Property is neither a natural right, as John Locke claimed, nor a fence to liberty, as claimed by James Madison. The natural right claim is easily dismissed. If you live in Connecticut you do not own property in California unless there is some type of government to back up your claim. “Squatter’s rights” or “use it or lose it” formed the extent of property law for early tribes.
Private property that government enables you to have may seem like a big plus, except that there is a flip side. Here in Connecticut there was the famous “Kelo v. New London” case where government took away private property that was being lived in and treasured. There is no way that “use it AND lose it” happens without some kind of power structure (whether marauders or government). What only government can provide (private property) government can taketh away (though not if you are wealthy).
Ah, but surely the concept of intellectual property that “free market libertarians” love to emphasize must be independent of government. If you were an early nomad and you witnessed other nomads hunt a mammoth in an innovative way, there was nothing that would stop you from copying that technique. A free flow of information is natural, as is imitation of good ideas. Before western colonialism civilizations tended to copy good ideas from each other. We copied the invention of gunpowder from the Chinese and then used it to their own disadvantage. With the advent of western colonialism came the double jeopardy of “no one shall copy a good idea from another without compensation” along with “we will help other civilizations out on our own terms.”
Entitlements to private property are not natural in any form outside of the “owners” use of that property. No government, no private property, end of story. Given that private property is not natural, this in turn partly refutes the claim that property is a fence of liberty. How can something you depend on government to have be liberating? This will factor into the liberty model I will present next. For further problems with property as a fence to liberty here is an excerpt from Systems out of Balance.
Historically, there have been at least three problems that stem from equating property with liberty.
- One person’s property can thwart the Blessings of another person’s Liberty.
- Unequal amounts of property bestow unequal “Blessings of Liberty.”
- Property can be obtained legally without any merit of productive labor.
Taken together, these three problems mean that property can be a fence for unequal “Blessings of Liberty” apportioned in a way that undermines merit, labor and economic productivity. Underlying these three problems is a fourth: the wealthy benefit at the expense of the middle class when unmerited property results in unequal liberty. A fifth problem, the focus of our discussion, is that a Supreme Court created and staffed through power politics, containing justices-for-life that disproportionately come from a narrow cross-section of society connected to wealth and power, using doctrines that do not draw upon empirical wisdom, establish property jurisprudence that amounts to cultural entitlements.
The phrase “Blessings of Liberty” comes from the Constitution.
Tags: Economic Merit, Human Condition, Liberty and Tyranny, Middle Class Economics, Political Wisdom
