Property
[citation needed] Various scholarly disciplines (such as law, economics, anthropology or sociology) may treat the concept more systematically, but definitions vary, most particularly when involving contracts.
From this has evolved the modern conception of property as a right enforced by positive law, in the expectation that this will produce more wealth and better standards of living.
[citation needed] The first, possession, can be defined as control over a resource based on the practical inability to contradict the ends of the possessor.
He elaborates on the differences between these two concepts and proposes a history of how they came to be attached to persons, as opposed to families or entities such as the church.
At the same time, critics say that it leads to the 'exploitation' of those resources for personal gain and that it hinders taking advantage of potential network effects.
[18] British Prime Minister William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham defined the meaning of castle in 1763, "The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown.
If an interest is not deemed a "property" right or the conduct is merely an intentional tort, these limitations do not apply, and the doctrine of sovereign immunity precludes relief.
(see Lockean proviso)[24] In his encyclical letter Rerum novarum (1891), Pope Leo XIII wrote, "It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and after that to hold it as his very own.
In every culture studied, ownership and possession are the subjects of custom and regulation, and "law" is where the term can meaningfully be applied.
Many tribal cultures balance individual rights with the laws of collective groups: tribes, families, associations, and nations.
Property rights are an instrument of society and derive their significance from the fact that they help a man form those expectations which he can reasonably hold in his dealings with others.
This rethinking was inspired by at least three broad features of early modern Europe: the surge of commerce, the breakdown of efforts to prohibit interest (then called "usury"), and the development of centralized national monarchies.
Urukagina, the king of the Sumerian city-state Lagash, established the first laws that forbade compelling the sale of property.
He said that the worst possible situation is when the commoners have half a nation's property, with the crown and nobility holding the other half—a circumstance fraught with instability and violence.
Filmer said that the institution of kingship is analogous to that of fatherhood, that subjects are still, children, whether obedient or unruly and that property rights are akin to the household goods that a father may dole out among his children—his to take back and dispose of according to his pleasure.
"To this end" (to achieve the previously specified goal), he wrote, "it is that men give up all their natural power to the society they enter into, and the community put the Legislative power into such hands as they think fit, with this trust, that they shall be governed by declared laws, or else their peace, quiet, and property will still be at the same uncertainty as it was in the state of nature.
"It cannot be supposed that [the hypothetical contractors] they should intend, had they a power so to do, to give anyone or more an absolute arbitrary power over their persons and estates, and put a force into the magistrate's hand to execute his unlimited will arbitrarily upon them; this were to put themselves into a worse condition than the State of nature, wherein they had a liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others, and were upon equal terms of force to maintain it, whether invaded by a single man or many in combination.
In contrast, one might think to his polemical works on religion and his empiricism-driven skeptical epistemology, Hume's views on law and property were quite conservative.
"In general," he wrote, "it may be affirmed that there is no such passion in the human mind, as the love of mankind, merely as such, independent of personal qualities, or services, or of relation to ourselves."
Marx cites several historical events in which large numbers of the peasantry were removed from their lands, then seized by the nobility.
Marx asserts that liberal theories of property are "idyllic" fairy tales that hide a violent historical process.
Charles Comte, in "Traité de la propriété" (1834), attempted to justify the legitimacy of private property in response to the Bourbon Restoration.
Since agriculture was so much more efficient than hunting and gathering, private property appropriated by someone for farming left remaining hunter-gatherers with more land per person and hence did not harm them.
Even a voluntary contract to surrender the product of work to an employer was theft, according to Proudhon, since the controller of natural resources had no moral right to charge others for the use of that which he did not labor to create did not own.
"Since the human race began in greatest poverty, that is, when there were the most obstacles to overcome, all that has been achieved from one era to the next is due to the spirit of property."
Andrew J. Galambos (1924–1997) was an astrophysicist and philosopher who innovated a social structure that sought to maximize human peace and freedom.
Contemporary political thinkers who believe that natural persons enjoy rights to own property and enter into contracts espouse two views about John Locke.
On the other hand, those such as Richard Pipes regard Locke's arguments as weak and think that undue reliance thereon has weakened the cause of individualism in recent times.
Pipes has written that Locke's work "marked a regression because it rested on the concept of Natural Law" rather than upon Harrington's sociological framework.
[50][51] These academics point to the personal nature of property and its link to identity being irreconcilable with wealth creation that contemporary Western society subscribes to.
