ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the two major variants of utility arguments for property rights. Both assert that property rights are necessary as a means to an end -the end being human happiness. But in one variant, traditional utility argument - happiness is defined very broadly, so as to include the whole range of human satisfactions. Traditional utility arguments is useful to begin by noting that these three utility arguments are not designed to justify the mere protection of possession, use, management, and so forth, but the corresponding rights. The other variant economic utility arguments - defines happiness more narrowly; it concerns only those satisfactions which can be sought by economic transactions and measured by ‘dollar votes’. Economic arguments for property rights take a somewhat different tack at the levels of specific and particular justification. Here they turn on technical concepts of efficiency, optimality, superiority, allocation, and distribution.
