Property

Until maybe the middle of the 19th Century, most of the world thought that it was sometimes just for one person to own another.  In any given instance, whether one person owned another was a matter for legislatures to legislate, and courts to decide (and, of course, for the individual conscience of the property owner).  Now, we no longer feel that way.  Slavery is considered to violate a fundamental human right, and therefore to be beyond the limits of what a legislature may impose, or a court enforce.  On the other hand, we (most of us) hold that that it is sometimes (often!) just and meet for one person to own the means another person requires to live, and to hold that property, and profit by it, even if that means the other person goes homeless, or starves, or sickens and dies.  How much of the means of life one person owns, and another does not, is a matter for legislatures to legislate, and courts to decide (and, of course for the individual conscience of the property holder).  And for determination by the sacred market.

But there is no inherent reason why one property “right” is more obvious, just and eternal than the other.  The right to own slaves was completely obvious to an ancient Roman, or a medieval Turk, or an antebellum Southerner, and to almost everybody else in their eras, and in between.  The right of private individuals to own capital seems obvious to most of us.  Maybe someday that will change.