Tag Archives: property rights

Unhappy Marxist Thanksgiving, Everyone! By Thomas DiLorenzo

Posted on November 24, 2022 | Leave a comment

The pilgrims didn’t have much to be thankful for until they discovered that capitalism and free markets work well. From Thomas DiLorenzo at lewrockwell.com:

In recent years the unhinged Marxist Left in “higher” education along with the hard-Left pop communists in the teachers’ unions have been preaching that Thanksgiving is a celebration of genocide, mass murder, and imperialism.  The Pilgrims murdered all the Indians, they say, and then sat down and treated themselves to big feast to celebrate their feat.  They even invented the elementary schoolish word “Thankskilling” to describe it.  (Send your kid to a university and he, too, can learn to sound like an uneducated Marxist moron for the rest of his life).

In reality, if the Pilgrims had anything to celebrate it was the destruction of an early form of socialism that allowed them to survive and prosper.  When the first settlers arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in May of 1607 they found incredibly fertile soil and a cornucopia of seafood, wild game, and fruits of all kinds.  Nevertheless, within six months all but 38 of the original 104 Jamestown settlers had starved to death.  Two years later the Virginia Company sent 500 more settlers and within six months 440 of them were dead by starvation and disease.  This became known as “the starving time.”  The Massachusetts Pilgrims fared no better.  About half of the 101 people who arrived on Cape Cod in November of 1620 were dead within a few months.

In 1611 the British government sent Sir Thomas Dale to serve as the “high marshal” of the Virginia colony.  He immediately recognized the problem:  The Virginia Company had adopted a system of agricultural socialism under which everything grown or produced would go to a “common store” and divided equally among all  the family groups.  The man who worked hard sixteen hours a day would be given the same remuneration as the man who did not work at all.  Dale’s solution was to establish property rights by allotting three acres of land to each man, who was still required to pay a fee to the Virginia colony (most early American immigrants were indentured servants) but then could keep everything else for himself and his family.

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What Would a World Without Personal Property Look Like? by Aden Tate

Posted on July 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

Property rights are the fundamental human right. A world without property rights would be a chaotic struggle to the death. From Aden Tate at theorganicpepper.com:

Within the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, the mantra has come out that by the year 2030, “you’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.”

For those of us who haven’t been brainwashed by communism, this likely seems somewhat disturbing. But let us examine just how one can ensure “people don’t own anything.”

Let’s look at what a world without personal property looks like.

Medical Tyranny

“If it were up to me, anybody not wearing a mask when they are out in public would be arrested … That’s an act of domestic terrorism and should be treated like one,” Lancaster, California, Mayor Rex Parris

Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit, shall we? John Locke pointed out that “Every man has a property in his own person,” with Paul Skousen further adding that your body is your first piece of original property that you own. If you are to own nothing, does it not follow that your body will no longer be your own as well?

We already see the fruits of this type of thinking in forced (or coerced)vaccinations for people to work and travel (and not be arrested). We’ve most certainly seen this with mandatory masking. What could be the further logical progressions of this type of thought, though?

Is mandatory sterilization out of the question? What about forced organ donation? Are these indeed that far out of a concept – are they not the next logical step – in a world where you own nothing?

Forced Relocation

“The theory of communism may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property.” – Karl Marx.

You will no longer own your house. And if you no longer hold the right to choice, your body, or your property, then you likely won’t have much of a say as to where you would reside either. Perhaps climate change could be argued as a reason to move all people into cities. Maybe racism/equity could be claimed as to why your home is being given to somebody else.

Regardless of which form it takes place, there are excellent odds that you would not be permitted to live where you want for long.

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Historical lessons in prosperity vs. poverty, by Simon Black

Posted on February 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

The preconditions for prosperity are few and simple, but they are profound. From Simon Black at sovereignman.com:

As the grandson of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan had a lot to prove.

So he set his eyes on the biggest prize in the known world at the time: southern China.

Kublai Khan completed his conquest of China in 1279, forging a new empire and creating the Yuan dynasty.

The Mongols were known for their expensive habits— they liked war and women especially. So when the money started to run out, administrators in the Yuan dynasty started printing paper money.

Yuan officials weren’t the first to come up with this idea; the government from the prior Song dynasty had also printed paper money. But there was a huge difference—

Paper currency from the Song dynasty, known as guanzi, was backed by copper, silver, and gold coins.

The Yuan currency, however, was backed by nothing. So whenever the government started to run out of money, they simply printed more.

