The emerging public pressure for responsible use of all productive means is blocked by the absence of a comprehensive and generally agreed design for allocating ownership of such means and the responsibility inherent in such ownership. A vacuum of decision-making criteria has become apparent. The "invisible hand" or laissez-faire model has been crippled by the emergence of corporate giants who can, singly or in concert, upset the statistical randomness which that model requires. Consequently, the context of ownership is reduced to the tension between individual or corporate self-interest on the one hand and benevolent good will on the other, with the relationship to property distorted from privilege to inherent right.