Against the Public Ownership Conception of Shared Property

The public ownership thesis is a Kantian-Rousseavian model of shared property. Its advocates argue that it is a superior model to those that can be derived from Lockeanism insofar as private property and common property cannot realize the distinct values that publicly owned property can. On this view, resources that are sites of shared activities must be owned by the public as a whole. I argue that the various values ascribed to public ownership can be realized by common property on the Lockean model, and the Lockean model is also better at dealing with the challenges of scarcity and disagreement that are central to questions of property rights.