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I have to admit that no one will ever be able to convince everyone to accept a single ideal. What that suggests to me is that the ideal I put forward can't be fundamental. It has to be proposed within a system of legitimate government. It is the system of government that would have legitimacy. By "legitimate government" I mean one that we are morally obliged to obey.

It seems to me that again and again when we talk about extensive, complicated modern property rights, we get pushed back to the role of legitimate government. Modern property is its creation. I don't see any other way to justify it. The same is true for social ideals to be pursued. Ultimately I don't see any other way to select such an ideal except through a legitimate government.

The idea is that within that system of legitimate government different people or different groups can propose and defend different social ideals. Few ideals would ever be accepted by all, but if one ideal were adopted as the basis of policy, then that policy would have the moral force of legitimate government. Everyone would be obliged to follow the policy even if they rejected the ideal on which it was based. Of course, they could argue against it and organize to change it.

We live in an imperfect world. Perhaps we have to give up thinking that everyone will accept certain ideals or that everyone will agree that every government policy is morally justified. Instead, we can say that some governments are legitimate and that we have an obligation to obey their properly adopted and promulgated laws -- including laws on property.

If we are working within the contractualist paradigm, then everything turns on what can be agreed to in the initial situation. If only the basis for legitimate government can be agreed to, then property rights are at the next level down i.e., they are not derived from a principle adopted in the initial situation but are instead determined by legitimate government. Everyone has an obligation to abide by the rules of property because of their source, but it would still be possible for those who reject my ideal to say that the laws on property are not part of the basic principles of justice agreed to in the initial situation. They would, of course, advocate a change in the law on property.

But if we could go one step further and get agreement on a basic principle governing property in the initial situation, then even a legitimate government would not have the power to adopt property laws that violated that principle. It would, of course, have the power to adopt laws that derived from that principle.

I think that maybe I can give you an argument for hypothetical agreement on such a principle governing property in the contractualist initial situation.