politicalcivility.com Blog

Private Property (Ownership)

I think one of the best philosophical summaries of this principle came from former P&G CEO, William Cooper Procter, when he explained the rationale of the profit sharing program he implemented in the late 1800’s.  Procter felt that in making the employees owners of the company that the “interests of the company and employee” would be inseparably connected.  So as they became owners they would be less likely to cut corners, cheat or do unethical things because they would be damaging their “property.”  With this “ownership” philosophy P&G has become one of the largest companies in the world, and I can tell you from having worked there that I’ve never worked for a company where people watched the stock so closely or talked more about how what they were doing was going to help the company and mean it.

Obviously Procter understood something about human nature.  By creating ownership, Procter created a keen sense of stewardship amongst employees.  Waste, corruption, etc. wouldn’t be tolerated because employees had a vested interest to maximize and take care of company resources.  Employees policed themselves.

The flipside of this is government ownership (socialism, communism, etc.) where we as citizens are essentially renters.  In this scenario there is no incentive to conserve, protect, etc. because I have no vested interest.  Living in Russia for two years really opened my eyes to the evils to business, the environment, the individual and to the country when government was the sole proprietor versus millions of individual owners.

Here’s an interesting question in closing: if you were buying a used car and had the choice between two cars, which were exactly the same make, model, color, price, etc., where one was from a rental agency (budget, avis, enterprise, etc.) or one from your meticulous next door neighbor, which one do you buy?  If you chose the second, congratulations you understand the value of private property.  If you chose the first, remind me not to drive in the same car with you. 

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An interesting side note here is that those pushing global warming energy policies should be extending ownership and private property if they’re really serious about making the earth more eco friendly.

Sorry to jump off on that, but it just had to come out.