timelets

Buchanan makes an important point about the dynamic aspects of property rights:

If a clearly defined set of rights exists (and I shall simply assume this here; at a later point I shall examine problems that arise when ambiguities are present), and if this set is effectively enforced, how can change in structure, basic constitutional change, take place at all? In order to answer this question, it is necessary again to avoid the confusion in thinking of rights in terms of imputations of goods or resources among persons. This static model would suggest erroneously that the assignment of rights remains always a zero-sum game; hence, there could be no agreed-on modifications in structure. Contractual or quasi-contractual readjustments in basic constitutional structure are, by definition, impossible in this limited model.

Clearly, if the system of rights is based on a single resource and has a single allocation mechanism, the government, it will remain a zero-sum game indefinitely, i.e. static.