In my previous post, I highlighted some of what I think are the mistaken arguments about property Kevin offered on this blog. My reason for writing that post was not to attack Kevin. (I had some trepidation about doing it, since I like and respect him a lot.) My reason was that his arguments are actually quite commonly heard both within and outside of philosophy. And too often, they lend seeming credibility to bad arguments about the importance of property rights in particular, or distributive justice more generally.

Before saying something more about that, let me set something straight. I noticed in the comments that a number of people disagreed with some of the things I had to say about whether property rights are accurately described as coercive or authoritative. But that really wasn’t what I was interested in. Here’s the point I was trying to make: whatever we might want to say about property rights (maybe they are coercive, maybe they are authoritative), for all Kevin showed us, we might say the same about a variety of other rights. So Kevin’s stated reasons are not good reasons for worrying about property rights in particular. Maybe these are real worries, but then a broad array of rights is in danger. More likely, though, they are all fine.

Back to the main point. Why write that post? Well, I also did not write that post because Kevin and I differ very much in our preferred conclusions. Indeed, I don’t think anything at all follows from those points about property about what policy conclusions are correct. So why spend time making these points? People sometimes ask me the same when I tell them that I’ve written a couple of articles defending the possibility of unilateral original appropriation. (If you don’t feel like reading article-sized papers on it, here’s a short piece summarizing some of my views.) Given that most of the stuff in the world is already owned, they say, who cares about appropriation?

My reason for thinking seriously about appropriation is also not to directly defend a particular set of conclusions. It is to defend a way of thinking about what the correct conclusions ought to be. Too often, philosophers, politicians, and others discuss questions of distributive justice or taxation as if people’s property rights pose no barriers to these. They pretend like these are just questions about how goods and resources are to be allocated.

I believe that is a serious mistake. Property rights matter morally – indeed, morally, they matter a lot. And they can pose barriers against the actions of both other private individuals and governments. Showing that original appropriation is possible helps us see this point. It helps us see that property rights are rights like many others: capable of being enjoyed by people independently of whether their governments recognize them. And it helps us see that among the primary functions of government is to secure and protect these rights – and not to behave as the ultimate creator or allocator of property. So even if it turns out that people’s property rights ultimately ought to give way to other concerns, they must be key parts of the conversation.

The reason for taking on Kevin’s arguments is similar. Kevin seems to think that property rights are somehow especially problematic. And in this, he is like many others who help themselves to that style of reasoning. They think that their arguments strike only against property. They pretend as if they can consistently endorse a full set of liberal rights, while rejecting private property.

They are seriously mistaken. The arguments for property rights are very similar to the arguments for other rights. They can be defended on autonomy-grounds, on welfarist grounds, on consequentialist grounds, and so on. (It is no accident, then, that one of the best interest-based arguments for human rights around endorses property rights as human rights.) And arguments against property undercut other rights as well. The price of rejecting property is high indeed.