 It may be thought that the justificatory issue is nowadays moot, with the collapse of socialist systems in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and the triumph of market economies all over the world. It is tempting to conclude that since economic collectivism has been thoroughly discredited, the problem of justifying private property has been solved by default: there is simply no alternative. But the point of discussing the justification of an institution is not only to defend it against is competitors. Often we justify in order to understand and also to operate the institution intelligently. In thinking about property, there are a number of issues that make little sense unless debated with an awareness of what the point of private property might be. Some of these issues are technical. Consider, for example, the rule against perpetuities, the registration of land titles, or the limits on testamentary freedom; all these would be like an arcane and unintelligible code, to be learned at best by rote, unless we connect them with the point of throwing social authority behind individual control (or behind the individual disposition of control) over material resources. (See Ackerman 1977, p. 116.)