Private property

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.

Links

• Private Property by Ludwig von Mises (excerpted from chapter 24 of Human Action: The Scholar's Edition (1949))
• Private Property and Its Critics by Ludwig von Mises (from Liberalism (book))
• All Hail Private Property by Tibor R. Machan, April 2002
• Private Property's Philosopher by David Gordon, September 2009
• The Economics and Ethics of Private Property by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
• Coase and Demsetz on Private Property Rights (pdf) by Walter Block, 1977
• Enforcement of Private Property Rights in Primitive Societies: Law without Government (pdf) by Bruce L. Benson, 1989
• Private property at Wikipedia