Moral justification for the right to private property

Abstract

The best way to assess the advantages of private property law is by considering the disadvantages and/or disadvantages of companies where they do not exist. In them the individual is often "disconnected" from the consequences of his actions, whether positive or negative. Therefore, work that only yields long-term results will not be carried out. During the 17th century, Thomas Hobbes described a "natural state" very similar to that of a society where property rights have not been established. « Under such conditions," he wrote in 1651 in Leviathan, there is no place for Industry, because its fruits will be uncertain; consequently the Earth will not be cultivated, there will be no Navigation, nor the use of products that must be imported across the sea; there will be no construction; nor will he be accounted for in Time, there will be no Arts; neither the Letters nor the Society; and even worse, there will be constant fear...

(In the same paragraph Hobbes wrote that man's life under these conditions would be "lonely, poor, dirty, violent, and short")."

During the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, John Marshall, the fourth Chief Judge of the Supreme Court, expressed an opinion similar to Hobbes's. "Industry and the economy" are an integral part of happiness, he said in 1788, but the Articles of Confederation (pre-Constitution) took away "the incentive to industry by questioning and not protecting property"