Property Rights and Human Nature

A recent science article, Kids Own Up To Ownership - Science News, sheds some light on whether property rights are part of human nature. It seems that 4-5 year old children have stronger ideas about property rights than adults. This provides some support to the idea that ideas about property rights are natural rather than being just a social construct.

People on the other side of this issue still could argue that humans go through natural phases of development. Children tend to see most moral issues in black and white. In adolescence, they typically develop a more consequential approach. Property rights are seen more in terms of how they effect people. I believe that they can still be justified on this basis.

The fact that young children tend to have less flexible ideas about property rights doesn't tell us much about whether or not this is natural for older humans. It could be that humans in a wide variety of environments tend to develop more flexible attitudes as they age. On the other hand, it could be that many different societies undermine property rights.

Capitalism is often said to support the strongest property rights. However, under the strictest form of capitalism there is no protection for "your" job. It could be that our natural ideas about property rights turn out to be inconsistent. Ownership to a job contradicts ownership of a business, which includes the right to decide who you will invite over to your facilities in order to produce goods and services which will generate revenue. The fact that young children frequently argue over who owns what provides evidence that our natural ideas in this area may be contradictory.

One possible criticism of the experiment is that the children were told who the items belonged to. To young children, the moral argument is over who owns what and not the implications of that ownership. Hence once this issue is resolved, this answers the moral question, at least as far as young children are concerned. It would be interesting if instead of telling the test subjects who owned the objects in question, the experimenters gave a history of the objects in question.