Ownership

Abstract

Personal responsibility, economic liberty, and the owning of property are how we got to where we are. They are how we get to a future that we can tolerate, indeed enjoy. In societies without effective property rights, the poor can never escape their poverty— the lack of effective property rights keeps the poor in their place. The question we consider here is what is “effective property rights” and what is “poverty” in the digitalized world. Because no machinery can sit idle indefinitely and be expected to still run when asked, we might ask how long a people who do have these rights can choose not to use them yet still have exercisable rights should they later want to do so. Which brings us to XYZ-as-a-service business models and the triad of property rights, liberty, and personal responsibility. This being a word-count-limited column for readers of IEEE Security & Privacy magazine, let’s be crisp. If you own something, your ownership includes the ineluctable liberty to use the thing you own as you see fit. In addition to my day job in cybersecurity.