Stop socialist theft.

[hugo]

Property Rights are a Fundamental Human Right

by Walter Williams (August 3, 2005)

 

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent 5-4 ruling in Kelo v. New London, statements have been made about property rights that are demonstrative of the paucity of understanding among some within the legal profession. Carolyn Lochhead's July 1st San Francisco Chronicle article, "Foes Unite in Defense of Property," reports on the coalition building in Congress to deny federal funds to cities that use laws of eminent domain to take private property for the benefit of another private party.

 

But it's the article's report on a statement made by a representative of People for the American Way, lead opponents to constitutionalists being appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, that I'd like to address. According to Ms. Lochhead's article, "Elliot Mincberg, the group's legal director, said the case [Kelo v. New London] had been brought by the Institute for Justice as part of an effort by conservatives to elevate property rights to the same level of civil rights such as freedom of speech and religion, in effect taking the nation back to the pre-New Deal days when the courts ruled child labor laws unconstitutional." To posit a distinction between civil or human rights on the one hand and property rights on the other reflects little understanding. Let's look at it.

 

My computer is my property. Does it have any rights -- like the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Are there any constitutional guarantees held by my computer? Anyone, except maybe a lawyer, would agree that to think of property as possessing rights is unadulterated nonsense.

 

So where do property rights come in? Property rights are human rights to use economic goods and services. Private property rights contain your right to use, transfer, trade and exclude others from use of property deemed yours. The supposition that there's a conflict or difference between human rights to use property and civil rights is bogus and misguided.

 

Let's go back to my computer example. Suppose someone steals my computer. Hasn't he violated my rights to my property and hence, my human or civil rights? Or, alternatively, if I throw my computer through your window, it's not my computer that's violated your human rights; it's I. Why? Because I've used my computer in a fashion that infringes on your human rights to your property.

 

That it's bogus to make a distinction between human, civil and property rights can be seen in another way. In a free society, each person is his own private property; I own myself and you own yourself. That's why it's immoral to rape or murder. It violates a person's property rights. The fact of self-ownership also helps explain why theft is immoral. In order for self-ownership to be meaningful, a person must have ownership rights to what he produces or earns. A good working description of slavery is that it is a condition where a person does not own what he produces. What he produces belongs to someone else. Therefore, if someone steals my computer, he's violated my ownership rights to my computer, which I earned through my labor, and therefore my human or civil rights to keep what I produce.

 

Creating false distinctions between human rights and property rights plays into the hands of Democrat and Republican party socialists who seek to control our lives. If we buy into the notion that somehow property rights are less important, or are in conflict with, human or civil rights, we give the socialists a freer hand to attack our property.

 

As President John Adams (1797-1801) put it, "Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty." Adding, "The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence."

 

Walter Williams for President.

[eisanbt]

But would not it be illogical to create a economic system, economics being fundamentally based in science and fact, that instead caters to a system of man-made morality which is born out of personal desire and selfish drives and will inevitably conflict with the benefit provided to a far greater number of individuals by altering or forgetting the interest of that singular individual?

 

This only comes to be seen as an injustice by those who experience it and are in disagreement with such a decision as well as those who fear the same. Were a socialist system to be implemented and all its citizen true believers in socialist practices, personal sacrifice no longer becomes an injustice or infringement of freedom and instead becomes part of something you hold higher than self-interest, which is of course the interest of the group.

 

These very people, like myself, would see one person's private interest interfering with the greater good to be as unjust as one like yourself might the infringement of what you consider this fundamental property/human right. This key difference as to where one places themself in the social-spectrum of importance and what is of greater value is where the division of socialist and classical-liberal theory splits.

 

However neither system has the right of coercion on the masses, and neither can realize their theoretical function so long as the hierarchy and social elite exist to serve only their interests, these people are of course big fans of capitalism and its expansionist potential. But capitalist or socialist, these people are the catapillers in the buttermilk of state-economics. (Excuse the corny metaphor )

 

PS: "eminent domain to take private property for the benefit of another private party." Is not socialism, its corruption.

[Mohammed_Rots_In_Hell]

PS: "eminent domain to take private property for the benefit of another private party." Is not socialism, its corruption.

It is in fact corruption, under the guise of socialism...

[hugo]

 

However neither system has the right of coercion on the masses, and neither can realize their theoretical function so long as the hierarchy and social elite exist to serve only their interests, these people are of course big fans of capitalism and its expansionist potential. But capitalist or socialist, these people are the catapillers in the buttermilk of state-economics. (Excuse the corny metaphor )

 

PS: "eminent domain to take private property for the benefit of another private party." Is not socialism, its corruption.

 

If you live under a government you are being coerced to some degree, Government is a neccesary evil to protect individuals from internal and external aggressors. The key is to limit coercion and expand individual liberties. The communist, the fascists, religious extremists all have had ideas of what the greater good is. Some, I believe, actually believed their philosophies, enforced on a nation's citizens, would lead to a greater good. Nothing, but widespread human suffering, has ever come from restricting human freedom. In the era since WWII the Fabian socialists/Keynesians have created a welfare culture in the Western world that propagates the poverty it was supposed to allieve.

 

When the simple fact that an increase in tax revenue can justify government use of eminent domain it is socialism. Government basically owns your home under expansive eminent domain laws. You are correct though expansive eminent domain laws also allow for crony capitalism. Crony capitalism and socialism both require government interference in the free market.