PROPERTY AND LIBERTY or FIVE OUTRAGEOUS PROPOSITIONS ABOUT PROPERTY

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PROPERTY AND LIBERTYorFIVE OUTRAGEOUS
PROPOSITIONS ABOUT PROPERTY
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FIVE OUTRAGEOUS PROPOSITIONS ABOUT PROPERTY

• I have as much property as Bill Gates!
• The former Soviet Union respected private
  property!
  
• Property protects the poor more than the rich!
• The American Revolution was fought for only three
  reasons Property, property, property!
  
• Property and liberty mean the same thing!

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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.

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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
  
• Reeds World of Property

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3. Property protects the poor more than the
rich!

• The rich can protect their own resources.
• In national terms
• There is little poverty in propertystrong
  nations
  
• There is little wealth in propertyweak nations
• How the free market can cause poverty
• Chinas secret
• The Mystery of Capital

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• 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

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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

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• Protection of property was the primary legitimate
  purpose for government. For example
  
• The protection of different and unequal
  faculties of acquiring propertyis the first
  object of government. James Madison
  
• The great end of mens 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

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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.

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• William Blackstone and property as natural
  liberty.
  
• James Madison and liberty as property.
• Propertyin 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 mans 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.

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• 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 allyd 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 ones
  wants and desires and to exclude every other
  person therefrom. Austrian Civil Code