A concept that gives the proprietor of an entity the right to use it rather then someone who might need to use it. Has very much in common with the concept of theft.
The consequences are especially disastrous when extended to include capital, as in capitalist economies. When a worker uses private capital for production he is forced to surrender part of the output to the proprietor of the capital (the capitalist).

The economic function of the principle of private property, is different from our cultural understanding of the historical institution of private property. The principle of private property involves three elements:

• That an individual will be entitled to decide what use to make of certain specific objects. This is freedom of discretion.
• That the individual will gain all the benefits that derive from the use of that object, and will be entitled to some kind of remuneration if their enjoyment of those benefits is coopted. But also, that the individual will bear the burden for all damages that they cause other people because of how they used the object, and all liability they agree to take on in connection with its use. This is responsibility.
• That the individual will not get any special privileges for being owner of any given object, except what derives from the use of that object. This is equity.

Obviously, what our society calls "private property" has little to do with this principle, and we move further away from it every day. Some private owners have special privilege, which they get by statute and by jurisprudential precedent. One of the most pernicious of these privileges is limited liability for damages that they cause. Another privilege is that they can often wrangle monopoly franchises from their parliamentary governments. This is especially a problem with energy and communications utilities. This is called (perhaps confusingly) "rent seeking"; it is not a direct consequence of private property, but is jointly caused by the existence of large fortunes and the existence of full-time legislators with the power (consitutional or practical) of making laws to regulate business privileges. If one or the other of these ingredients didn't exist, rent seeking could not occur.

Sometimes companies set on each other with the tools of law to the detriment of consumers. A good example is "antitrust" legislation; most people who talk about this topic don't have any clue why it's called "antitrust" rather than "antimonopoly". The problem with antitrust laws is that consumers benefit from getting better products than they had before, but companies only have an interest in having relatively better products than their competitors; antitrust laws, and other measures contrived to "protect competition", are a convenient way for them to make their competitor's products worse, rather than having to go to the trouble of making their own products better. Another privilege is that of "intellectual property", which involves restricting people's uses of goods supposedly under their discretion, even when it doesn't cause loss on anyone else (except to their pride). This was supposedly done in the name of protecting everyone else's power to produce, including brain workers, but the open source movement, among other things, has shown how utterly vacuous this idea really is.

It's important to note that land and capital are not magical cornucopias that pour riches onto their owners. Just because you have land and capital, does not mean you are guaranteed to be rich. Land and capital must be maintained; also, the owner needs more to live than he can get from any one piece of land or capital, unless the land is a farm that he is working himself for his own subsistence. If you want to profit from capital, you have to use it in a way that people support; in other words, you have to use it in a way that benefits other people by their own standards. The three elements of the principle of private property I outlined above are contrived to ensure that there is no way anyone can get around this need for reciprocity. You can't divorce the principle from the social function of property; if they don't match, everything unravels. Any alleged tendency for wealth to flow up to the rich, away from the poor, is caused by deviations from the principle. But this principle, with its three elements – freedom of discretion, responsibility, and equity – are all you need to establish the correct social function, so that using property to the general benefit is rewarded, even if inequalities of wealth are enormous.

So, when these three elements, without addition or subtraction, define the scope of property, owners have a stake in using their property in a way that benefits others, by their own standards. This means that the consumers have enormous say in how land, and capital, and property in general, gets used. Either the owner actually consumes the property themselves, or they use it to benefit others – those whose products this owner consumes in turn. The result is a social order in which everyone who participates (ie., produces), benefits by their own standards, in proportion as they benefit others by their own standards. No matter how much wealth one person has or how little another has, so long as these three principles (and no others) are maintained, the wealthy has a strong incentive to benefit the poor.

Political rhetoric and moral casuistry has long seriously obscured the usefulness of private property. Property is not a "natural law" or "natural right", nor is it a violation of "human rights" or "social justice". Private property plays a key role in the division of labor, insofar as it makes economic calculation possible, insofar as it provides an incentive for the rich to support the poor by gaining stake in the products of labor, and insofar as it provides for a system of very efficient material production, creating a tendency toward an improvement in the standard of living of everyone who participates in the economy to any capacity. It is adaptable to joint ownership, including stock or cooperative ownership, but it does not presuppose them. It is thus more flexible than presupposed common ownership, and does not suffer from the problems caused by a lack of social feedback mechanisms to which communism is so fatally sensitive.

Prop"er*ty (?), n.; pl. Properties (#). [OE. proprete, OF. propret'e property, F. propret'e neatness, cleanliness, propri'et'e property, fr. L. proprietas. See Proper, a., and cf. Propriety.]

1.

That which is proper to anything; a peculiar quality of a thing; that which is inherent in a subject, or naturally essential to it; an attribute; as, sweetness is a property of sugar.

Property is correctly a synonym for peculiar quality; but it is frequently used as coextensive with quality in general. Sir W. Hamilton.

In physical science, the properties of matter are distinguished to the three following classes: 1. Physical properties, or those which result from the relations of bodies to the physical agents, light, heat, electricity, gravitation, cohesion, adhesion, etc., and which are exhibited without a change in the composition or kind of matter acted on. They are color, luster, opacity, transparency, hardness, sonorousness, density, crystalline form, solubility, capability of osmotic diffusion, vaporization, boiling, fusion, etc. 2. Chemical properties, or those which are conditioned by affinity and composition; thus, combustion, explosion, and certain solutions are reactions occasioned by chemical properties. Chemical properties are identical when there is identity of composition and structure, and change according as the composition changes. 3. Organoleptic properties, or those forming a class which can not be included in either of the other two divisions. They manifest themselves in the contact of substances with the organs of taste, touch, and smell, or otherwise affect the living organism, as in the manner of medicines and poisons.

2.

An acquired or artificial quality; that which is given by art, or bestowed by man; as, the poem has the properties which constitute excellence.

3.

The exclusive right of possessing, enjoying, and disposing of a thing; ownership; title.

Here I disclaim all my paternal care, Propinquity and property of blood. Shak.

Shall man assume a property in man? Wordsworth.

4.

That to which a person has a legal title, whether in his possession or not; thing owned; an estate, whether in lands, goods, or money; as, a man of large property, or small property.

5. pl.

All the adjuncts of a play except the scenery and the dresses of the actors; stage requisites.

I will draw a bill of properties. Shak.

6.

Propriety; correctness.

[Obs.]

Camden.

Literary property. Law See under Literary. -- Property man, one who has charge of the "properties" of a theater.

 

© Webster 1913.

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Prop"er*ty (?), v. t.

1.

To invest which properties, or qualities.

[Obs.]

Shak.

2.

To make a property of; to appropriate.

[Obs.]

They have here propertied me. Shak.

 

© Webster 1913.