Proprietà privata e beni collettivi
di James A. Sadowsky, S.J.
Fordham University

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Abstract

In the article “Private property and public goods” James Sadowsky identifies through logical argumentation the limits and meaninglessness of some terms commonly used in the economic and legal sphere. These terms have been often used to justify illegitimate political decisions. For Sadowsky, a Jesuit professor at a major U.S. university, the real person, not the fictitious collectivity, is at the foundation of any economic system.
After having justified the existence of private property through the concept of self-ownership, defined in negative terms as what the others cannot do to it, Sadowsky considers some terms that are often taken for granted in economics. For the authors many of such terms are meaningless. Specifically the author, focusing his attention on the paradigm of the person, opposes the abstract ideas of collective property and public property. These ideas are often used to mask the desire for control of the state or a group of individuals over what is actually individual’s property.
The article is of great relevance in the context of the financial crisis that now afflicts the political-economic system.