Original Acquisition

There was a time when no one owned anything. Before the establishment of governments, before the first communities had formed, the world and everything in it was unowned. Every person had an equal right to every resource; no one could claim anything as their own.

It is difficult to see how, given this initial state, private property rights could arise. Property rights place significant constraints on other people: if I own an item, then everyone else is burdened with an obligation not to use it without my permission to do so. If initially everyone has an equal claim to the use of an object, then by what authority could one person gain a right to exclusive use at the expense of everyone else? To answer this question, one must develop a theory of original acquisition.

John Locke offered three arguments in response to this problem: the labour-mixing argument, the added-value argument, and the reward-entitlement argument. Each of these arguments sees original acquisition as subject to the Lockean proviso: we can only appropriate goods if we leave as much and as good for others.