Common Property

Common Property should be distinguished from both private and public state property, argues Peter Barnes, who proposes Trusts as a property format for it.

This distinction is often made by the geolibertarian branch of libertarianism.

Peer Property, such as the General Public License, may be considered to be a form of common property.

See the related concept of Collaborative Goods

Definition

A form of property to which individuals have open access (see Common Rights), and that has not been delegated to a community and/or its representatives.

Citation

Dan Sullivan:

"The distinction between common property and state property is lost on royal libertarians. Common property is that to which we all have inalienable rights. State property is that which the state actually owns, and can dispose of as it sees fit. For example, a public right of way is literally a right of way. Under principles of common law, nobody, not even the king, could close a traveled road and make it private property. A state maintenance truck, on the other hand, is state property, which can be sold if it no longer suits state purposes." (http://geolib.pair.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html)

Discussion

Peter Barnes on Common Property and Trusts

From Peter Barnes at http://onthecommons.org/node/995

"It seems that when it comes to "takings" of valuable property, governments in Europe as well as the United States have a double standard. If the property is privately owned, it can't be taken without fair compensation. In the U.S., this prohibition is embedded in the Constitution ("nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation," says the Fifth Amendment).

By contrast, if the valuable asset is commonly owned, no such prohibition exists. A government can take from the commons and give to private owners without the latter paying a dime. There doesn't even have to be a "public use" to justify the taking.

Why this double standard? Why does private property receive royal treatment, while Common Property gets the bum's rush?

Part of the answer is that private property is more clearly "possessed" than common property. It comes wrapped in deeds and titles that give it legitimacy and legal standing. Common property, by contrast, is generally ill-defined. There's no piece of paper that says who the atmosphere, or the broadcast spectrum, belong to. So when Bob Dole, the former Republican Senator, said in 1995 that the broadcast spectrum "belongs to every American equally," he had common sense, but no deed or title, to back him up. Hence Congress could blithely hand out free broadcast licenses to private media corporations, and no one could say it acted unconstitutionally.

It seems to me this is an oversight that can and should be corrected. A taking of valuable common property needs to be compensated just as much as a taking of private property. That compensation could go to government, or to a trust representing all beneficial owners. This would put an end to further windfalls for the rich, at the expense of everyone else. It would assure that common resources are used for the common good.

Perhaps, to make things crystal clear, we ought to create a new class of property -- common property -- that lies somewhere between private property and state property. Such property could be managed by trusts rather than corporations. Such trusts would be separate from government, and government couldn't take and redistribute their property without compensation, any more than it could take Exxon's. The trusts' beneficiaries would be future generations and all living citizens more or less equally. Trustees would be legally bound to serve those beneficiaries, just as corporate directors are legally bound to serve stockholders. Each citizen's beneficial share would be a non-transferable birthright.

One can imagine such trusts protecting common gifts such as the atmosphere, the broadcast spectrum and terrestrial ecosystems, paying equal dividends to living citizens, and supporting renewable energy, public transportation, non-commercial broadcasting and other common goods.

In short, by giving common property the same respect we give private property, we could have a market economy that takes better care of the planet and of citizens who lack private wealth. This would be a better version of capitalism than the one we have now." (http://onthecommons.org/node/995)

Josh Farley on using common property rights for non-rival goods

Josh Farley at http://onthecommons.org/node/1179

“Elinor Ostrom , Daniel Bromley , Fikret Berkes and others have pointed out that many societies have developed institutions based on common property rights that avoid the tragedy affecting rival, non-excludable resources, showing empirically that common ownership can be an effective solution. Is it possible that common property is the only efficient solution to the allocation of non-rival resources? Many existing environmental markets actually operate on this principle already. For example, it is the polity that determines allowable emission levels for SO2 and CO2 and the total allowable catch in fisheries using individually tradable quotas, not the market. The polity could not set supply if the resource were not common property. Shared production and shared ownership of information would also be more efficient than private ownership. Publicly funded research with results freely available to all would increase the economic surplus from information, and there is no plausible reason that salaried scientists would work harder for the private sector than the public sector or produce more socially valuable information.

In sum, private ownership of non-rival resources or resources that generate non-rival benefits seems to generate a tragedy of the non-commons, and the relative importance of non-rival resources seems to be increasing. Paradoxically, social ownership may be necessary for creating markets, as seems to be the case for waste absorption capacity. Perhaps the appropriateness of socialism and capitalism or of common property and private property should not be questions of ideology, but rather objectively determined by the physical nature of a resource as non-rival or rival. This certainly appears to be a worthwhile topic for ecological economists to investigate." (http://onthecommons.org/node/1179)

More Information

1. Property; Collaborative Goods; Peer Property
2. Trusts

Bibliography:

1. Common Rights vs. Collective Rights: contrasting common and collective property.
2. Ostrom, Elinor. 2000. "Private and Common Property Rights", in Encyclopedia

of Law and Economics, Vol. II: Civil Law and Economics, , pages 332-379. Ghent, Belgium: University of Ghent.