Self-Ownership and the Logic of Property Link to heading

Self-ownership = the exclusive handle over your body, with a custody chain that terminates in you and no one else.

Introduction Link to heading

The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) is usually built on the axiom of self-ownership: the claim that one owns oneself and the results of one’s actions.

Locke, Hoppe, and Rothbard approximate this concept, treating it as “self-evident” within natural law or libertarian ethics. But critics often challenge the axiom as unfounded or subjective. If self-ownership cannot be demonstrated, then aggression—the coercive seizure of others’ bodies or property—can be reframed as morally permissible.

This essay proposes a way to derive self-ownership from objective facts about scarcity, exclusivity, and custody. The goal is to show that self-ownership is not a bare axiom but the base case of property rights.

Exclusivity Link to heading

All resources are finite. A resource is scarce when it is finite relative to human desire, such that competing claims can plausibly arise.

  • Consumables: Air molecules metabolized in lungs; food broken into bodily tissue.

  • Durables: Tools, land, and vehicles that can be controlled but not consumed.

Every scarce resource terminates in a point of exclusive control or consumption. Call this a resource handle.

  • Only one person can eat a given apple.

  • Only one person can operate a particular plow at a time.

  • Even abundant goods (like air) can become scarce in special contexts (diving, Mars colonies).

Handles are mutually exclusive. Control or consumption by one agent excludes simultaneous use by others.

Ownership Link to heading

Exclusivity alone is not enough. Ownership = exclusive custody of a handle + a valid chain of custody.

  • Custody is descriptive: who currently controls or consumes the resource.

  • Validity is normative: whether the transfer of the handle followed accepted rules.

Example:

  • If you steal an apple from a vendor and eat it, you hold the handle (consumption), but you broke the rule of voluntary exchange.

  • If you pay for the apple, the transfer is valid, and ownership passes.

A chain of custody is the sequence of valid transfers. Ownership means not only holding the handle but also being connected to this chain. Theft = handle without chain.

Rules of validity are normative, shaped by incentives and consensus. Most societies converge on the rule that voluntary exchange = valid. Charity is another rule: transfer without payment but with consent. A rule that “all seizures are valid” would destroy incentives and collapse into chaos.

Homesteading Link to heading

Where do custody chains begin?

  • Unowned resources: no one holds the handle.

  • Homesteading: the first agent to establish control (picking a wild apple, farming land, mining ore) creates the first custody link.

This bootstrap event grounds legitimacy. Subsequent transfers extend the chain. Theft interrupts it.

Thus homesteading is the origin of all property outside the self.

The Algebra of Self-Ownership Link to heading

General rule:

Ownership = exclusive handle + valid custody chain.

But what about the self?

  • Your body is a scarce resource.

  • You hold its exclusive handle through your agency.

  • Unlike external resources, your agency is non-transferable: no one else can be you or assume direct control of your neurons.

Thus the custody chain of the self is unique: it begins and ends within the individual. There is no prior custodian and no possibility of transfer.

This makes self-ownership a special case where the normative component drops out. Exclusivity alone suffices because nature itself validates the chain. No opinion, law, or consensus can alter the brute fact that your agency is yours.

Conclusion Link to heading

  • Scarce resources terminate in exclusive handles.

  • Ownership arises when exclusive custody is connected to a valid custody chain.

  • Homesteading begins the chain for unowned resources.

  • In the special case of the self, the chain terminates within the individual, non-transferable by nature.

Therefore: self-ownership is not an assumption but a demonstrable fact.

The NAP then follows as a corollary: aggression is the illegitimate seizure of another’s handle, whether of their body or their external property.

This framework reframes morality as property logic: violations of morality are violations of ownership. Ethics extends to how we use our own handles responsibly in community. Aesthetics orders the abundant signals that shape recognition and valuation of custody chains. And political philosophy becomes the theory of how societies manage handles at scale.

Self-ownership, then, is the first custody chain—the foundation on which every system of rights, trade, and cooperation must rest.