 The Humean view of property as a convention has been taken up by Murphy and Nagel (2004) as a basis for resisting the view, associated with Nozick 1974, that property rights can pose any moral obstacle to programs of tax and transfer or other forms of redistribution and social control. But the fact that something is conventional doesn’t mean it can safely be treated as malleable or as something that can be overridden without cost. There is always a further question about the moral reasons that there are for holding conventions steady; and these reasons may actually echo other themes in the property debate.