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I want to add a couple of final thoughts.

• First of all, I strongly suspect that we -- and I mean Americans in general -- will never agree about the nature of property and the role of government in relation to property. There are different interests, different social ideals, and different hierarchies of values at stake. All of these are reflected in different views of property.
  
  
• Those with less property will always have different interests than those with more property. It's always easy for one group to call for higher taxes on "the one percent" and for the one percent to call the others envious. That will never change.
  
  
• There are many different traditions in any large culture. In the United States, there is a tradition of individualism suggesting that each person should make his own decisions and improve his lot by bargaining in a free market. Another tradition, you might call it communitarian or collectivist, believes that we all share certain responsibilities for each other. The results are obvious. The first group has constructed a social ideal that includes very limited government and largely free markets. The second group believes that a strong government should help those who do poorly in the market. The first group does not see obligations to the common good as part of the fundamental justification of strong individual property rights. The second tradition sees obligations to the common good as part and parcel of property ownership -- especially the ownership of natural resources and major means of production.
  
  
• Finally, there are different hierarchies of value. One group sees liberty (meaning the right to not be interfered with) as the number one social/political value. Another group sees liberty as important, but also stresses the importance of equality and well-being. These two views lead to different views of property and government.
  
  
• Second, I think that we have seen that all of the major philosophical views on the nature of ethics (for example, utilitarianism, libertarianism, and contractarianism) have serious critics. My own view is that there are serious problems with every major tradition. I don't expect that to change anytime soon. It may be in part because of conflicting interests, but I suspect that there is more to it than that. Perhaps it is simply a fact that in a relatively free society, intelligent, knowledgeable, humane people will come to different conclusions about the nature of good and evil, right and wrong. That may simply be part of the human condition.

• Third, let me remind you that some writers have suggested that there are certain very important concepts (like liberty and equality) that are essentially contested. The philosopher W. B. Gallie wrote a well-known paper on this subject in 1956. Jeremy Waldron has suggested that property may be one of those concepts.  I think he may be right about that. There is no definition of the rights of property written in stone, and we are going to go on debating it for a long time.
  
  In a similar vein, the philosopher Ronald Dworkin has talked about how we have developed several different conceptions of certain key concepts. In Dworkin's view, we can share a concept but have different conceptions or specifications of that concept. For example, we share the concept of justice because we all acknowledge certain paradigm cases of justice and injustice. We also share ideas about the function that justice should have in society. Beyond that, however, we disagree strongly about the conception or specification of justice. I think that justice is one of these key concepts, and property may be another. Look at Dworkin's Justice for Hedgehogs for his views. I am not optimistic that we will every agree on a specification of justice or property.
  
  
• But, fourth, theoretical differences about ethics or property may not always prevent us from agreeing that certain conditions are problematic. We may even be able to agree on solutions. Amartya Sen made a similar point in his book The Idea of Justice. Sen does not expect everyone to agree on the same principles of justice, but he believes that we can nevertheless identify the worst cases of injustice and do something to alleviate them.
  
  
• Finally, I want to suggest that you think of private property as one way to maintain a zone of freedom around the individual (or the family or some other organization such as a labor union or a business corporation). On the other hand, the regulatory state and the welfare state are ways to advance certain other values -- especially elements of the common good, to protect the  weaker members of society, to prevent private owners from passing costs on to other parties, to create effective liberties by providing people with resources, and so forth. Our politics attempts to draw a line -- to determine what will be subject to individual decision making and what will be subject to decisions made by government. We are constantly moving that line. Through our politics we are constantly adjusting what is private and what is public. Some movements of the line are due to the enfranchisement of new groups. Some are due to new knowledge about the consequences of our actions (affecting the environment, for example). Some are due to changes in our values or our priorities. We have decided, for example, that the use of birth control is a private matter. On the other hand, we have decided that property rights should be altered in some ways to prevent pollution or soil erosion or the loss of beachfront. In my opinion, we will never stop moving the line. The contest over what is private and what is public will never end. We need both spheres -- including private property and government regulation and taxation -- because we value both individual freedom and the common good. There must be a balance between the two, but the balance is dynamic and will never stop changing.