Private property rights

Extracted Attributes

• Economic Role

  Foundational to capitalism and the operation of the means of production for profit

• Core Components

  Acquisition, exclusive use, and disposal

• Bundle of Rights

  Access, withdrawal, management, exclusion, and alienation

• Marxist Critique

  Social relationship where property owners take possession of what others produce

• Legal Designation

  Ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities

• Regulatory Limitation

  Subject to building codes, historical preservation rules, and political enforcement

Timeline

• John R. Commons defines property rights as an enforceable authority to undertake particular actions in a specific domain. (Source: undefined)

  1968-01-01

• Economists North and Thomas attribute the growth of modern Western societies to the transition from common property to private property. (Source: undefined)

  1976-01-01

• V. Ostrom argues that private property rights depend on the existence and enforcement of rules by a political system. (Source: undefined)

  1989-01-01

• Schlager and Ostrom identify five property rights relevant to resource use: access, withdrawal, management, exclusion, and alienation. (Source: undefined)

  1992-01-01

• Publication of 'Private and Common Property Rights' exploring the emergence of property systems. (Source: undefined)

  2000-01-01

• The Cato Institute publishes the 9th Edition of its Handbook for Policymakers, outlining constitutional protections for private property. (Source: undefined)

  2022-01-01

• The All-In Podcast hosts discuss the California Wealth Tax as a threat to private property rights, labeling it an asset seizure tax. (Source: undefined)

  2024-01-01

Private property

Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which is owned by a state entity, and from collective or cooperative property, which is owned by one or more non-governmental entities. Private property is foundational to capitalism, an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. As a legal concept, private property is defined and enforced by a country's political system.

Web Search Results

• 2000 Private and Common Property Rights

  Private-property rights, however, cannot simply emerge spontaneously from a common property system. Private-property rights depend upon the existence and enforcement of a set of rules that define who has a right to undertake which activities on their own initiative and how the returns from that activity will be allocated (V. Ostrom, 1989). In other words, rules and rulers are required to establish, monitor and enforce a property system. [...] 2000 Private and Common Property Rights 339 5. Property as Bundles of Rights A property right is an enforceable authority to undertake particular actions in a specific domain (Commons, 1968). Property rights define actions that individuals can take in relation to other individuals regarding some ‘thing’. If one individual has a right, someone else has a commensurate duty to observe that right. Schlager and Ostrom (1992) identify five property rights that are most relevant for the use of common-pool resources, including access, withdrawal, management, exclusion, and alienation. These are defined as: Access: The right to enter a defined physical area and enjoy nonsubtractive benefits (for example, hike, canoe, sit in the sun). [...] 3. The Economic Debate over Private vs. Common Property Economists tend to view common property institutions as having a longer history than private-property institutions and to explain the growth of modern, Western societies in part as the result of changing from common property to private property (North and Thomas, 1976; North, Anderson, and Hill, 1983). Private property is considered by most economists to be an essential ingredient in economic development due to the incentives associated with diverse kinds of property relationships (see, for example, Welch, 1983). A farmer who owns his own labor, land and other factor inputs, for example, is likely to see a direct relationship between investments and the level of benefit achieved over the long term. A farmer who belongs to an

• Property Rights and the Constitution | Cato Institute

  “Private property.” The first of those terms is “private property”: “nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” As every first-year law student learns, “private property” means far more than a parcel of real estate. Were that not the case, property law would indeed be an impoverished subject. Instead, the common law reveals the many significations of the concept “property” and the rich variety of arrangements that human imagination and enterprise have made of the basic idea of private ownership. As outlined previously, however, those arrangements all come down to three basic ideas—acquisition, exclusive use, and disposal, the three basic rights we have in property, from which more specifically described rights may be derived. [...] The very concept of “property,” therefore, entails and denotes all the legitimate uses that can be made of the underlying estate, giving it value. And the uses that are legitimate are those that can be exercised consistent with the rights of others, private and public alike, as defined by the traditional common law. As outlined above, however, the rights of others that limit an owner’s uses often depend on the facts. Thus, a resolution can state only the principle of the matter, not its application in specific contexts. Still, the broad outlines should be made clear in any congressional enactment. In particular, the term “private property” should be defined to include all the uses that can be made of property consistent with the common-law rights of others. The only grounds that justify