By 1350, Kublai Khan had been dead for decades. But the Yuan dynasty’s economic overseers were still printing paper money like crazy. And it was causing severe hyperinflation across China.

People’s lives were turned upside down by the government’s fiscal irresponsibility, and rebellions broke out across the country.

By 1368, the Yuan dynasty had completely collapsed, and a destitute peasant farmer-turned-monk named Zhu Yuanzhang rose up to become Emperor and found the new Ming Dynasty.

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Doug Casey on Rent Strikes, the Erosion of Property Rights, and What Comes Next

Posted on June 10, 2020 | 2 comments

Who’s going to want to own an apartment building and rent out to tenants after all this? From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

rent strike

International Man: In recent months, “rent strikes” have emerged in many cities. There has also been an increasing number of politicians suggesting they’ll pass laws to force landlords to “cancel rent.”

What is your take on this?

Doug Casey: Property rights are basic to human rights. In fact, it doesn’t make any sense to talk about human rights unless you talk about property rights.

Your primary form of property is your own body. But things outside of your body are equally as important. You can’t survive without possessions, things that belong to you alone, and that you are responsible for. “Rent strikers”—who are philosophically aligned with socialists, communists, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and similar groups— don’t see it that way, however. They believe their problems are your problems. They’re completely irresponsible.

They seem to think that saying something, no matter how irrational, can make it so. And saying that you shouldn’t have to pay rent makes it possible to roll back the laws of economic reality.

Of course, the whole world has pretty much gone on tilt over the last six months. Not paying agreed-upon rents and mortgages is economically destructive. But that’s exactly the result these people want. It’s a step to completely overturning what’s left of capitalism. That’s bad enough. But saying you don’t have to meet your obligations is simply dishonorable. These people shouldn’t be taken seriously but treated with contempt.

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Institute for Justice makes history with U.S. Supreme Court victory for property rights, by Scott Bullock

Posted on February 20, 2019 | Leave a comment

This is a donor email I received from the Institute for Justice this morning. With the possible exception of Judicial Watch, no organization fights as tenaciously against the depredations of all levels of government.

In a unanimous 9–0 decision released this morning, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with IJ and Tyson Timbs and ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s protection against excessive fines applies to every level of government. Writing for the majority, Justice Ginsburg states that “[p]rotection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history for good reason: Such fines undermine other liberties. … They can also be employed, not in service of penal purposes, but as a source of revenue.”

IJ brought this vital constitutional question before the Court last November in the context of civil forfeiture, which perfectly illustrates the majority opinion’s point. In allowing state and local governments to seize and keep cash, cars, homes, and other property—often without ever convicting owners of any wrongdoing—forfeiture laws give law enforcement a powerful incentive to police for profit.

This decision will provide every single American, including those who fall victim to forfeiture abuse, with robust constitutional protection against excessive fines imposed by state and local governments. Moreover, today’s opinion gives IJ ammunition to take on other abusive fines and fees schemes throughout the nation. We also plan on making Timbs the first in a series of cases the Court takes on to fundamentally reassess the constitutionality of civil forfeiture laws.

Thank you for making these historic accomplishments for liberty possible.

Scott

Scott G. Bullock
President and General Counsel
Institute for Justice

 

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We’re All Trespassers Now in the Face of the Government’s Land Grabs, by John W. Whitehead

Posted on May 8, 2018 | 1 comment

Remember property rights? From John W. Whitehead at rutherford.org:

We have no real property rights.

Think about it.

That house you live in, the car you drive, the small (or not so small) acreage of land that has been passed down through your family or that you scrimped and saved to acquire, whatever money you manage to keep in your bank account after the government and its cronies have taken their first and second and third cut…none of it is safe from the government’s greedy grasp.

At no point do you ever have any real ownership in anything other than the clothes on your back.

Everything else can be seized by the government under one pretext or another (civil asset forfeiture, unpaid taxes, eminent domain, public interest, etc.).

The American Dream has been reduced to a lease arrangement in which we are granted the privilege of endlessly paying out the nose for assets that are only ours so long as it suits the government’s purposes.

And when it doesn’t suit the government’s purposes? Watch out.

This is not a government that respects the rights of its citizenry or the law. Rather, this is a government that sells its citizens to the highest bidder and speaks to them in a language of force.

Under such a fascist regime, the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which declares that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation,” has become yet another broken shield, incapable of rendering any protection against corporate greed while allowing the government to justify all manner of “takings” in the name of the public good.

Practically anything goes now.

