[see section 3.1 for references on private property]
The Cherokee Constitution of 1839 states that “The lands of the Cherokee Nation shall remain common property.” In a society where land is common property, and provides amply for basic necessities of food and shelter, scarcity would not emerge as the fundamental economic problem. “Economists” in such a society would probably spend time on studying rules for sharing, and methods for resolving the commons problem, and settling intra and inter-tribal disputes regarding usage of common property. This is made more plausible by looking at the case of England, below.
In England, Tawney (1926) describes how political and religious upheavals in the post-Cromwell world made possible the social revolution created by the movement of “enclosures,” or the privatization of public property. Traditional ideas of how to handle sharing of common property were forgotten. Kogl (2005) writes that
“Commons rights enabled persons to meet many everyday needs: not only by pasturing livestock and raising crops in the open fields, but cutting turfs (peat for fuel) and wood (for building and fuel), hunting game, and foraging for wild foods and building materials as well. All these rights were precisely named (e.g. right of turbary, right of botes) and lands were precisely delineated as pasture (mead or meadow), agriculture lands (the open fields), or “wastes” and woods. The precision with which the commons systems defined lands under different types of ownership is reflected in a rich vocabulary—of carrs, gores, selions and so on—that we have largely lost today. The English common property regime was far from a vague, first-come first-served system in which everybody and nobody owned the land.”
This shows that institutional and social structures evolve to handle common property rights. Polanyi (1944) has argued at length that market societies are exceptional, and that production and distribution are handled via a variety of different social institutions in non-market societies. Economic problems are formulated and solved quite differently in such societies.
As a third example, consider an idealized communist society, based on public ownership of means of production and an ethical commitment to providing to ‘each according to his needs.’ In such a society, the central economic problem might well be providing suitable incentives to workers to ensure high productivity. Substantial recent economic literature shows that non-monetary incentives can be more effective than monetary incentives in improving labor productivity; see, for example, Ariely (2008, Chapter 4). This literature which studies the impact of social mechanisms like gift exchange on efforts put in by laborers may be a central concern in such economies.
Some would argue, like Fukuyama (1992), that all alternatives have proven non-viable, and history has converged to the optimal economic and political structures of capitalism. However there are several empirical and normative claims within such a statement, which have been discussed at length in associated literatures. In this paper, our purpose is not to discuss the relative merits of alternative arrangements, but merely to show that it is a normative decision for a society as a whole to choose among alternative ways of structuring property rights. Such structures may determine whether we live in wealthy societies with aggressive competitors, high luxury and inequality, or relatively poorer but more egalitarian societies with norms of cooperation and community. The idea that everyone would prefer to live in a wealthier society (since it would be, at least potentially, a Pareto improvement), is itself clearly normative. It is harmful to bury the normative choices involved and present private property as a fact of nature, a part of a scientific and “positive” theory.