ ''The Ethics of Liberty''].</ref>
 
The rival account, that titles are conferred by the state or by social convention, is rejected on the ground that a grant revocable by the granter is not ownership but a licence. Whether that objection succeeds is one of the live disagreements between libertarian and mainstream legal theory.
 
==Where the tradition disagrees: intellectual property==
 
Austrians divide sharply over whether ideas can be owned. The older position, held by Rothbard in a qualified form, allowed copyright as a matter of contract while rejecting patents. The position that has become dominant among Rothbardians, argued at length by Stephan Kinsella, denies that [[intellectual property]] is property at all: patterns of information are not scarce in the relevant sense, since one person's use of a design does not prevent anyone else's, so no conflict arises that a property rule would be needed to settle. On this view intellectual property is a state-granted monopoly privilege and an interference with property in physical things.
 
Others in the tradition hold that the products of the mind are the clearest case of something a person made and therefore owns. The dispute turns on whether scarcity is the ground of property or merely a common occasion for it, which is why it reaches back into the argument at the top of this article.
 
==See also==
* [[Private property]]
* [[Scarcity]]
* [[Economic calculation problem]]
* [[Intellectual property]]
* [[Tragedy of the commons]]
* [[Contract]]


==References==
==References==
Line 31: Line 47:


==Links==
==Links==
* [https://mises.freecapitalists.org/liberal/ch1sec1.asp Property] by Ludwig von Mises (from [[Liberalism|Liberalism (book)]])
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/the-ethics-of-liberty/ The Ethics of Liberty] by Murray N. Rothbard
* [https://freecapitalists.org/books/economics-and-ethics-of-private-property-studies-in-political-economy-and-philosophy-the/ The Economics and Ethics of Private Property] by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
* {{wplink}}
* {{wplink}}


[[Category:Economic concepts]]
[[Category:Economic concepts]]
{{stub}}

Latest revision as of 13:10, 16 August 2026

Property, or a property right, is a rule assigning to some person the authority to decide how a particular scarce resource is used. The subject matter runs from land and raw materials through the means of production and finished goods, and on some accounts to inventions and texts as well, though that extension is disputed within the Austrian tradition.

Property is the institution Austrian economics is built on rather than one topic among many. Ludwig von Mises wrote that the programme of liberalism, condensed to a single word, would read "property", meaning private ownership of the means of production.[1]

Property as the answer to conflict

The Austrian case begins from scarcity. Where a resource can serve two incompatible purposes and two people want it for different ones, some rule has to determine whose purpose prevails, or the matter is settled by force. A property rule is that determination. On this reading property rights are not an imposition on an otherwise harmonious world; they are the technique by which the conflict that scarcity implies is resolved without violence.

The point generalises past physical shortage. Two parties can quarrel over a piece of land not because land in general is short but because that site has a history or a significance neither will trade away. Even then the question the property rule answers is the same one: who decides.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe developed this into a systematic argument that norms governing scarce means are what any dispute presupposes, since the parties to an argument are already exercising exclusive control over their own bodies while they argue.[2]

Property and calculation

The second Austrian argument is economic rather than ethical, and it is the one Mises regarded as decisive. Where the factors of production are owned and traded, they carry money prices, and those prices let a producer compare the many technically possible ways of making a thing and find which wastes least. Remove ownership of the factors and the prices go with it, leaving no way to make the comparison. Mises's argument against socialism is therefore an argument about property, and it holds against planners of any degree of diligence and good faith. See economic calculation problem.

The three systems

Arrangements are conventionally sorted into three kinds, and the distinctions matter because the second and third are routinely confused.

  • Under common property a resource is open to all comers, with no one entitled to exclude anyone. Grazing land held in common is the standard case, and the difficulty it runs into is that each user bears the whole benefit of taking more and only a fraction of the cost. See tragedy of the commons.
  • Under collective property use is directed by a body acting in the name of society. This is not the same as common property and often its opposite: the resource is closed to individual decision rather than open to it, and the decision passes to whoever speaks for the collective.
  • Under private property a determinate owner decides, need account to no one for the decision, bears the consequences, and may transfer the authority to another who then holds it on the same terms.

Where titles come from

A theory of ownership needs an account of how anything came to be owned in the first place, since exchange and gift only move a title that already exists. Austrians in the Lockean line, above all Murray N. Rothbard, hold that unowned resources are appropriated by being brought into use, and that the resulting title is then transferable.[3]

The rival account, that titles are conferred by the state or by social convention, is rejected on the ground that a grant revocable by the granter is not ownership but a licence. Whether that objection succeeds is one of the live disagreements between libertarian and mainstream legal theory.

Where the tradition disagrees: intellectual property

Austrians divide sharply over whether ideas can be owned. The older position, held by Rothbard in a qualified form, allowed copyright as a matter of contract while rejecting patents. The position that has become dominant among Rothbardians, argued at length by Stephan Kinsella, denies that intellectual property is property at all: patterns of information are not scarce in the relevant sense, since one person's use of a design does not prevent anyone else's, so no conflict arises that a property rule would be needed to settle. On this view intellectual property is a state-granted monopoly privilege and an interference with property in physical things.

Others in the tradition hold that the products of the mind are the clearest case of something a person made and therefore owns. The dispute turns on whether scarcity is the ground of property or merely a common occasion for it, which is why it reaches back into the argument at the top of this article.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Ludwig von Mises. Property, Liberalism (book).
  2. ↑ Hans-Hermann Hoppe. The Economics and Ethics of Private Property.
  3. ↑ Murray N. Rothbard. The Ethics of Liberty.

Links

Retrieved from "https://wiki.freecapitalists.org/index.php?title=Property&oldid=25779"