Relying on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London, entire neighborhoods have been seized and bulldozed to make way for shopping malls, sports complexes and corporate offices.

Indeed, little has prevented the government from bulldozing its way through the Fifth Amendment in an effort to take from the middle and lower classes and fatten the coffers of the corporate elite.

For instance, consider the government’s pipeline projects.

All across the country, power companies have been given the green light to build massive gas and oil pipelines that crisscross the country, cutting through private and public lands, as well as unspoiled wilderness.

“Yet despite oft-repeated claims by politicians and oil executives about the danger of relying on foreign oil, this U.S. petroleum renaissance never was designed to make America energy self-sufficient,” points out journalist Sandy Tolan. “A growing amount of that oil will end up in China, Japan, the Netherlands, even Venezuela.”

So much for the public use, huh?

To continue reading: We’re All Trespassers Now in the Face of the Government’s Land Grabs

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The American system is not capitalism, by Bob Livingston

Posted on January 24, 2018 | Leave a comment

Here’s one hint that we have here in America is not capitalism: governments spend abour 40 percent of the GDP. From Bob Livingston at personalliberty.com:

the word "capitalism" marked out

One of the great myths of our time is that America is a capitalistic country. It is not, and has not been close to capitalistic for more than 150 years.

Capitalism is a social system in which an individual’s rights, including his rights to own property, are recognized and all property is privately owned. In a capitalistic society, governments acknowledge that individuals and companies can and should compete for their own economic gain, and the prices of goods and services are determined by the free market. The role of government in capitalistic societies is to ensure that markets function without interference and to protect individuals from fraud and/or the use of physical force by others.

Capitalism is not about greed. Capitalism is about human freedom, or as we term it, personal liberty. As Adam Smith posited in Wealth of Nations, when individuals are permitted to pursue their self-interest through markets, they are amazingly good at finding ways of bettering not only themselves but society as well.

In Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand writes:

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control… In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions, and interests dictate. They can deal with one another only in terms of and by means of reason, i.e., by means of discussion, persuasion, and contractual agreement, by voluntary choice to mutual benefit. The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial. It is the institution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree — and thus keeps the road open to man’s most valuable attribute (valuable personally, socially, and objectively): the creative mind.

Americans no longer have property rights. Think you do? Try going a year or two without paying tribute to the king (via property taxes) and you’ll see who owns your property. The local sheriff will evict you; the state or local government will seize your property and sell it to the highest bidder or its favorite crony.

To continue reading: The American system is not capitalism

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Supreme Court Deals Blow to Property Rights, by Eric Boehm

Posted on June 23, 2017 | Leave a comment

Constitutionally protected property rights have been shrinking since at least FDR. From Eric Boehm at reason.com:

When governments issue regulations that undermine the value of property, bureaucrats don’t necessarily have to compensate property holders, the Supreme Court ruled Friday.

The court voted 5-3, in Murr V. Wisconsin, a closely watched Fifth Amendment property rights case. The case arose from a dispute over two tiny parcels of land along the St. Croix River in western Wisconsin and morphed into a major property rights case that drew several western states into the debate before the court.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in a scathing dissent, wrote that ruling was a significant blow for property rights and would give greater power to government bureaucrats to pass rules that diminish the value of property without having to compensate property owners under the Firth Amendment’s Takings Clause.

To continue reading: Supreme Court Deals Blow to Property Rights

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Germany Confiscating Homes to Use for Migrants, by Soeren Kern

Posted on May 14, 2017 | Leave a comment

This is reminiscent of a scene from Dr. Zhivago. Germany is taking people’s houses and apartments for the “greater good.” From Soeren Kern at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • In an unprecedented move, Hamburg authorities confiscated six residential units in the Hamm district near the city center. A trustee appointed by the city is now renovating the properties and will rent them — against the will of the owner — to tenants chosen by the city. District spokeswoman Sorina Weiland said that all renovation costs will be billed to the owner of the properties.
  • Similar expropriation measures have been proposed in Berlin, the German capital, but abandoned because they were deemed unconstitutional.
  • Some Germans are asking what is next: Will authorities now limit the maximum amount of living space per person, and force those with large apartments to share them with strangers?

Authorities in Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, have begun confiscating private dwellings to ease a housing shortage — one that has been acutely exacerbated by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow more than two million migrants into the country in recent years.

City officials have been seizing commercial properties and converting them into migrant shelters since late 2015, when Merkel opened German borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Now, however, the city is expropriating residential property units owned by private citizens.

