The Jewish legal concept of pe'ah requires landowners to leave a meaningful portion of their field unharvested so that the poor can gather food for themselves. Instead, the produce must be left for the poor to take for themselves, and the amount left for them is determined by the owner's prosperity and the people's need. Pe'ah , and the gleanings of the harvest and the stray grapes of the vineyard, are not charity. Or more strictly speaking, they are the property of the poor. The underlying premise of pe'ah and related laws is that our property is not ours alone.
Owners have plain and unquestioned rights, and most of their property is strictly private.
But they also have public duties. He uses ideas that seem to belong to conservatives as the building blocks for a liberal policy agenda. Singer believes that private property is so valuable, so critical to a good life, that public policies should ensure that everyone can have a little. It also means the duty to act so that one's actions do not unduly interfere with the ability of others to obtain similar ends. It also links us to our government, which is responsible for protecting what we have.