In the second of his Two Treatises on Government (1689), notorious slaver and ur-liberal John Locke proposed what has come to be known as “Lockean” property rights.

Locke’s argument, a labor theory of property, was that we own ourselves, so we logically own our labor (lest we become slaves, which is how Locke made his fortune). When we perform labor on otherwise unowned resources, those resources become ours:

“Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men. For this Labour being the unquestionable Property of the Labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joyned to…”

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