In his book Principles of Property Law, Ziff discusses various justifications for the existence of private property. Of these, economic efficiency and prosperity is the most convincing, due to the objectively quantifiable success of mixed-market economies in providing development for their societies compared to socialist command systems with minimal private ownership of property. Other justifications such as personhood, moral development, labour and desert are questionable due to the social conflict they would engender, while freedom is unlikely to be enhanced by private property. While private property is not sufficient to cure all of society’s property-related ills, we would be in a much worse position without it.
The most cogent justification given for private property is that of economic efficiency and increased prosperity through an incentive system. This can be seen in the relative economic backwardness of communist economic systems, where private property is minimal and productivity is stifled due to a lack of personal material reward for work. By allowing more private property and their transfer, property interests ought to settle with those who value them most and can utilise them most effectively. In addition, one of the main drivers of economic development is lending, and as de Soto has noted, this cannot readily occur without a mortgage over existing private property, hindering economies lacking in such.
The leading evidence for the economic efficiency argument is Hardin’s notion of the ‘tragedy of the commons’, whereby people with access to common land choose to overexploit it, because even if they decided to use the land sustainably, someone else would abuse the common property for their own gain, eventually ruining it for everyone. This problem is ever increasing, as global population increases while fish, water and clean air become scarcer. Private