The Philosophy of Ownership

The concept of property rights is a subject about which there is broad misunderstanding. The term right always relates to man as a property owner. We say that a man has a “right” to his life. What we mean is that he is the proper owner of his life, of his own person, of anything that is functionally related to him as a living being. In no way does this guarantee that a man will stay alive. A man may have an incurable disease, yet even at death’s door he has a right to life.

Of what use is such a concept when it is clear that although a man may have a right to his life, he may not be able to retain his life? The value of the concept lies in its universality. By setting forth the doctrine of rights, we set forth the proposition that all men are equally endowed, “rightfully” (properly, morally), as property owners. When we say that a man has a right to his life, what we are in effect saying is that only he has a right to his life. Thus, even though a man may be on his death bed, no other man can come forward to live for him. Rights may not be transferred, although most properties can be.

A man can sell his services, or even his body, but he cannot dispose of his rights any more than he can dispose of his life to another. Granted, a man may be able to contract in such a way that another man will kill him. But this does not transfer his right to life to another. It simply results in death. Neither man now owns the life of the one who is dead. A man’s right to his life is non-transferable.

Seen in this light, a right is a kind of property which cannot be sold or transferred. A man may sell or transfer most other properties he owns. By so doing, he expresses his right as a property owner. He cannot sell his rights or transfer them for, regardless of what arrangements he may try to make, he still retains his functional ability to own and utilize property. A contract in which a man pretends or attempts to transfer his rights to another is an absurd contract and has no validity.

A right exists for a man to acquire any property he wills to possess. He may be an original claimant; that is, he may be the first to own an item extracted from the sum total nature has provided. Additionally, he may be a reclaimant; that is, he may become the owner of a property which at one time was owned by another and has been discarded. Also, he may be a secondary or subordinate claimant, obtaining his right to own a property by the process of exchange with another property owner. This explains one meaning of the word right. It is the right to acquire a property. A man’s ability to own a property will always be subject to variables, depending upon his capital, his energies, and so on. But his right to acquire a property is total. That is, he has a right to seek to own anything, provided in so seeking he keeps in mind that all others with whom he must deal have the same rights he has as a property owner.

A right is expressed in a second way. Any man may do precisely as he pleases with what he has totally and honestly acquired. All rights that a man has relate to his functional ability as a would-be owner, and his functional ability as an actual owner. As an actual owner he is totally sovereign over what he owns and his decisions are final.

Since many properties are large, and many persons may be involved in the ownership and control of these properties, ownership is sometimes a complex procedure. Even a simple purchase of a small property, such as a refrigerator, which occurs through some type of credit plan, becomes more complex than an outright purchase. When credit is used, the acquisition of all control over the property purchased is delayed until the full price has been paid and total authority and control is passed from the seller, the mortgage holder, or other intermediary. The concept of property ownership is a total concept. Until such time as the seller has been fully satisfied, and all obligations are retired, total ownership of a property is not transferred.

The final test of absolute ownership is to inquire whether the owner may RIGHTFULLY DESTROY the item owned. If no other party has any interest in the property, then the owner may rightfully decide that if he wants to do so he can destroy the item he owns. If there is a mortgage holder, lien holder, or other intermediary maintaining some interest in the property, obviously the “owner” is not yet the total owner and the question will have to be answered in the negative. When the owner is the total owner in fact, then the question can be answered in the affirmative.

All rights to property, once established totally, preclude the necessity of asking permission of anyone concerning its use or disposal. If a man orders a meal at a restaurant, he does not have to ask permission of the restaurant owner as to whether he can eat. He is the owner. He may utterly demolish this property which he has acquired. If he purchases a suit of clothes, he does not inquire of his tailor whether he can wear the suit or burn it up or give it away. It is his. He may do as he pleases with it, wisely or foolishly, once he has paid for it in full. All rights of the seller have been satisfied. The owner has all rights to the property.

Of course, if a man buys a suit of clothes or an automobile or a house and then puts an insurance policy on these properties so that he may be indemnified in the event of loss, he has created a contract with an insuring company and the company has a property in the contract. He has placed the goods owned under contract and may not, without first cancelling the policy, or otherwise obtaining permission, do as he pleases with the property. The insurance company has a property right by virtue of the policy issued.

Unfortunately, in the development of this country, a general theory of societal interest in major properties has been maintained so that absolute private ownership of land and the appurtenances to land, such as buildings and other improvements, is not viewed as possible. The owner of a home who has satisfied all lien holders, has obtained title in fee simple, and views himself as the sole and exclusive owner of what he has acquired, is still not the sovereign of his property. It is presumed that the “community” or the “city” or the “county” has a vested interest in his property and so he must submit to the decisions of planning boards, zoning commissions, licensing agencies, government engineers, and inspection bureaus. A home owner who wishes to add a room or subtract a room, build a fence, put in a garage, or make other alterations, may find that in spite of the presumption that he is the owner, he is not really the sovereign of what he owns. He must seek permission from others who have no financial interest in the property. This is an invasion of the total concept of property, and an unfortunate inheritance from savage and barbarous times which preserves the practice of collective ownership.

