Property

.

Chapter 4 in Aristotle’s Economics, 2024, pp 46-53 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Anticipating Hobbes, Locke and Burke, Aristotle came to the defence of private property. Whereas property in common would be susceptible to the free-rider problem, private holdings would be well maintained. Property made philanthropy possible. It was familiar. It had stood the test of time. It satisfied the differentiation of taste. Some assets should be state-owned in order to generate public finance. Since rights are not natural but social, it would be acceptable for the government to trim holdings as Plato had recommended in the Laws. Aristotle noted the possibility of state-led levelling down but did not recommend its early adoption. Compulsion is never a good thing even if the alternative is continuing divergence from the middle ground. A compromise option would be for wealth to be retained but not to be put on display.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Politics and Public Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035315444.00007 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22488_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().