The Future of Private Property

Abstract

Using the theory of inequality developed by Wilkinson and Pickett in The Inner Level: How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone’s Well-being, this review essay canvasses two recent normative contributions that claim a way forward for the concept and law of private property: Alexander’s defence of private property as fostering human flourishing through the living of a good life, as advanced in Property and Human Flourishing, and Posner and Weyl’s radical liberal overhaul of the very content of property found in Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society. The essay assesses Alexander’s focus on the role of obligation as a component of private property necessary to fostering the living of a good life, and Posner and Weyl’s proposal that private property be replaced with a new ideal-typic form of property known as ‘partial common ownership’. It concludes with a reflection on the ubiquity of inequality in any proposal one might adopt for either the overhaul or the replacement of private property.