Property and its Enemies

Abstract

Ownership is a relation with characteristics that force society to function more effectively and that make property a target of much hostility. Among the intellectual enemies of property, Locke is arguably the most influential. His “enough and as good left for others” condition, that he believed to be easily satisfied, was a failed attempt morally to justify property. Instead, it succeeded in undermining its legitimacy. Hume identified the existence of a convention,—in today's language, a Nash-equilibrium—which, being wholly voluntary and ageless, has attractive moral qualities besides ensuring the “stability of possession”. A recent attack against the “myth of property” by Murphy and Nagel is guided by an erroneous understanding of the nature of conventions.