Land taxation illustrates the point. Each tax assessment levied by a taxing authority creates what is viewed as a “lien” upon the property. This lien precedes any actual property interest a mortgage holder or other lender might have. It constitutes a kind of social rent paid annually by the presumed owner of the property. If he fails to pay his “rent” (tax), his property may be taken from him and sold to the highest bidder to satisfy his unpaid tribute to the group. This could result in wiping out the actual interest in the property held by a mortgagor. The presumed “rights” of the tribe are protected by governmental agencies. No man may ever be certain that his property won’t be taken from him because of his temporary failure to pay an annual tribute in rent (tax) to the tribe for his presumed private ownership.

In dealing with land, an owner may sell certain rights while retaining others. He may sell water rights. He may place easements or liens of various sorts. He may dispose of mineral rights, mining rights, agrarian rights, and so on. The seller would retain the unsold rights to the land, but would have transferred certain property rights to others.

Eminent domain, an unhappy custom traceable to early tribal control of property, is a legal device maintained in many countries wherein actual confiscation of a property can be engineered by the government when and if, in the judgment of the king or other potentate, the “public good” demands such confiscation. This is merely a reassertion of the tribal rights of the chieftain over all property.

Some states in the United States impose involuntary liens upon certain types of personal property. A man may buy an automobile but he may not legally drive it upon a government highway until he pays the fee demanded by the state in the form of a license, an inspection charge, or other sums it may levy. Clearly the use of highways not owned by the automobile owner must be paid for. But here is an instance where private use of a property is limited by collective “ownership.”

States which collect personal property taxes prevent the ultimate and the total control of private property by the purchaser and presumed owner. So far as is known, the owner of an item of personal property may destroy such property without seeking permission from some political agent. However, if he has it in his possession at the time assessment is made, he will be forced to pay a kind of tribal rent (personal property tax). This type of tax is particularly onerous for it discourages merchandising, inhibits the choices of customers, and penalizes efficient business operations.

To provide for the ultimate satisfaction of all owners, full property rights for all must be recognized.

No man may acquire rights in such a way that he exercises more rights than another; hence, no man has rights that are less than those of another.

Implicit in this universality of rights, extended to all men, is the fact that human rights are unalienable (inalienable), and hence not subject to alienation even by an owner. A man may transfer property (except his property in rights) to another. But he cannot transfer his rights. He may transfer what we call a “property right” in a given property to another, but he retains all the rights he ever had and may immediately exercise these rights again in attempting to regain that which has been transferred as a “property right.” If we presume that a man’s conduct can cancel his rights, then we would have to dismiss the concept of rights as having no usefulness or validity.

It is widely held that if a man steals another man’s property, in some way he loses his rights to his own property or even to his life. This assumes that rights do not arise from the nature of man as a property owner and user, but from the nature of his conduct. This would lead to the supposition that some men, those conducting themselves in some approved manner, have rights, but other men, conducting themselves in a manner not approved, have no rights. If we are to presume that rights are retained only when human conduct is approved in some fashion, it would follow that no universal concept of human rights would ever be possible. Human conduct is such that a single wrong-doer would disrupt the scene. Let one man perform an act which was disapproved by others, and it would be claimed that others had rights OVER him. This would mean that he had fewer rights and others had more. If rights can be transferred on the basis of human behavior, then no system of equal and universal rights can even be imagined. The only usefulness in the concept is the supposition that rights arise from the nature of man, that they are equal, and that they are unalienable, in spite of human character or human behavior.

The very nature of rights presumes an unprivileged ability to own and to utilize what is owned. If only some men may do as they please with the acquisition of property or the utilization of property, then it follows that owning property is not a right but a privilege that descends to certain persons but to no others.

There is only one position possible in respect to a concept of rights. Either all men have equal rights or no such concept is possible. Were we to say that some men have rights but others do not, we would have to change the terminology and contend that owning property is not a right but a privilege bestowed by some upon others, or bestowed by human conduct on some but lacking for others. Or we might contend that no man has any rights to own property. This would not only destroy the concept of rights but the concept of privilege.

Customarily in the United States we give lip service to the idea of equal human rights. In practice, we act as though all rights were merely political privileges which can be extended or withdrawn at the whim of the government. Government men become a class of permanently privileged persons, and men not in government become a class of temporarily privileged persons at the decision of the men in government. The idea of equal rights for all men as property owners has never been fully recognized in the United States.

To their credit, many legal minds have been concerned with this problem of unalienable rights and have endeavored to write law which would protect the rights of the wrong-doer. But even in so doing, they have created a permanent privileged class, the men in government such as lawyers and judges, who administer the law and who, at least to a degree, live in a privileged atmosphere.

In a system where privilege holds sway, no man’s property is truly his own, nor ever truly safe from intrusion. Since a privilege is a special permission, granted by some to others, such a grant of privilege can be, and often is, withdrawn. In such a system, government is viewed as a sovereign. The property owners are subject at all times to the denial of their property rights, which if rights exist are actually bestowed upon them by their own natures. This bestowal is denied by any system of taxation, legalized confiscation of earnings or other property, regardless of the reason given for the taxation or the confiscation.

No connotation is intended that privilege is somehow undesirable. Privileges, when extended by owners respecting what they own, are in the main advantageous. But all privileges are subordinated to rights. The man having the right extends the privilege. He may also withdraw it. Rights are not granted and cannot be withdrawn.