The right to bequeath
Yesterday I mentioned that laws and systems making property inheritable, along with private ownership of productive resources, can lead to more environmentally responsible results than commons.
Of course the invention of property inheritance has more effects than that. When English philosopher John Locke considered the institution, he concentrated on the balance between its encouragement of the lifelong industriousness of talented fathers, and its discouragement of industriousness to inheriting sons.
He did not consider women parents and offspring because the law of couverture prevented nearly all women from owning private property. So far as I know women's industriousness was not considered in this light.
Inheritable property has other effects, as well. It makes intergenerational accumulation possible, solidifying class structures based on wealth. It also furnishes motives for patricide that are absent when property cannot be bequeathed.
The English habit and common law of primogeniture consolidated property, while the French tendency to bequeath property to all (male) children tended to the dissipation of estates.
So many effects from a property rights institution we seldom think of as anything but-- wrongly-- A Law of Nature.
Facebook posts incorporated:
Inheritance and incentives
Of course the invention of property inheritance has more effects than that. When English philosopher John Locke considered the institution, he concentrated on the balance between its encouragement of the lifelong industriousness of talented fathers, and its discouragement of industriousness to inheriting sons.
He did not consider women parents and offspring because the law of couverture prevented nearly all women from owning private property. So far as I know women's industriousness was not considered in this light.
Inheritable property has other effects, as well. It makes intergenerational accumulation possible, solidifying class structures based on wealth. It also furnishes motives for patricide that are absent when property cannot be bequeathed.
The English habit and common law of primogeniture consolidated property, while the French tendency to bequeath property to all (male) children tended to the dissipation of estates.
So many effects from a property rights institution we seldom think of as anything but-- wrongly-- A Law of Nature.
Facebook posts incorporated:
Inheritance and incentives