The Political Rhetoric of Property and Natural Resource Ownership: A Meditation on Chance, Taxation and Appalachia

While our legal system embraces a myriad of forms of property, our political rhetoric of property narrowly speaks of individual ownership and control, fostering a strong dichotomy between public and private property. This rhetoric has also led us to embrace a chance-based division of our natural resource wealth and to refrain from significantly taxing these resources. I compare alternative methods of natural resource ownership in the United States and Australia, suggesting that poverty in natural-resource-rich areas such as Appalachia might be addressed by changes in taxation of natural-resource wealth. Addressing the notion of personal-identity-connected-with-property as a traditional objection to changes in property law structures, I suggest that due to the development of a strong regional identity, Appalachia offers an example of one case where personal connections to land favor changes in existing property structures.