Ownership in an Equitable Society

The right to property is the right for a person to keep in one’s possession a certain object. For said object, this right immediately reduces the rights of all other humans by a factor of one object that they could otherwise use, potentially use up completely. If you own something, then you own it to the exclusion of someone else, or there would be little point in making the claim that you own it. If I own something, yet others may freely take it from me, then I can’t be said to own that object. So ownership has two sides: it gives rights to the owner and takes rights away from everyone else.

Image by: Brianhe, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons