Property Rights

The first puzzle presented by the existence of private property concerns where property rights came from. It is difficult to see how, given an initial state of nature where everything was held in common, individuals could gain rights to the exclusive use of some items, restricting the liberty of others to use them. Various solutions to this problem, theories of original acquisition, have been proposed.

A second problem concerns the just distribution of property. There is great inequality in the distribution of goods in society, with an ever-widening divide between rich and poor. Further, it is often unclear whether the rich are particularly deserving of their riches, and the poor particularly deserving of their poverty. How we ought to distribute property, and to what extent we ought to redistribute it, is a matter of much debate.