Efficiency, Equity, and Data as Private Property

Debate about private property often assumes that the economic outcomes from deploying private property will be beneficial. Yet private property has some demerits. These include a tendency towards allocative inefficiency and regressivity, both largely due to its associated monopoly power and reliance on willingness to pay. Given this, the implications of deploying private property in the novel context presented by data in the internet age warrant close analysis. The literature lacks a systematic analysis of how propertization of data would manifest, given private property's costs and benefits and data's novel features. This Article provides such an analysis. It reveals that, in the context of data and data markets' unique features, the benefits of employing a private property framework are low while the associated costs-inefficiency, regressivity, and political dysfunction-are very high. In the context of the vast inequalities typical in the digital realm and data's role as a medium of political control, private property's regressivity-driving features increase wealth-based allocation of political power. When applied to data, private property is therefore likely to depart a role in which it fosters democracy and freedom from political control for a dangerous new role as a stanchion for hegemonic political control.