In an unprecedented move, Hamburg authorities recently confiscated six residential units in the Hamm district near the city center. The units, which are owned by a private landlord, are in need of repair and have been vacant since 2012. A trustee appointed by the city is now renovating the properties and will rent them — against the will of the owner — to tenants chosen by the city. District spokeswoman Sorina Weiland said that all renovation costs will be billed to the owner of the properties.

The expropriation is authorized by the Hamburg Housing Protection Act (Hamburger Wohnraumschutzgesetz), a 1982 law that was updated by the city’s Socialist government in May 2013 to enable the city to seize any residential property unit that has been vacant for more than four months.

The forced lease, the first of its kind in Germany, is said to be aimed at pressuring the owners of other vacant residences in the city to make them available for rent. Of the 700,000 rental units in Hamburg, somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 (less than one percent) are believed to be vacant, according an estimate by the Hamburg Senate.

To continue reading: Germany Confiscating Homes to Use for Migrants

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This Thanksgiving, Be Grateful for Property Rights. The Pilgrims Nearly Starved Without Them. by John Stossel

Posted on November 27, 2014 | Leave a comment

From John Stossel, reason.com:

This Thanksgiving, I give thanks for something our forebears gave us: property rights.

PROPERTY RIGHTS

People associate property rights with greed and selfishness, but they are keys to our prosperity. Things go wrong when resources are held in common.

Before the Pilgrims were able to hold the first Thanksgiving, they nearly starved. Although they had inherited ideas about individualism and property from the English and Dutch trading empires, they tried communism when they arrived in the New World. They decreed that each family would get an equal share of food, no matter how much work they did.

The results were disastrous. Gov. William Bradford wrote, “Much was stolen both by night and day.” The same plan in Jamestown contributed to starvation, cannibalism, and death of half the population.

So Bradford decreed that families should instead farm private plots. That quickly ended the suffering. Bradford wrote that people now “went willingly into the field.” Soon, there was so much food that the Pilgrims and Indians could celebrate Thanksgiving.

There’s nothing like competition and self-interest to bring out the best in people.

While property among the settlers began as an informal system, with “tomahawk rights” to land indicated by shaving off bits of surrounding trees, or “corn rights” indicated by growing corn, soon settlers were keeping track of contracts, filing deeds and, alas, hiring lawyers to sue each other. Property rights don’t end all conflict, but they create a better system for settling disputes than physical combat.

Knowing that your property is really yours makes it easier to plant, grow, invest, and prosper.

In Brazil today, rainforests are destroyed because no one really owns them. Loggers take as many trees as they can because they know if they don’t, someone else will. No one had much reason to preserve trees or plant new ones for future harvests; although recently, some private conservation groups bought parcels of the Amazon in order to protect trees.

The oceans are treated as a commons, and they are difficult to privatize. For years, lack of ownership led to overfishing. Species will go extinct if they aren’t treated as property. Now a few places award fishing rights to private groups of fishermen. Canada privatized its Pacific fisheries, saving the halibut from near collapse. When fishermen control fishing rights, they care about preserving fish.

Think about your Thanksgiving turkey. We eat tons of them, but no one worries that turkeys will go extinct. We know there will be more next year, since people profit from owning and raising them.

As the 19th-century economist Henry George said, “Both humans and hawks eat chickens—but the more hawks, the fewer chickens; while the more humans, the more chickens.” (Sadly, even Henry George didn’t completely believe in private property. He thought land should be unowned, since latecomers can’t produce more of it. Had he seen how badly the commonly owned rainforest is treated, he might’ve changed his mind.)

Hernando de Soto (the contemporary Peruvian economist, not the Spanish conquistador) writes about the way clearly defined property rights spur growth in the developing world. Places without clear property rights—much of the third world—suffer. “About 4 billion people in the world actually build their homes and own their businesses outside the legal system,” de Soto told me. “It’s all haphazard and disorganized because of the lack of rule of law, the definition of who owns what. Because they don’t have (legally recognized) addresses, (they) can’t get credit.”

Without deeds, they can’t make contracts with confidence. Economic activity that cannot be legally protected instead gets done on the black market, or on “gray markets” in a murky legal limbo in between. In places such as Tanzania, says de Soto, 90 percent of the economy operates outside the legal system. So, few people expand homes or businesses. Poor people stay poor.

This holiday season, give thanks for property rights and hope that your family will never have to relearn the economic lesson that nearly killed the Pilgrims.

http://reason.com/archives/2014/11/25/thanksgiving-props-for-property-rights

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