Property Rights

With the American election almost upon us, I thought I might take this opportunity to muse over certain issues of political theory from a position of ethics.

Most people recognise care for the poor as valuable and, to some extent, morally obligatory. Yet, these same people will recognise the value and necessity of property rights. But when considering the welfare state it is clear that they two are in opposition, if not mutually exclusive altogether.

John Locke claimed that, “…every man has a ‘property’ in his own ‘person’. This nobody has any right to but himself. The ‘labour’ of his body and the ‘work’ of his hands, we may say, are properly his…That labour put a distinction between them and the common.” (The Second Treatise of Government, 1688).

Locke’s theory of property suggests that the individual has an exclusive right to that which has been earned through their labour (i.e. wages). To deny wages, or steal without consent, it follows, is unethical. This is, of course, very practical as a rule of law because it means that an individual can invest their labour with a guarantee of return, motivating them to work hard and efficiently. The government ought not to take wages from the individual beyond those necessary to fulfil its role of defending property rights.

This conception of property rights can be contrasted with that of utilitarian ethicist, Peter Singer. Singer contends that an individual has a right to the product of his or her labour only so far as it benefits him/her more than it would benefit someone else. Consequentially, it is immoral for an individual not to give up their own property for the advantage of others “at least up to the point at which by giving more one would begin to cause serious suffering for oneself and one’s dependents – perhaps even beyond this to the point of marginal utility” (from his essay ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’).

It is counter-intuitive to say that someone else has a right to my wages just by virtue of the fact that they are poorer than me, but still much of what Singer says is genuinely appealing. It affirms the equality of everyone, despite varying ability to earn wages. The ability to make money is, after all, morally insignificant, “since the initial endowments of natural assets and contingencies of their growth and nurture in early life are arbitrary from a moral point of view” (John Rawls, A Theory of Justice). Thus, it is just that there should be equal distribution of wealth.

But can a government practically or morally enforce such an ethic? Certainly not the former and I think not the latter either. I would have to say that the role of the government is to maintain peace and facilitate freedom. A minimalist government can do no more than protect property rights. It then falls on the individual and not the government to give their excess wealth in order to fulfil their moral obligations.