property: a bundle of rights?
Econ Journal Watch has a symposium dedicated to the question of whether property is some sort of bundle of rights. They’ve got some prominent folks, like Richard Epstein, who defends the rights bundle position. Others, such as Eric Claeys, think it is conceptual mush. Interesting readings for folks interested in legal issues, political philosophy, and econ soc.
orgtheory.net 
Thanks. I’ll have to digest this later but it looks really interesting.
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informationforager
September 23, 2011 at 3:17 pm
Any analogy can be useful. Part of the problem is that the word “right” is used ambiguously and ambivalently. Just this moment, I gave one of our aparment complex’s maintenance workers the right to install a GFI plug in the bathroom. If I were not home, he had the right to enter and do the work. However, I cannot give him my right to pursuit of happiness.
Can you unbundle and sell your right to vote – say, in a primary or for millages only, reserving your right to vote for this office, and selling your right to vote for that?
If rights are a bundle, how many can you sell before the bundle ceases to exist? How many before the bundle is weakened to failure? (Lincoln’s divided we fall appears also as the “fasces” theory of goverment: any individual stick can be broken, but the bundle of them cannot.)
It is a useful analogy, perhaps, but I would not make too much of it.
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Michael E, Marotta
September 23, 2011 at 9:25 pm