PROPERTY AND
LIBERTY
or
FIVE OUTRAGEOUS
PROPOSITIONS
ABOUT PROPERTY
FIVE OUTRAGEOUS
PROPOSITIONS ABOUT
PROPERTY
1. I have as much property as Bill
Gates!
2. The former Soviet Union respected
private property!
3. Property protects the poor more
than the rich!
4. The American Revolution was
fought for only three reasons:
Property, property, property!
5. Property and liberty mean the
same thing!
1. I have as much property as Bill
Gates!
Property is a right not a synonym for
“things.”
Property is the right of ownership.
Property/Ownership is the legal right
to exclude others – including the
state in most instances – from
resources acquired without coercion,
theft, or fraud. Property is limited
by the equal exclusionary right of
others.
2. The former Soviet Union
respected private property!
“The theory of the Communists may
be summed up in a single sentence:
Abolition of private property.”
–The Communist Manifesto
“The personal property right of
citizens. . . is protected by law.”
–Soviet Constitution of 1936, Art. 10
All societies recognize some
applications of private property
Reed’s World of Property
3. Property protects the poor
more than the rich!
The rich can protect their own
resources.
In national terms:
– There is little poverty in
property–strong nations
– There is little wealth in property–
weak nations
How the free market can cause
poverty
China’s secret
The Mystery of Capital
How the institution of property
facilitates wealth:
– Provides maximum incentive for
new resource production
– Allows landholders to work
outside their homes
– Facilitates capital formation
– Makes resources easily divisible
4. The American Revolution was
fought for three reasons:
property, property, property!
“No taxation without representation” was a
property issue
• “At every stage in the controversy to 1776
and beyond, Americans claimed to be
defending property rights.” –P.J. Marshall
• “Liberty, property, and no stamps.”
• “If we can tax the Americans without their
consent, they have no property, nothing
they can call their own.” –John Wilkes,
Lord Mayor of London
Protection of property was the
primary legitimate purpose for
government. For example:
– “The protection of different and
unequal faculties of acquiring
property…[is] the first object of
government.” –James Madison
– “The great end of men’s entering into
society [is] the enjoyment of their
properties in peace and safety.”
–John Locke
– “Civil government. . . .is instituted for
the security of property.” –Adam Smith
– “The first and principal cause of
making kings was to maintain property
and contracts.” –John Davies
5. Property and liberty mean the
same thing!
Importance of property and liberty:
two views
– Liberty depends on people having
enough of their own resources to be
free from depending on the state.
– Property and liberty are semantically
identical, the two sides of the same
definitional coin. To say that one has a
liberty to take certain action or that one
has a property in taking certain action
are equivalent. Under property/liberty,
one may legally exclude others from
interference.
William Blackstone and property as
“natural liberty.”
James Madison and liberty as property.
– “Property…in its particular application means
that ‘dominion which one man claims and
exercises over the external things of the world,
in exclusion of every other individual.’ In its
larger and juster meaning, it embraces
everything to which a man may attach a value
and have a right; and which leaves to everyone
else a like advantage. In the former sense, a
man’s land, or merchandize, or money is called
his property. In the latter sense, a man has
property in his opinions and the free
communication of them. He has a property of
peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in
the profession and practice dictated by them.
He has property very dear to him in the safety
and liberty of his person. He has an equal
property in the free use of his faculties and free
choice of the objects on which to employ them.
In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his
property, he may be equally said to have a
property in his rights.” –James Madison,
“Property,” National Gazette, Mar. 29, 1792.
The “state of perfect freedom” is the ability of
people “to order their actions, and to dispose of
their possessions and persons, as they think fit,
within the bound of nature, without asking leave, or
depending on the will of any other man.”
–John Locke
“Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.”
–John Adams
“The right of property is the guardian of every other
right, and to deprive a people of this, is in fact to
deprive them of their liberty.” –Arthur Lee
“Liberty and Property are not only joined in
common discourse, but are in their own natures so
nearly ally’d that one cannot be said to possess the
one without the enjoyment of the other.”
–National Gazette, Feb. 22, 1768
“A fundamental interdependence exists between the
personal right to liberty and the right to property.
Neither could have meaning without the other.”
–Lynch v. Household Finance Corp., 405 U.S. 538,
552 (1972).
“Property is the liberty to do with the substances
and uses of a thing according to one’s wants and
desires and to exclude every other person
therefrom.” –Austrian Civil Code