Editing Business ethics (section)

====Natural right vs social construct====
Neoliberals hold that private property rights are a non-negotiable natural right.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|last=Bethell|first=Tom|author-link=Tom Bethell|editor-first=Ronald|editor-last=Hamowy|editor-link=Ronald Hamowy|encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism|chapter=Private Property|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC|year=2008|publisher=[[SAGE Publishing|SAGE]]; [[Cato Institute]]|location=Thousand Oaks, California|doi=10.4135/9781412965811.n243|isbn= 978-1-4129-6580-4|oclc=750831024|lccn=2008009151|pages=393–94}}</ref><ref>[http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/documents/documents_p2.cfm?doc=23 Digital History] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120419075820/http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/documents/documents_p2.cfm?doc=23 |date=2012-04-19 }}. Digitalhistory.uh.edu. Retrieved on 2010-09-02.</ref> Davies counters with "property is no different from other legal categories in that it is simply a consequence of the significance attached by law to the relationships between legal persons."<ref name="Davies 2007 20">{{harvnb|Davies|2007 |p=20}}</ref> Singer claims, "Property is a form of power, and the distribution of power is a political problem of the highest order".<ref>{{harvnb|Singer|2000|p=9}}</ref><ref>Cohen, M. R. (1927). Property and Sovereignty. Cornell Law Quarterly, 13, 8–30. Cohen commenting on the power dimension of property noted, "we must not overlook the actual fact that dominion over things is also imperium over our fellow human beings" p. 13</ref> Rose finds, {{" '}}Property' is only an effect, a construction, of relationships between people, meaning that its objective character is contestable. Persons and things, are 'constituted' or 'fabricated' by legal and other normative techniques."<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1994|p=14}}</ref><ref>"'Property' has no essential character, but is rather a highly flexible set of rights and responsibilities which congeal in different ways in different contexts" {{harvnb|Davies|2007 |p=20}}</ref> Singer observes, "A private property regime is not, after all, a Hobbesian state of nature; it requires a working legal system that can define, allocate, and enforce property rights."<ref>{{harvnb|Singer|2000|p=8}}</ref> Davis claims that common law theory generally favors the view that "property is not essentially a 'right to a thing', but rather a separable bundle of rights subsisting between persons which may vary according to the context and the object which is at stake".<ref name="Davies 2007 20"/>

In common parlance property rights involve a [[bundle of rights]]<ref>Cooter, R. and T. Ulen (1988). ''Law and Economics''. New York, Harper Collins.</ref> including occupancy, use and enjoyment, and the right to sell, devise, give, or lease all or part of these rights.<ref>[[Tony Honoré|Honoré, A. M.]] (1961). Ownership. In A. G. Guest (Ed.), Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence. London: Oxford University Press.; Becker, L. (1980). The Moral Basis of Property Rights In J. Pennock & J. Chapman (Eds.), Property. New York: New York University Press.</ref><ref>However, some scholars often use the terms ownership, property and property rights interchangeably, while others define ownership (or property) as a set of specific rights each attached to the vast array of uses accessible by the owner. Ownership has thus been interpreted as a form of aggregation of such social relations—a bundle of rights over the use of scarce resources . Alchian, A. A. (1965). Some Economics of Property Rights. Il Politico, 30, 816–829</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|doi=10.2307/797162|author=Epstein, R. A.|year=1997|url=https://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=M1sW1nylSWKQJzZnVYGGY3ZCLG0shFGz4Bjj8YTLjNjFKRGv92Ym!-1814198305!558324302?docId=5000440763|title=A Clear View of the Cathedral: The Dominance of Property Rules|journal=Yale Law Journal|volume=106|issue=7|pages=2091–2107|quote=Bundle of rights is often interpreted as 'full control' over the property by the owner|jstor=797162}}{{Dead link|date=August 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|doi=10.2307/797592|author1=Merrill, T. W.|author2=Smith, H. E.|year=2001|title=What Happened to Property in Law and Economics?|journal=Yale Law Journal|volume=111|issue=2|pages=357–398|url=http://www.yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal/content-pages/what-happened-to-property-in-law-and-economics?/|jstor=797592|access-date=2018-11-24|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140201205042/http://www.yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal/content-pages/what-happened-to-property-in-law-and-economics?%2F|archive-date=2014-02-01|url-status=dead}}</ref> Custodians of property have obligations as well as rights.<!-- refs don't obviously support this point.--><ref>Property has been conceptualized as absolute ownership with full control over the owned property without being accountable to anyone else {{harvnb|Singer|2000|p=29}}.</ref> Michelman writes, "A property regime thus depends on a great deal of cooperation, trustworthiness, and self-restraint among the people who enjoy it."<!-- isn't this true of all "rights"? what right is secure if society doesn't accept/trust it? Isn't a better criterion the existence of a well-established rule of law that includes property protections?--><ref>Rose (1996), "Property as the Keystone Right?", ''Notre Dame Law Review'' '''71''', pp. 329–365.</ref>

