The concept of "rightful ownership" comes into being in the hands that produce that which is to be rightfully (morally) owned.

What we produce with our own bodies and or own minds is but a candidate for rightful ownership, although an extremely worthy candidate. For even as we produce a commodity or provide a service by virtue of our actions, there will still exist a debt to be paid for the use of the necessary non-produced inputs to our productive efforts. Labor alone will produce no output whatsoever. Without the natural world we are all dead. And there is a constant competition for the use of all natural resources though we all have an equal right to use such resources.

If our use of naturally occurring inputs has deprived others of their right to use such inputs, then we must compensate them for this deprivation. And only when that compensation is fully paid may we claim rightful ownership of our own produce. There is no finer example of such expropriation of resources than the socially supported "ownership" of land and naturally occurring minerals, plants, and animals. As these resources were not produced by human effort, then there is no rightful ownership of such things.

This concept of "rightful ownership" is not my own invention. I was introduced to this idea by an individual posting as "Roy Langston" in unmoderated "Usenet" in the late 1990's. And it occured to me then as it does now that this morality is a cornerstone of what is now becoming defined as Geoism and seminal to my thoughts on what I choose to label as Social Meritocracy.

The concept of rightful ownership is essential to the correct definition of "Economic Rent" and to the rightful distribution/redistribution of such rent.