PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS
SECTIONS INCLUDE:
Summary
Private
Property and Property Rights
Are Private
Property Rights Inalienable?
Property and
Government
Property and
Human Nature
Conclusion
*****
A.
Summary
Abusive behavior in America is not uncommon. Our political leaders' attitudes toward
every one's individual inalienable rights and the Common Good is one of
the factors which will determine whether rights will ultimately triumph over abusive behavior in this country. Property rights are often used as a rationalization for abuse by those who believe
in a Machiavellian use of government, by those who advocate laissez-faire,
and by tax protesters. This chapter tackles the following questions:
1)
What
are private property rights and what are the limitations to private property
rights?
2)
What
is the human appeal of the above mentioned dysfunctional relationships between
private property and the government?
3)
Can
respect for property rights help eliminate abuse in this society?
B. Private Property and Property Rights
What is property? There are different kinds of property and different
sorts of property rights. According to Investopia.com,
personal property refers to things like boats, clothing, furniture, and
automobiles as opposed to real property. Real property (real estate)
refers to land and buildings—that which generally remains in a set location
(not readily movable).[i]
This post will use the term property to refer to privately
owned personal property and/or privately owned real estate, businesses,
etc. "Privately owned" refers to property not owned by
governments or by quasi-governmental entities.
According to Investopia.com
property rights are
Laws
created by governments in regards to how individuals can control, benefit from
and transfer property. Economic theory contends that government enforcement of
strong property rights is a determinant regarding the level of economic success
seen in the area. Individuals will create new forms of property to generate
wealth, only when they are assured that their rights to their property will
protect them against unjust and/or unlawful actions by other parties.[ii]
Property rights apply to that which
an individual owns. If what one owns has financial value it can be
thought of as an "economic good".
Property rights law gives one the right to acquire economic goods, to
use goods, to earn income from the goods, to transfer the goods to others, to
protect the goods. For example, one has the right to buy land, to grow
vegetables on that land, to sell those vegetables, to sell the land or give it
away, to sue anyone else who tries to use the land without your permission.
C.
Are Private Property Rights Inalienable?
One can find
variations of all kinds of things on the World Wide Web. For example, I
came across an article entitled "among these are Life, Liberty, and the
pursuit of Happiness". The article was at Foundation.com,
a project of the Claremont Institute, and stated that Boston's 1772
"Rights of the Colonists" document
contains the following passage. "Among
the natural rights of the colonists are these: First, a right to life; secondly
to liberty; thirdly to property.”[iii]
An inalienable right to own real private
property, especially when combined with the notion that all people are created
equal, would be absurd. Imagine 7
billion people each being born with the right to own a plot of real estate with
the same value as everyone else's plots.
But the author of this article is not claiming this. The author of the Foundation.com
article states, “As with happiness, this is not a right to property itself, but
a right to use one's talents to acquire property, and to use it as one sees fit,
as long as one does not injure oneself or others.”[iv]
Investopia.com defines property
rights as laws created by governments[v]. Wikipedia’s definition is “Property rights are theoretical constructs in economics
for determining how a resource is used and owned”.[vi]
If these definitions are valid, then
property rights would seem to be concepts created by the human mind rather than
something with which we are all born. On the other hand, to deny one the
opportunity to exercise property rights would be to interfere with one's right
to liberty and possibly to the pursuit of happiness.
D.
Property and Government
There is an
issue and probably always has been since the country's beginnings as to the
best or proper relationship between private property and government. This
issue can be expressed with the following questions:
- Is there a legal or moral obligation for earners to pay taxes?
- What should people expect in return for the taxes, fees, etc. they pay to the government?
- How much control should the government exercise over the production and use of privately owned economic good?
1.
Tax Protesting
Income (excluding
government revenue) is private property in America. Some people regard
taxing of income by government as extortion and as a threat to their property
rights. According to Wikipedia, there is a distinction between the
terms tax protester and tax resister.
