Tryals

Exclusive or private ownership is not the only way to distribute and manage resources.  Before you stuff your fingers in your ears, consider that this observation need not lead inevitably to state ownership or a communistic regime.  There are various styles of ownership between these extremes, such as family trusts, corporations and cooperatives.  There are churches, mosques and synagogues—all owned by communities.  We are used to the idea of owning shares —in companies, holi

But have we even agreed on what property  is?  Many with strong opinions are already sure.  My property is what belongs to me .  That clears up exactly nothing.  So let’s try to do better.  Property is nothing but a publicly-recognized claim on a particular resource .  To claim property is to demand the removal  of that specific resource from the realm of common use and reserve  it for the exclusive use of a particular person.  Property, then, is fundamentally an act of   ex

Imagine a man who works hard in his chosen trade.  He has honed his skills with long practice and dedication, innovated techniques unknown to his rivals, cleverly sidestepped routine bureaucratic and managerial obstacles, and ultimately employed his talents more profitably and advantageously than any of his competitors.  By his greying years he has amassed a considerable fortune.  Now he wishes to retire and pass on the accumulated fruits of his hard work to his biological he

Perhaps the problem is that we are so used to making assumptions about property in our daily lives that we hardly think about what the term really means—what property actually is .  It has something to do with the root of the word, proper —what is fitting or suitable—and its sibling propriety , meaning an action or reward appropriate to a particular person.  The latter once referred to an inherent  quality—that those with certain inborn characters had particular things owing

The members of our talkative species have acquired some remarkable notions about personal immortality.  Most of us seem vaguely resigned to the likelihood of our death.  Eventually.  Someday.  And yet we go out of our way to put off the seeming inevitability.  We fantasize about a cure for cancer.  We make extravagant claims for wonder drugs and genetic therapies.  We place faith in technologies that might conceivably enhance our natural lifespans, artificially accomplishing

Imagine a deserted island in the middle of a distant ocean.  It has never known a human occupant and is too far from any civilized nation to have been charted or claimed.  But late one night a group of castaways washes up on its shores, survivors of a terrible storm that has swept the decks of a number of fortuitously passing ships.  Let us suppose that these castaways are from many places, that none of them knew any of the others before their stranding, so have no ties or sh

A lottery is a reliable way of getting rich, so long as you’re not the one buying the ticket.  To be sure of making money, you need to be the one selling it.  If the vendor has designed her lottery well, which is not hard to do, she is almost guaranteed of making a healthy profit.  She knows what the lottery will pay out relative to ticket revenues.  She knows exactly how to attract buyers.  It hardly matters to the seller that someone will take a large share of the revenue a