The case for a robust property-owning democracy

Rawlsian approaches to property-owning democracy do not deal adequately with knowledge and incentive problems. Attempts to implement them in practice may produce outcomes that are more unjust than existing welfare state democracies. Nevertheless, certain policies aligning with a property-owning democracy are more likely to address social inequality, given realistic challenges to implementation. They include reducing public debt, specifying public service entitlements in ways that they can be more assuredly claimed as rights, funding pension systems through investment rather than unfunded entitlements, reforms to prevent intellectual property from producing excessive rents, and making homeownership and affordable housing accessible to all through increasing supply. On many margins, individual liberty and material equality are aligned as social values and it is important for liberal democracies to aim at reducing arbitrary and unwarranted sources of inequality.