week 7 10/17-10/21 reading economics of property rights

For any society, the right to own private property is essential. Private property grants you control over how to use your resources, what to use them for, and right of exchange over your property. However, the barriers to everyone having private property exist due to scarcity. In addition, we can neither support ourselves entirely on just effort nor can we have the same goals for land as others do. Typically, property disputes are resolved with some form of negotiation or competition. The alternative,being violence, is too expensive to be a permanent resort. I think that although negotiation and competition do not always work their rate of success is far higher than that of violence. Besides, violence having a place in your affairs could conceivably set a dangerous precedent. Some would say that private property being taken care of via competition/trade is selfish. I'd argue that this accusation is false. There is but three main methods of getting what you want from someone: love, trade, or force. Love is too ideal to work for a sufficient amount of time and violence usually ends up finishing whoever is involved whether they were an aggressor or a victim. This leaves us with trade, a method with a sufficient success rate. I know that there will always be classes that are richer than the others but everyone as individuals deserve the chance of owning private property. This is derived from the enlightenment thinking of John Locke. This is opposed to communism which believes the state should own everything. A failed method this is as it strips much incentive away from the working population to work extremely efficient if their extra effort will be awarded the same as regular or sub-par. In our society, property rights are a form of human rights which are inseparable from property rights. For example, right to free speech is the property right to hire an assembly or own one. These rights, property rights, are a realization of the conditions needed to facilitate further existence as a human being