For libertarians, property rights are the most sacred value. They will often make arguments to the effect that taxation is theft, as are any laws or regulations that constrain their ability to do with their property as they wish, or reduce its value. Obviously, when pressed, they will agree that there are limits. Just because you own a gun doesn't mean you're allowed to shoot me. Sometimes you'll see a formulation to the effect that you should be able to do whatever you like with your property as long as you don't harm others.
It shouldn't take a profound thinker to see that as soon as you concede this, you have created a vast space of disputable problems, paradoxes, and reductio ad absurdum. Your magic key to the problem of rights and justice has melted like a snowball on a hot stove. But before we get to that, I need to say something about the concept of property fundamentally.
The concept of property, and the rights thereunto pertaining, is not out there in nature, like the rocks and the trees and the stars, waiting to be discovered. In fact there are many different concepts of property and they are all social constructions, specific to a time and culture. The native Americans, before the Europeans came, had no concept that land could be owned. People might have an understanding with neighboring groups about the right to exploit certain territory, or there might be conflicts about it, but there was no individual ownership of land and there could also be areas in which anyone could come and go freely. For this reason, initially they did not understand what the Europeans were doing when they exchanged good for land. Of course, more often, the Europeans just took it. We'll get back to that. To this day nobody owns the oceans. Although international treaties have given nations exclusive rights to exploit their coastal waters, nobody owns those either. In general, nobody owns rivers or large lakes. But different rules could be invented that would change that.
In foraging societies, generally speaking, if there is a successful hunt, or someone comes on a trove of edible plants, nobody owns the the carcass or the nut trees. The people share the resource. Of the meager possessions of the band, we may presume that some intimate items such as clothing or a favorite tool or toy or weapon were understood to pertain to an individual in some way; and shelters pertained to families, although they were largely impermanent. But other tools and resources were held in common.
When the lords of medieval manors established their holdings, they did so by force of arms. When Europeans seized land in the Americas, they did it the same way. In modern capitalist societies, many fortunes, such as that of the Kennedy family, originated in criminal activity, and regardless, much property is inherited. Much more is the result of pure luck. We can see right away that there is a moral problem with declaring an absolute or even a presumptive right to property: most of it is demonstrably ill-gotten. Much else is of questionable provenance, as the rules by which one becomes entitled to profit or other forms of gain have to be invented, and people can disagree about what they ought to be. In other words, property rights freeze in place a situation which is demonstrably unjust to begin with.
While you contemplate all that, I'll get to that vast space of disputable problems, paradoxes and reductio ad absurdum next time.
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