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  Ayesha Speaking

Speaker Dee has hardly mentioned the concept of self-ownership, but some libertarians place a lot of emphasis on it. Nozick seems to think that very strong property rights in natural resources can be derived from self-ownership as long as his version of the Lockean Proviso is adhered to. Furthermore, he seems to believe that self-ownership requires those strong property rights. I'm not so sure.

I have already mentioned Will Kymlicka and some of his criticisms of Nozick. Kimlicka believes that even strong versions of self-ownership are quite compatible with many different kinds of property rights. I think he's right on this. I don't think there is any clear, logical path from self-ownership to really strong property rights in natural resources.

People could have full self-ownership and land could be administered by some combination of collective and individual control. In some peasant societies, for example, the village allocates property to individual families to grow food. The family works the land and consumes the product. But the family does not own the land in a strong sense. It cannot sell the land or give it to an outsider. But it seems to me that an arrangement like this is entirely compatible with self-ownership.






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