Objective property rights enable humans to live together in peace and properity. We have civilisation to the extent that we have both peace and prosperity. Therefore, civilisation is built on objective property rights.
For civilisation to be saved and advanced, two tasks need to be achieved:
- Develop a fully consistent set of principles for determining objective property rights in rivalrous resources.
- Convince so many people to become dedicated to these principles that the legal order reflects and protects them.
Task 1: Getting A Consistent Philosophy
Identifying the correct principles is the first task. It has to be done independently of any concern with how to convince the masses of them. Whether or not principles are correct has nothing to do with whether or not these principles will be popular. Someone will have to make them popular, but that is a completely different challenge.
Task 2: Convincing Enough People
Once you have a consistent set of principles, someone does need to find ways to convince others to adopt the them. But this is a totally separate challenge to identifying the principles. Convincing the masses is a political and rhetorical challenge.
You cannot choose your principles on the basis of whether or not they will be popular. This will never achieve a consistent set of principles since you will end up catering to the demand of the masses, which will be whatever set of prejudices are currently regnant. That might get you influence, but not a consistent philosophy.
My focus is entirely on the first task. I ignore the second task completely.