Musing on Property
John Locke says: “[T] he earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men.” I don’t know how much weight I or anyone else would or should put on his contention “[I]it is very clear that God, as King David says (Psalm 115. 16), ‘has given the earth to the children of men,’ given it to mankind in common,” and I’d argue about whether or not living things, at least those with central nervous systems, can be owned, but insofar as the concept of property is acknowleged, I accept that it was all originally “in common” and that its division and appropriation as individual or private is the core question of economics.
