'Economic property rights' as 'nonsense upon stilts': a comment on Hodgson. Issue 4 (9th June 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: COLE, DANIEL H.
• Is Part Of: Journal of institutional economics. Volume 11:Issue 4(2015)
• Page Start: 725
• Page End: 730
• Publication Date: 2015-06-09
• Subjects: Institutional economics -- Periodicals; 330.1552
• DOI: 10.1017/S174413741500020X
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1744-1374

Abstract

Abstract: Hodgson's (2015 ) critique of extra-legal 'property rights' – in this case, so-called 'economic property rights' – is right on target. This Comment contributes two further points to his critique. First, the notion of 'economic property rights' is based on what Gilbert Ryle (1949) referred to as a 'category mistake', conflating physical possession, which is a brute fact about the world, with the right or entitlement to possession, which is a social or institutional fact that cannot exist in the absence of some social contract, convention, covenant, or agreement. The very notion of a non-institutional 'right' is oxymoronic. Second, the fact that property is an institutional fact does not mean it must exist with the structure of a 'state' (as Bentham suggested). Rather, institutions like 'property rights' only require some community, however large or small, operating with what Searle (1995 ;2005 ) calls collective intentionality and collective acceptance, according to shared 'rules of recognition' (Hart, 1997 ).