Reflections on Obligation

Private property is so firmly entrenched that the best we can do is sound notes of caution in how it is used; doing so, we render the liberal concept somewhat less harmful. Private property is not an unmitigated good. But used cautiously, it can achieve important objectives. This chapter offers some reflections which we may want to consider as notes of caution necessary to ensure that it does. The argument advanced is that while the individual has choice, it is not the responsibility of that individual alone to make choices to the benefit of all. It ought to be the state that adjusts the meaning of property so that choice is constrained in order to achieve optimal outcomes for the community. Nothing more than reflections are possible because we find it hard even to conceive, so thoroughly ideologised are we by neo-liberalism, of alternatives to the current formal system of property as the only tool of allocation. The chapter reflects on the ways in which choice, ego, must be reined in, controlled, constrained; this involves a change in narrative: property cannot be made just, because it simply is not just and so it is pointless endlessly to go around in circles about how it can be. The shift may come through wider education about what private property is, why it cannot be justified, and what we need to consider if were to explore alternative approaches to allocating resources. The alternatives, whatever they are, must be about turning our emphasis on choice into one on obligation.