Menon claims that the autonomous individual, responsible for his/her own existence is a cultural construct moulded by [[Western culture]] rather than the truth about the [[human condition]]. Penner views property as an "illusion"—a "normative phantasm" without substance.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Gray|first1=Kevin|title=Property in Thin Air|journal=The Cambridge Law Journal|volume=50|page=252|year=2009|doi=10.1017/S0008197300080508|issue=2|s2cid=146430275 }}</ref>

In the neoliberal literature, the property is part of the private side of a public/private dichotomy and acts a counterweight to state power.<!-- need a cite from that literature--> Davies counters that "any space may be subject to plural meanings or appropriations which do not necessarily come into conflict".

Private property has never been a universal doctrine, although since the end of the Cold War is it has become nearly so. Some societies, e.g., Native American bands, held land, if not all property, in common. When groups came into conflict, the victor often [[Indian Removal Act|appropriated]] the loser's property.<ref>Fischbach, M. R. (2003). [https://archive.org/details/recordsofdisposs00fisc Records of Dispossession: Palestinian Refugee Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict]. New York: Columbia University Press {{ISBN|0-231-12978-5}}. In this book Fischbach discusses on forceful dispossession of Palestinian property by Israel</ref> The rights paradigm tended to stabilize the distribution of property holdings on the presumption that title had been lawfully acquired.

Property does not exist in isolation, and so property rights too.<ref>{{Cite journal|doi=10.2307/795134|author=Sax, J. L.|year=1971|title=Takings, Private Property and Public Rights|journal=Yale Law Journal|volume=81|issue=2|pages=149–186|id=see pp. 149, 152|jstor=795134|url=http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/facpubs/1586}}</ref> Bryan claimed that property rights describe relations among people and not just relations between people and things<ref>{{harvnb|Singer|2000|p=6}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|doi=10.2307/785533|author=Hohfeld, W.|year=1913|title=Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning I|journal=Yale Law Journal|volume=23|issue=1|pages=16–59|jstor=785533|url=https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2324&context=ylj}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|doi=10.2307/786270|author=Hohfeld, W.|year=1917|title=Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning II|journal=Yale Law Journal|volume=26|issue=8|pages=710–770|jstor=786270|s2cid=142251500 |url=http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/4378}}</ref><ref>Miunzer, S. R. (1990). A theory of property. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 17</ref><ref>Bryan, B. (2000). Property as Ontology: on Aboriginal and English Understandings of Property. Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, 13, 3–31. In this article Bradley Bryan claimed that property is about much more than a set of legal relations: it is 'an expression of social relationships because it organizes people with respect to each other and their material environment' p. 4</ref><ref>Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 7</ref> Singer holds that the idea that owners have no legal obligations to others wrongly supposes that property rights hardly ever conflict with other legally protected interests.<!-- the existence/importance of the "no obligation" claim needs a ref.--><ref>{{harvnb|Singer|2000|p=16}}</ref> Singer continues implying that [[legal realism|legal realists]] "did not take the character and structure of social relations as an important independent factor in choosing the rules that govern market life". Ethics of property rights begins with recognizing the vacuous nature of the notion of property.