Chapter 1: Why “Property” - Foreign Military Studies Office - U.S. Army

to improve the faithfulness of evidence regarding everyday rights andduties, including the duties of government. (Formalizing real estaterecords can involve considerable technical effort --interviewing,surveying, monumenting, mapping, registering, filing, digitizing, webmountingand so-on). Much of the success of Western societies, andmuch of what is often alluded to as the American Way, is bound to thesystemic creation of irrefutable evidence regarding rights and dutiesrelated to things, and particularly to real estate. However good theevidence, however, rights remain inchoate unless they can be exercised.This exercise of rights usually requires that an authoritative body canconsider and act upon the evidence, or that a functioning market existswithin which rights and duties can be traded. That is why we judge thestrength of the social contract according to its observance, by which wemean to tie the evidence together with its practicable consequence.This observance of the social contract (the combination of solidevidence and the realistic possibility of doing something with it) givesthe contract strength within its basic rules. These basic rules, however,may still be unjust according to one perspective or another. Forinstance, we may be easily able to determine what varying rights andduties pertain to owners within an area, and all of those owners mayhave quick access to enforcement mechanisms that operate smoothlyand according to set procedures and standards; but if an appreciableclaimant identity lives within the population, but is excluded fromparticipation as owners, there still exists great potential for conflict.Some readers may be immediately stressed by the wordproperty, or challenged; preoccupied that it is synonymous with“private property” and a tattoo of capitalism and Western culturalarrogance. Indeed, formalized property is a hallmark of Westernculture and a basic institution in most materially successful economies,if not all. The most defensible goals of human development: freedomof expression, association, movement, worship, material prosperity, andnon-violent resolution of conflict, are more likely achieved whererights and duties associated with land are formalized -- regardless of thename given the overall system. The question of cultural variation, andthe attendant possibility of outright rejection of private land ownership9