A
tax protester is someone who refuses to pay a tax on constitutional or legal
grounds, typically because he or she claims that the tax laws are
unconstitutional or otherwise invalid. Tax protesters are different from tax
resisters, who refuse to pay taxes as a protest against the government or its
policies, not out of a belief that the tax law itself is invalid.[vii]
According
to nolo.com, the IRS "estimates
that every year it receives 20,000 to 30,000 frivolous tax returns—that is,
returns in which the taxpayer refuses to pay taxes on invalid grounds."[viii]
I
probably tend to have more sympathy for tax resisters, such as those who refuse
to financially support what they consider to be unjust wars, than I have for
tax protesters. The latter seem to be motivated by self-interest rather
than by concern for social injustice. I would not object to tax
protesters occupying an island in the middle of the ocean. In that way,
Americans who do pay taxes would not have to finance the protesters' water
supply, their roads and bridges, their street lights, their garbage collections
and disposal, their public library use, police protection, etc.
Ironically, tax protesters are probably some of the same people who complain
that poor people receive economic good from the government without having to
pay taxes.
I
suspect the thinking of tax protesters goes something like "This is my money.
I earned it. No one has the right to take it away from me and use it to
benefit someone else." Perhaps the desire to control all of one's economic good by withholding taxes is
inherent in human nature. If everyone did that and no one paid taxes,
fees, etc. to the government, the government would have to borrow money to
provide law enforcement, courts, national defense, financial regulation,
etc. Borrowing money in the absence of income is a solution doomed to
fail. No sane lender would continue lending money with no chance of
repayment. This would result in the end of government, i.e., anarchy.
Those American citizens who feel they could cope quite nicely without
government assistance might not mind a state of anarchy. They might be
perfectly happy. That is, until the Russians or Chinese or ISIS invaded the United
States.
Governments need economic good with which to
protect every one's individual, inalienable rights as well as rights granted by
law such as property rights. Government also needs revenue with which to
provide for the Common Good.
2. Machiavellian Governing
Consider the following facts:
1.
American
governments, in general, are horribly wasteful (see Chapter 8, Wasteful
Government Spending).
2.
Millions
of poor people receive more economic good from the government than they pay in
taxes.
3.
Those
who need the benefits of the Common Good the least, pay the lion's share of
income tax[ix].
4.
If those who most need the benefits
of the Common Good had to pay for those benefits themselves, the quality and
quantity of such benefits would shrink considerably.
Based on the list above, what is a moral use of government revenue? If one believes in a Machiavellian
approach to government[x]
it may seem only fair for our Government to be persuaded to go to war for the
economic benefit of those who pay the most in taxes. And why would it be
unreasonable to draft the poorest citizens to fight that war, citizens who have
benefited from taxes paid by the rich?
Machiavellian principles of governance as
expressed in The Prince contradict the truths which the signers of the
Declaration of Independence held as self-evident, namely that all people are
created equal with certain inalienable individual rights. Machiavellians do
not respect rights established by law including property rights, unless it is
in their best interest.
3. Laissez-faire
In regard to the
relationship between private property (economic goods) and government, there is
the tax protester approach and the Machiavellian approach. Then there are
also those people who believe in the theory of laissez-faire, a system
in which the owners of capital make all the decisions without government
control or oversight. According to this theory, in the absence of
government regulation and oversight, businesses would be more profitable and
could employ more workers which would, in turn, increase the tax base.
The advocates of laissez-faire carefully omit the kinds of jobs and
wages that would increase. Neither can they guarantee that the quality
and safety of goods and services would not decline in a laissez-faire
system, nor do they readily admit that, under laissez-faire, collective
bargaining unions would not enjoy government protection. Under laissez-faire,
all of these factors would be determined by the owners/stock holders of
businesses, that is, by the decision makers, whose main goal is to increase
business profits.
The counter argument is that, under laissez-faire, consumers
could determine which businesses thrive and which perish via their
purchases. Some consumers care enough about some issues like
environmental, health, and safety concerns to actually boycott particular
products or companies. I suspect that the majority of consumers are
generally more concerned with saving time or with the best deals than they are
with the quality and safety of products. Add to that the ability of
companies to deceive the public.
Take for example
the exploding gas tanks of Ford Pintos manufactured from 1970 to 1976.
