Abstract
ABSTRACTTwo rival approaches to property rights dominate contemporary political philosophy: Lockean natural rights and egalitarian theories of distributive justice. This article defends a third approach, which can be traced to the work of David Hume. Unlike Lockean rights, Humean property rights are not grounded in pre-institutional moral entitlements. In contrast to the egalitarian approach, which begins with highly abstract principles of distributive justice, Humean theory starts with simple property conventions and shows how more complex institutions can be justified against a background of settled property rights. Property rights allow people to coordinate their use of scarce resources. For property rules to serve this function effectively, certain questions must be considered settled. Treating existing property entitlements as having prima facie validity facilitates cooperation between people who disagree about distributive justice. Lockean and egalitarian theories endorse moral claims that threaten to unsettle property conventions and undermine social cooperation.
Highlights
Two rival approaches to property rights predominate in contemporary political philosophy
The work of John Rawls is largely responsible for framing the resource egalitarian research agenda, Ronald Dworkin might be a better example of an archetypal resource
In contrast to the resource egalitarian approach, which starts with highly abstract principles of distributive justice and analyzes particular property rules in light of these principles, Humean theory begins with simple property conventions and shows how more complex institutions can be justified against a background of settled property rights
Summary
Since it is easier to explain what is distinctive about Humean theories of property in contrast to their main rivals, I will start by describing the neo-Lockean and resource egalitarian approaches.[4]. Discussions of property rights in political egalitarian since his theory of distributive justice follows more directly from a conception of moral equality. The most popular alternative to neo-Lockeanism is what I will call “resource egalitarianism.”[11] Resource egalitarian theories evaluate property rights in light of egalitarian principles of distributive justice. The distribution of property rights should be based on principles governing political institutions that are appropriate for free and equal people. In contrast to the “top-down” resource egalitarian approach, neo-Lockean and Humean theories take a “bottom-up” approach Both theories begin with the justification of property rights and use these to help build a more fully specified political order. It differs from narrowly instrumentalist approaches both in its emphasis on the importance of property rights for political order and in its accent on the ways in which property conventions are partially determined by psychological propensities that may make it difficult to alter them even when doing so is desirable on economic or political grounds
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