Needs do not matter. History is full of thinkers falling into the trap of referring to needs as were they something real and distinct. But by referring to what people "need," you're really using rhetoric without substance. You are creating the illusion that your claims are

objective, whereas they are not. To put it differently, it sounds smart but isn't. Economists recognized this fact in the early 1870s, which caused a revolution in the study of economics. Until then, they had, like everybody else, been trapped by thinking of people's needs in the

objective meaning that the term seems to imply. But there is nothing objective about it, and even if there were--it would still be irrelevant. So referring to "need" in your argument is akin to the trade of stage magicians: what you're doing looks impressive, but it's not. When

we think of a need, we think of something fundamental, basic, and necessary--without it, we could not survive. So our "needs" include food, shelter, and clothing, all those "life's necessities" without which we could not go on. A want, in contrast, is ephemeral, volatile,

unnecessary (in the strict sense), and could be (often is?) based only in the whims of whoever expresses it. But there are two fundamental problems with using the seemingly much more important concept of "need" when trying to explain or understand the world. Because it is, in a

Many anti-market folks assert that property must have arisen from someone claiming for himself that which was jointly used. That's their bias, not an explanation or theory. Private property can emerge from joint or communal use without conflict. When it does, it is by definition

legitimate property. Locke showed how it could be done through mixing one's labor with unowned/unclaimed land. I have previously drafted an alternative theory. Neither claims that all existing property, or even the existing property *system*, is therefore

legitimate, only that there can be legitimate private property. This is enough to carefully consider the concept, which must be accepted as a potential alternative solution for social production and economy. The arguments for property-based production are very strong, which is,

I suspect, what actually drives the anti-market folks' refusal to consider the potential for legitimate property: with it, their position becomes a very steep uphill battle. This may also be the reason they make vague historical claims, as though any historical action would

invalidate the concept itself (it does not). But it is not difficult to see how legitimate property could emerge without any conflict. Elinor Ostrom's work shows how communal property might not lead to the 'tragedy of the commons' because users adopt rules of use that create