According to a MotherJones.com article, the Ford Motor Company knew
the Pinto gas tanks were prone to exploding in rear end crashes before the cars
started coming off the assembly line. A cost-benefit analysis determined
it would be more profitable for Ford to pay for damages than to switch to a
safer gasoline tank design. The result? The article referenced
above states, "By conservative estimates Pinto crashes have caused five
hundred burn deaths to people who would not have been seriously injured if the
car had not burst into flames."[xi]
The only reason Ford modified the Pinto to make it safer is because the Federal
Government eventually intervened. Under laissez-faire, there
would have been no government intervention. Unless the majority of
potential buyers of Pintos had somehow learned about the design defect and
refused to buy the car, hundreds more people might have died or been horribly
disfigured in Pinto crashes.
Another example
involves cigarettes. In a laissez-faire system, the
government would not have had the power to regulate cigarettes. Because
the cigarette companies would have been free to continue to deceive the public
about the negative health effects of smoking, more people would now be addicted
to nicotine. And more would have died from the negative health effects of
smoking.
The Ford Pinto and
cigarettes are just two examples of corporations valuing profit over their
customers' opportunities to experience their inalienable rights to life.
In the absence of government regulations and the fear of the consequences for
violating those regulations, what could/would motivate corporations to be
transparent about the quality, safety, and environmental impacts of their
products and services? Other than a negative cost-benefit analysis?
If we had a well-informed population of consumers that actually cared about
every one's individual inalienable rights, it might motivate some business
owners to care as well. Until and unless that occurs, laissez-faire
would have a negative effect on individual rights and on the Common Good.
E.
Property and Human Nature
There are
those who would deny the government has the legal authority to acquire and use
any of their personal property. There are those who would enhance their
own personal selfish interests and economic good using government
revenue. And there are those who feel government should not possess the
authority to protect individual inalienable rights and/or the Common Good
by regulating private enterprise. Each of these
approaches to government and private property appeals to the less enlightened
side of human nature. The less enlightened side of human nature to which
I refer can be characterized by the following sayings:
- Greed is good.
- Every man/woman for him/herself.
- I am responsible for me and mine and no one else.
- No one has a moral responsibility to help anyone else.
- When things get tough the tough get going.
- It's a dog eat dog world.
These sayings and
the thinking behind them has a certain emotional appeal. They are
simplistic. A child can understand and follow them. These sayings
represent self-centered behavior and greed, neither of which justifies
depriving others of their individual inalienable rights and their property
rights. I also think these sayings appeal to our basic human survival
instincts. Survival instincts help a person to survive in the wilderness
when lost, alone, hungry and fearful. What is needed for individual
survival in extraordinary circumstances is different from what is needed for
the survival of a group in a secure, nonthreatening environment.
The
survival and condition of prosperity of every member of a group of people, be
it a community, a city, a state, a country or the human race, depends upon and
is affected by the actions of each member of that group. A more enlightened
side of human nature must prevail in order to enable each member of a group to
be optimally healthy (alive), liberated, and to pursue personal happiness. That
more enlightened side of human nature is suggested by the following sayings:
- No man (or woman) is an island.
- I am my brother's keeper.
- The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
- Our commonality is more significant than our differences.
- All men (and women) are created equal.
- Cooperation trumps unfair competition.
I
am not claiming that individuality, personal independence, self-reliance, and
self-determination are not desirable qualities. There is a theory that if
everyone had those qualities no one would have to depend on anyone else and so
everyone would prosper. I am not sure how this theory deals with the
disabled and the elderly. It does not encourage self-restraint. I
guess this theory would allow people to behave badly since the economic
consequences of bad behavior would supposedly be sufficient to discourage that
behavior. Maybe that would work. The problem with ignoring the good
of the whole for the sake of individual achievement is that it does not
guarantee that everyone will have the opportunity to actually experience their
rights.
The more enlightened side of human nature does not appeal to those people who
are born to be warriors, those who thrive on conflict, and those who have been
characterized as "raging bulls". It is unwise to pretend these
personalities do not exist. If they can learn to control and channel their
aggressive tendencies, there are important functions they can fulfill in a
society. These people must be taught that aggressive tendencies, anger or
the desire to fight or to dominate does not give one the right to threaten the
individual rights (including property rights) of those who wish to live in
peace.
