Artificial Property Rights

Description

Kevin Carson:

"It's important, therefore, to distinguish natural from artificial property rights. Natural property rights reflect scarcity where it naturally exists; artificial property rights create scarcity. Natural property rights secure the individual's right to her own labor product; artificial property rights enable the holder to collect tribute from the labor product of others. Natural property rights entitle the holder to a return to his contributions to production; artificial property rights entitle the holder to collect a toll for not obstructing it.

Social regulations and commercial prohibitions, as Thomas Hodgskin said, "compel us to employ more labour than is necessary to obtain the prohibited commodity," or "to give a greater quantity of labour to obtain it than nature requires," and put the difference into the pockets of privileged classes.

Artificial property rights are “the power of throwing the necessity to labour off [one's] own shoulders... by the appropriation of other men's produce,” and “[t]he power... possessed by idle men to appropriate the produce of labourers....”."

Source

• Kevin Carson: The Political_Economy_of_Waste.