This article is a discussion on capitalism and property. The goal of the article is to explain the issue with private property and why capitalism, which normally depends on private property, can flourish simply using personal property and the concept of stewardship. It does so by integrating two older articles that I wrote for Politicoid way back in the day.
Capitalism is often defined as an economic system characterized by private ownership for the purpose of profit. But private property is a myth, or at least it cannot exist without government intervention. In a voluntary system, there is only personal property. It’s for this reason that anarchists often reject capitalism. Yet we can still have capitalism, or at least an economic system which is very close to it, using personal property alone.
An understanding of rights, as I view them, is necessary to understand my argument for why private property cannot exist without government. Private property belongs to an individual, in perpetuity, regardless of whether it’s in that person’s possession. What this definition means is that even if we lose a piece of property and someone else picks it up and makes use of it…