Richard Kelo Discusses John Locke

John Locke was a seminal thinker in human history.  His writing represents one of the first times a philosopher examined economic questions.  Locke looked at questions like property rights: who owns what and what represents legitimate ownership?

Rick Kelo

Even in 2018 a lot of modern political topics still center on the same questions Locke examined.  As Rick Kelo points out that the "1%" and wealth inequality are just one example.  Who owns what, and was the wealth of the 1% acquired by exploiting the 99%?  Is it a legitimate function of government to redistribute wealth in order to correct for this?

Rick Kelo points out that many of these questions are answered if we take the time to read Locke's analysis and apply it.  For example, in his Second Treatise on Government, John Locke examined property rights and ownership:

"The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property." 

~ John Locke, Two Treatise, Book II, Chp 25, Sec 27

That statement forms the basis for original property rights, or what many philosophers call the "Homesteading Principle."  When a person combines his labor the product he owns.  The exception is when someone has entered into a contract to sell their labor for a fixed price.  Since most of the 1% are business owners, Rick Kelo mentions, their property is their own.  That includes if they improve it, and that includes if they enter into a contract and pay someone else a fixed sum of money to improve it.