RE: Property rights exist because we have morality
I disagree with a lot of what you wrote here. You would own the artwork you created not because you created it, but because you already owned the medium or substrate it was expressed on, the canvas and paints, or the stone for the sculpture, or the paper or computer for the book. The artwork potentially increases the value of the substrate, but doesn't per se cause ownership. Property rights may not exist. Where are they if they do? Where do they come from? They seem to exist only in their violation, whereas ownership is primary and requires no property right.
Morality isn't the source of property right (assuming it exists), but is an effect derived from it.
One can't own an action, but one can be responsible for one's actions, which is why you'd still be thrown in prison, if not hanged or shot, for pushing that person in front of the train.
Thank you for disagreeing and writing why and which parts you disagree on! I agree it is required to own the medium or substrate. If I were to use someone else's property I would be guilty of theft and the artwork would not belong to me.
As to the question of not owning an action, this might be a question of semantics? Isn't being responsible for your actions the same thing as owning your actions? Property rights do not exist in the physical world, you can't touch them. They do however exist as a concept in peoples minds, you could say they are social constructs. As to where they come from, people made it up just like you make up the rules for a sport or game. If you don't have any rules the game is pointless, so why play it? Without property rights you can just hit someone over the head and take their stuff, there are no rules after all.
This also explains why I believe morality is the source of property rights. People probably realized that playing "the game of property rights" led to less conflict and greater prosperity. Tus they discovered it was what they were already doing and that it was working, then they inscribed it in their law.
Saying property rights don't exist because they can't be touched (or as some would say, because they have no shape) is to not recognize that many abstract ideas exist despite not being tangible, e.g., families are more than the people who comprise them; they are also the relationships between the parents and children and other members of the family. Qualities and relationships are as much a part of existence as tangibility.
I have doubts that property rights exist in any form. What does exist, as a relationship between a person and a thing, is ownership.
One can't own an action. An action is not a thing. One can be responsible for an action, of course, but that isn't the same as owning. One can't sell or buy an action. If he could, then the buyer would own the action and be able to do with it as he pleases. One can pay for a service (e.g., an action), but the service isn't owned by the person who receives it, even if said person does own the result of the service or action, such as a haircut or house-cleaning.
I'm fine with using the word ownership instead of property rights. I guess you are right about not being able to own an action in the same way as owning an object. What I was trying to convey was that you have to own the responsibility as in "own up to something".