• Property Rights - Econlib - The Library of Economics and Liberty

  The extent and degree of private property rights fundamentally affect the ways people compete for control of resources. With more complete private property rights, market exchange values become more influential. The personal status and personal attributes of people competing for a resource matter less because their influence can be offset by adjusting the price. In other words, more complete property rights make discrimination more costly. Consider the case of a black woman who wants to rent an apartment from a white landlord. She is better able to do so when the landlord has the right to set the rent at whatever level he wants. Even if the landlord would prefer a white tenant, the black woman can offset her disadvantage by offering a higher rent. A landlord who takes the white tenant at [...] Finally, a private property right includes the right to delegate, rent, or sell any portion of the rights by exchange or gift at whatever price the owner determines (provided someone is willing to pay that price). If I am not allowed to buy some rights from you and you therefore are not allowed to sell rights to me, private property rights are reduced. Thus, the three basic elements of private property are (1) exclusivity of rights to choose the use of a resource, (2) exclusivity of rights to the services of a resource, and (3) rights to exchange the resource at mutually agreeable terms. [...] Private property rights to a resource need not be held by a single person. They can be shared, with each person sharing in a specified fraction of the market value while decisions about uses are made in whatever process the sharing group deems desirable. A major example of such shared property rights is the corporation. In a limited liability corporation, shares are specified and the rights to decide how to use the corporation’s resources are delegated to its management. Each shareholder has the unrestrained right to sell his or her share. Limited liability insulates each shareholder’s wealth from the liabilities of other shareholders, and thereby facilitates anonymous sale and purchase of shares.

• [PDF] The Public Nature of Private Property - Barnard Sociology

  THE EMERGENCE AND EXPANSION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY AS A LIBERAL IDEAL When American legal academics describe private property, they present a liberal notion of property as a set of private rights. One of the first things professors of law teach students in property classes is that legally, property is not an object one owns. Rather, it is a bundle of rights that can be split among many individuals or entities. These include rights to use, exclude others from using, and transfer property. When government protects private property in this way, it protects individual control over property; those with property rights can do what they wish, as long as they do not interfere with others’ sim-ilar interests. By this definition, government seems no more than an arbiter of agreements and conflicts [...] to capitalism or formalizing pri-vate property rights in effect create private property (de Soto, 2000; Verdery, 2003). Even today’s governments in advanced capitalist countries dedicate significant executive and judicial resources to the tracking of property interests, dispute settlement, and regulatory enforcement, and legislative resources to the creation of those regulations. In addition, even the most libertarian advocates for limited government confess that to make private property viable, governments need to do more than protect private control. [...] The Public Nature of Private Property DEBBIE BECHER Abstract American legal academics describe private property as a set of private rights. How-ever, liberal ideas of private control poorly describe legal practices, and thus the bundle of rights is a misleading metaphor for private property. Indeed, social the-orists have long understood that property is not the ownership of a thing or a set of individual rights, but a set of social agreements about what ownership entails. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, constituents have expected govern-ments to protect the value in their properties, not just their control over the resources. Property rules involve government intimately not only in creating value but also in determining who deserves which valuable resources.

• Private property

  The justifications for private property rights have also been critiqued as tools of empire that enable land appropriation. According to academic commentator Brenna Bhandar, the language implemented in property legislation dictates colonized peoples as unable to effectively own and utilize their land. It is suggested that personal rights are interchangeable with property rights, therefore communities that utilize communal methods of land ownership are not equally validated by private property ideals. It is also argued by critical race theorist Cheryl Harris that race and property rights have been conflated over time, with only those qualities unique to white settlement recognized legally. Indigenous use of land, focusing on common ownership, is distinguished from private property ownership [...] The social and political context in which private property is administered will determine the extent to which an owner will be able to exercise rights over the same. The rights to private property often come with limitations. For example, local government may enforce rules about what kind of building may be built on private land (building code), or whether a historical building may be demolished or not. Theft is common in many societies, and the extent to which central administration will pursue property crime varies enormously. [...] Private property in the means of production is the central element of capitalism criticized by socialists. In Marxist literature, private property refers to a social relationship in which the property owner takes possession of anything that another person or group produces with that property and capitalism depends on private property. The socialist critique of private ownership is heavily influenced by the Marxist analysis of capitalist property forms as part of its broader critique of alienation and exploitation in capitalism. Although there is considerable disagreement among socialists about the validity of certain aspects of Marxist analysis, the majority of socialists are sympathetic to Marx's views on exploitation and alienation.