Without property rights we would not have specialization and trade.
In the good 'ole US of A the great plaines spent years without reaching their agricultural potential. Why? The USA believed in property rights didn't they? The problem was they could not enforce the property rights. Hence they were useless. So,... when good old barbed wire came along that technological innovation transformed the great plaines. The agricultural giant plaines became covered with barbed wire and their agricultural potential was achieved! Why? because the farmers had the right now to keep Joe Smith off of their farm land (Restriction of use). A key essential to private property rights: the right to keep others off (restrict access to the resource).
Another key point in Property Rights is the transfer of ownership. When ownership is transferred, obviously the new owner sees a higher value in the resource he is buying than the previous owner. That means that the resource is now owned by someone who gives it higher value. Thus the transfer of property rights allow the property to move to its highest valued use.
Furthermore ownership creates an incentive for me not to over exploit the resources I own. For example, if I own a 1,000,000 sq. mile ranch that has 500 head of rhinos, of which I farm their horns and sell them, my rhino population will never go extinct. I would never exploit the rhino population below a sustainable point (below a point where my opportunity cost is higher than the potential benefits of killing a rhino).
Furthermore, I won't just keep the population at a sustainable number, I will invest in my sustainable rhino business, because it is mine.
one thing to note- on communal property everybody exploits as much as they can get away with because we all know that if I don't do X, then Joe Shmoe over there will just do X anyway. This is why our seas are tremendously overfished and exploited, this is also why the black Rhino is nearly extinct..
signed
-AS
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