Two-thirds of the world’s population lacks access to a formal system of property rights.

For a long time, Western economists failed to appreciate the relationship between private property rights and economic development. Karl Marx saw private property as the source of wealth and called for its elimination to promote equality. A century and a half later, we know that a country without a formal system for registering property rights limits its own economic development and prevents its citizens from realizing their full potential. It’s a simple yet startling fact: The road to economic development runs through the county clerk’s office at the local courthouse.

Fortunately there is a new technology that could make a global property-rights registration system feasible. Patrick Byrne, an e-commerce pioneer and the CEO of Overstock.com, has committed a professional staff and significant resources to modernizing the collection and maintenance of property-rights records on a global scale. Blockchain is an especially promising technology because of its record-keeping capacity, its ability to provide access to millions of users, and the fact that it can be constantly updated as property ownership changes hands. If Blockchain technology can empower public and private efforts to register property rights on a single computer platform, we can share the blessings of private-property registration with the whole world. Instead of destroying private property to promote a Marxist equality in poverty, perhaps we can bring property rights to all mankind. Where property rights are ensured, so are the prosperity, freedom and ownership of wealth that brings real stability and peace.

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