Property Rights: Philosophic Foundations

✍ Scribed by Lawrence C. Becker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 146
• Series: Routledge Revivals
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Property Rights: Philosophic Foundations, first published in 1977, comprehensively examines the general justifications for systems of private property rights, and discusses with great clarity the major arguments as to the rights and responsibilities of property ownership. In particular, the arguments that hold that there are natural rights derived from first occupancy, labour, utility, liberty and virtue are considered, as are the standard anti-property arguments based on disutility, virtue and inequality, and the belief that justice in distribution must take precedence over private ownership. Lawrence Becker goes on to contend that there are four sound lines of argument for private property that, together with what is sound in the anti-property arguments, must be co-ordinated to form the foundations of a new theory. He therefore expounds a concise but sophisticated theory of property that is relevant to the modern world, and concludes by indicating some of the implications of his theory.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
The need for a new theory
Foundations for a new theory
Private property and property rights per se
Scarcity
2 Property Rights
Rights
Property rights
Justification
3 The Argument from First Occupancy
A priori restrictions on first occupancy claims
Arguments for first occupancy
Conclusion
4 The Labor Theory of Property Acquisition
The root idea
Locke’s theory
Criticism of Locke’s theory
Entitlement reconsidered
Deserving to own: reformulating the labor theory
5 Arguments from Utility
The traditional arguments
Analysis of the traditional arguments
The economic arguments
6 The Argument from Political Liberty
The argument
The soundness of the argument
7 Considerations of Moral Character
People who will use property to good effect
People who will manage property well
The virtuous
Property as necessary for the development of moral character
8 Anti-Property Arguments
Social disutility
Self-defeatingness
Virtue
The perpetuation of inequality
9 The Justification of Property Rights
The plurality of general justifications
The coordination problem
The compatibility requirement
The requirement of permitting maximal acquisition
The compensation requirement
Two additional considerations
Probable directions for specific justification
Notes
Index