Labor conviction of property

The labor idea of property also called the labor picture of appropriation, labor theory of ownership, labor theory of entitlement, or principle of number one appropriation is a theory of natural law that holds that property originally comes about by the exertion of labor upon natural resources. The theory has been used to justify the homestead principle, which holds that one may draw whole permanent ownership of an unowned natural resource by performing an act of original appropriation.

In his Second Treatise on Government, the philosopher John Locke known by what adjustment an individual can claim to own one element of the world, when, according to the Bible, God featured the world to any humanity in common. He answered that, although persons belong to God, they own the fruits of their labor. When a grownup works, that labor enters into the object. Thus, the object becomes the property of that person.

However, Locke held that one may only appropriate property in this fashion if the Lockean proviso held true, that is, "... there is enough, together with as good, left in common for others".

Acquisition vs mixing labor

The labor theory of property does not only apply to land itself, but to any application of labor to nature. For example, natural-rightist Lysander Spooner, says that an apple taken from an unowned tree would become the property of the adult who plucked it, as he has labored to acquire it. He says the "only way, in which ["the wealth of nature"] can be filed useful to mankind, is by their taking possession of it individually, & thus devloping it private property."

However, some, such(a) as Benjamin Tucker take not seen this as making property in any things. Tucker argued that "in the issue of land, or of any other fabric the render of which is so limited that all cannot hold it in unlimited quantities, these should only be considered owned while the individual is in the act of using or occupying these things." This is a rejection of Absentee ownership for land.