There's a specific way property law is just like nutrition and drug labeling. When done well, it's a way to remove lawyers from day-to-day transactions. I'll explain. (It takes a minute, but comes back around at the end.)

Some people vehemently oppose any kind of nutrition labeling.* Their argument is that as long as they accurately describe what's in the package, it's up to the consumer to decide whether they want to consume it.

Of course none of us has time to independently research everything we could possibly put in our bodies, so we rely on third parties to do the testing for us. And since that research is expensive, the only people with a motivation to do it are the same people with a motivation to lie if they don't like the results. This applies both to health claims for the ingredients, as well as verification that the ingredients actually are as listed.

We go through our daily lives reading labels and trusting that things are generally as stated, because a government agency somewhere is acting on our behalf to ensure that's true. If we couldn't rely on that every purchase would require independent investigation, and if the contents of a package don't match the ingredients it would be up to individual consumers to sue the manufacturers for redress, which is the official stated preference of libertarian-leaning Republicans.

If they get their way, there will be only two ways to trust you're getting what you pay for:
1) Have a fleet of lawyers on retainer, standing by to enforce your rights.
2) Only barter with people you personally know and trust.

So, how is this like property law?

Forget about philosophical "ownership" that transcends death and just answer this question: Who gets to decide who can drive the car parked in the driveway next to where I live? Who controls that car? I think it's me, because I "own" that car. Most of society agrees with me.

But let's do away with private property. Now who controls it? "The community." Okay, fine. But now I need to go to work. Today I get in "my" car and I go. If "the community" controls it, who has the keys? How do I get permission to take the keys? How far in advance do I need to reserve it?

I suspect "the community" will organize itself into various levels of administration. You'll need a lawyer to negotiate every request to use the car.

As long as there are scarce resources, you need a way to allocate them. You can either do that once, via policy - AKA property law - or you can do it at the point of every transaction.

Property law, done well, would mean it's clear who controls a resource, and that control is at an appropriate level. It doesn't make sense for "the community" to control my car, just as it doesn't make sense for a single person to control what can be dumped into a lake.


* "Nutritional supplements" already fall into a black hole, where they routinely make medical-sounding claims but aren't classified as drugs, so they fall under neither nutrition labeling laws nor efficacy standards. Yes, plenty of money went into building this dodge.

We're used to being the smartest person in the room. When regulation looks like "protecting people from themselves" we like to think, "Get your nanny state away from me, I'm too smart for that."

And on a single instance of a single transaction, with enough time to go down the rabbit hole and build a point-by-point position, that might be true. The problem is we can't do that every time for every decision.

You're probably not going to know enough about cars to beat the professional car salesman. You're probably not going to know more than the epidemiologist about the latest in drug interactions. At some point you have to trust someone, or better yet, trust the system. That's why making a good system is so important, and attacking the system itself is worse than any single offense against the system.