Freedom
in society is not doing whatever one pleases, such as vandalizing, stealing,
and creating graffiti. Freedom is one's ability to choose to think and
feel whatever and to act however as long as one's actions do not threaten other
people's rights, including property rights.
None
of us are perfect. Most of us hopefully recognize our shortcomings as
faults rather than trying to justify them or even taking pride in
them.
In contrast, tax protesters rationalize not paying taxes and fees
they owe to the government. Corporate human beings rationalize their
willingness to injure others in order to make a profit with the philosophy of laissez
faire. Those who engage in government corruption, or who support and
promote plutocracy and oligarchy rationalize their actions as following the
philosophy of Machiavelli as expressed in The Prince.
These
people believe they should be free to engage in these activities that undermine
other people's individual rights and the Common Good. But as the Foundation.com
article referenced at the beginning of this chapter stated, the right to
property is the right to acquire and use property "as long as one does not
injure oneself or others"[xii]. Tax protesting,
Machiavellian activities, and laissez faire threaten human rights and
the Common Good and so do injure others.
Therefore, they are not true expressions of property rights.
There
are American political figures in positions of great power and responsibility
who promote aspects of these dysfunctional approaches. Some are even
currently seeking a nomination to run for President in 2016.
F. Conclusion
Public policy at all levels of government
can be designed to preserve, protect, and where necessary, create every one's
opportunities to experience their inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. Those opportunities include access to the Common
Good. Property rights, while not something one is born with, are
nonetheless essential to peoples' opportunities to experience their inalienable
rights. So government has an obligation to protect people's property
rights and to ensure that peoples' use of property, i.e., economic good, does
not abuse others. In order for government to effectively execute its
functions, revenue is necessary. Some people believe there is value in
not paying taxes, in Machiavellian principles and/or in a purely laissez-faire
economic system. Those people include some of our
national political leaders. They believe that certain people deserve the
privilege of acquiring more property at the expense of other peoples'
individual rights and at the expense of the Common Good. This approach to
property appeals to the darker side of human nature.
Since
we are all created equal, we all deserve to be healthy, free, and
happy. To actualize those opportunities for everyone will require
political leaders with a more enlightened outlook.
END NOTES
[i] (Investopedia, LLC 2016) [2016. Investopedia, LLC. Property Rights.
Accessed January 7, 2016. http://www.investopedia.com/Property
Rights/terms/p/property_rights.asp.]
[ii]
(ibid)
[iii] (among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness 2012) [2012. among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit
of Happiness. Accessed January 22, 2016.
http://www.founding.com/the_declaration_of_i/pageID.2423/default.asp.]
[iv](ibid)
[v]
(op cit, Investopedia)
[vi] (Property rights (economics) 2015) [2015. Property rights (economics). November 12.
Accessed January 7, 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_rights_%28economics%29.]
[vii] (Tax protester 2015) [2015. Tax protester.
December 15. Accessed January 6, 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_protester.]
[viii]
(Fishman 2015) [Fishman, Stephen, J.D. 2015. Tax Protesters Never
Win. Accessed January 7, 2016. http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/tax-protesters-never-win.html.]
[ix] (High-income households earn a disproportionate share
of pre-tax income and pay an even larger share of total federal taxes 2015) [2015. High-income households earn a
disproportionate share of pre-tax income and pay an even larger share of total
federal taxes. Accessed January 7, 2016.
http://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0014_taxes-income.]
[x] (Spark Notes, LLC 2015) [Spark Notes, LLC. 2015. The Prince. Accessed January 7, 2016.
http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/summary.html.]
—. 2015. The Prince. Accessed January 7, 2016.
http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/summary.html.
[xi]
(Dowie, 1977) [Dowie, Mark. 1977. Mother Jones. September/October.
Accessed December 1, 2015.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1977/09/pinto-madness?page=1.]
[xii]
(op cit, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness)
