Section 7 of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico Constitution compares the right to life and liberty with the right to enjoy property. According to the political community of Puerto Rico, “Nobody can be denied their property or freedom without following the proper legal procedures.” This is stated in the Great Charter.”
Not all societies acknowledge and uphold the right to private property, just as Puerto Rico does. Conversely, this is a common practice in societies where economic freedom and political democracy form the foundation of their shared existence. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, one of the leading democracies in the world, protects people from being “denied the right to life, liberty, or property without following the proper legal procedures. Additionally, his private property cannot be taken without just compensation for public use.”Private property refers to the unique and exclusive use of tangible and intangible resources by individuals and legal persons other than the State, is inseparable from economic freedom, which is the right of every individual to make production, exchange and consumption decisions in the pursuit of their well-being, without any obstacles beyond the bare minimum required to protect others’ rights.
In turn, the free market economy—which has shown to be the most adaptable and practical type of social structure to deal with the significant issues that comprise the “Economic Problem”—is founded on the concept of economic freedom. This includes what should be produced. To what extent? How? And for what purpose? The intricate social fabric that involves determining how best to distribute goods and services among society’s members, develop novel technologies, and make effective use of limited productive resources is summed up by these questions. The free-market economy is the most successful economic system known so far in human history, and it operates.
Aristotle, perhaps the best-known of the ancient Greek philosophers, said that what is not anyone’s property is not cared for properly because everyone assumes that it is being handled by someone else. One of the main issues with the central economic planning system that ultimately led to the collapse of the former Soviet Union was the lack of motivation to effectively utilize a productive resource that belongs to “everyone” in an abstract sense rather than any one person.
Now, as with all rights, the right to private property has its limitations. One of them is that a free-market economy that functions well and promotes economic freedom is at odds with an excessive concentration of property. The market system assumes the free competition of many individual economic agents that compete with each other for the economic opportunities that arise. This, in turn, assumes a large population of entrepreneurial agents, for which the ownership of productive resources mustn’t be concentrated in a few hands. For instance, attempts by an economic agent to monopolize a market—which is equivalent to trying to focus control over business management at the expense of other competitors and customers—are illegal under US law.
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Private property is having our own home, a car in our name, or any asset that we own and that we can enjoy to our liking or lend to whoever we want. It facilitates the protection of the individual against the State and institutions. In the economic and political system, knowing what the right to private property is is part of the basic knowledge of our rights as individuals.
EU Charter of Fundamental Rights