In keeping with my discussion on rights (What is a Classical Liberal? and The Origin of Rights), I'd like to draw your attention to a couple article/posts addressing property rights.
In the wake of Kelo v. New London, Walter Williams talks about how drawing a distinction between human rights and property rights shows very little understanding of the origin of rights in "Property Rights are a Fundamental Human Right."
My computer is my property. Does it have any rights -- like the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Are there any constitutional guarantees held by my computer? Anyone, except maybe a lawyer, would agree that to think of property as possessing rights is unadulterated nonsense.
So where do property rights come in? Property rights are human rights to use economic goods and services. Private property rights contain your right to use, transfer, trade and exclude others from use of property deemed yours. The supposition that there's a conflict or difference between human rights to use property and civil rights is bogus and misguided.... Suppose someone steals my computer. Hasn't he violated my rights to my property and hence, my human or civil rights? Or, alternatively, if I throw my computer through your window, it's not my computer that's violated your human rights; it's I. Why? Because I've used my computer in a fashion that infringes on your human rights to your property.
... In a free society, each person is his own private property; I own myself and you own yourself. That's why it's immoral to rape or murder. It violates a person's property rights. The fact of self-ownership also helps explain why theft is immoral. In order for self-ownership to be meaningful, a person must have ownership rights to what he produces or earns. A good working description of slavery is that it is a condition where a person does not own what he produces ...
Creating false distinctions between human rights and property rights plays into the hands of Democrat and Republican party socialists who seek to control our lives.
In "Property Defined, Defended," Todd Seavey defines private property, and gives reasons to prefer private property over things held in common.
I'd say property could be roughly defined as things (whether physical or abstract, such as contractual obligations) over which specific owners have control (the ability to use, trade, give away, destroy, alter, improve, etc.) ...
More basically, I ought to say that there is an ambiguous yet important distinction (even when one is not talking about or advocating property rights) between the moral/political system that exists and the one that ought to exist (to my mind, the system of sustainable rules most conducive to long-term maximum happiness for all moral agents) - and thus that I am not willing merely to defer to the existing legal system or latest whim of Congress to define property, any more than I'd defer to a burglar who entered my apartment on the question of who really owns my TV.
... people take it for granted that property is whatever the law says it is - and indeed that morality and rights are whatever the law (or commonly-held opinion) say they are. Nuts to that ... So in a moral rather than mere legal sense, I can meaningfully assert that I own something even if in point of fact it's being taken from me by non-property-respecting agents, including an insufficiently property-respecting legal system ...
• Unlike government-mandated interactions, strict property rights create a matrix within which each interaction, each trade, is a mutually-beneficial one in the eyes of those choosing to engage in the trade (I give Jones five dollars and receive a meal because each of us prefers the post-trade state of affairs to the one that existed before the exchange; we do not trade because someone told us to make the exchange on pain of imprisonment or because one of has "exploited" the other by some chicanery, as Marx-influenced leftists would have you believe).
• Property tends to create radical decentralization, giving each of us shields against the will of the mob ...
• Property ... tends to move resources efficiently toward their most-valued uses - as opposed to the uses people (or some highly-influential or rhetorically skilled people) merely say are the most valuable. Talk is cheap.
• Property creates the security that enables people to engage in rational long-term planning ...
To the extent property rights are weak, humans become lazy parasites and political influence-seekers instead of productive, creative, rational, beneficial agents - and no amount of rhetoric ... can dispel this reality.
Take the time to read each article/post in full. You'll be glad you did!
