PPD 325 EXAM I: Property Rights

5th Amendment

"No shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation"

Entail property

- alternative to property rights that involved the common law that assets must pass a property owner's heir upon death and CANNOT be divided among the children - primogeniture (first-born male heir) - Tocquelle says that the abolition of this helped drive the shift from aristocracy to democracy

Feudal system

- an alternative to property rights that involved a monarchy granting land to a smaller number of nobles that pledge military support to the state - peasants worked the land in exchange for protection

the labor theory of property

- argued by Locke and other American thought leaders/ founders - property results from the mixing of labor and nature A) Individuals own themselves B) Individuals own their labor C) Therefore, an individual owns the product of their labor - believed: economic value is created only after an individual exerts labor to refine raw materials

American Political thought

- otherwise known as classical liberalism, views property as a NATURAL RIGHT (including life and liberty) - the founders believed: 1) a system was needed to enforce property rights 2) the social compact: individuals must allow that system to confiscate some property to enforce those rights - IMPORTANT: property was viewed as morally-precedent to law (i.e. laws are the guidelines/ institutionalization of natural rights) - French philosopher Bastiat: life, liberty, and thought all existed before laws

Property Rights Core Idea

1) property rights are tied closely with law and our political and economic systems

historical alternatives to property rights

These were models unto which the American System learned to avoid and build away from 1) Feudal system 2) Entail Property 3) Socialism 4) Communism

Cons

_______ regarding ethics of property rights: - moral conflict: is it "right" that some possess more property than they need while other do not have enough? - imbalance of property = imbalance of political power - worry about greed and perverse incentives - tension between community values vs. individual freedom - i.e. pharmaceutical innovations; charge prices

Pros

_______ regarding ethics of property rights: -history suggests people are better stewards of private property than public property - is an incentive to produce goods society wants - property rights are theoretically "equal" - they apply as much to the "poor" as to the "rich"

Liberty

________ and property are inextricably linked - property derives itself from ________ - historical significance: natural rights and slavery; Lincoln used this to justify emancipation of slaves

Ethics

________of Property Rights: 1) legal property rights must be the products of determinate legal rules (so they inevitably diverge in some applications from the moral principles that support them) - ref difference between law and morals 2) property rights suffer from problems of transition (i.e. Intellectual property, or after death) 3) Expose fundamental conflicts among the diff conceptions of justice that guide law: - distributive - corrective - redistributive

Property

a person's right to exclude others from infringing on that person's legally resources - also known as "the first principle of association": the guarantee to everyone of the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it - ruled by Supreme Court in 1795 as a fundamental right

communism

an alternative to property rights in which a gov owns ALL RESOURCES and OUTLAWS (most) PROPERTY - i.e. cuba

socialism

an alternative to property rights in which a gov owns: 1) ALL resources 2) the means to production - however, some property rights DO exist (i.e. Venezual; president Chavez)

social contract

an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, for example by sacrificing some individual freedom for state protection. Theories of a social contract became popular in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries among theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as a means of explaining the origin of government and the obligations of subjects.

governments

since most existing physical resources have owners, _________ enforce property rights but also regulate how resources are acquired, used, and transferred - negative externality: i.e. pollution

fair market value

the owner of a property may reject the price that the gov sets for a certain property (claiming that it is not __________) - BUT, as long as the gov's purpose is legit, this challenge will likely not sustain

property rights

the provision of _________ ______ addressed the following concerns: 1) wo property, the gov would own all media. firearms, churches, land, homes, business, and creativity 2) supplied an incentive for labor that wouldn't exist otherwise 3) structured exchange for scarce resources 4) systems wo property move toward tragedy of the commons --- leading to every woman/man for him/herself

areas of conflict

there may be ____________ when it comes to gov and private property sanctions: 1) possible criminal activity 2) for economic development (eminent domain)

eminent domain

when governments use authority to confiscate property - generally, the gov is only allowed to invade the property rights of individuals to the extent necessary to accomplish the intended public purpose (i.e. infrastructure - roadways, sewer, power lines, communication systems)

tragedy of the commons

within a shared resource system where individuals act independently and rationally according to their own self interest and behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting that resource - i.e. like if there were NO property rights