Property Rights
They ought to be called by their name.
Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'
Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (Movie in 1975)
We talk about property rights all of the time without ever mentioning the term “property rights.” Maybe it’s time we should start calling them by their name. They are everywhere in our society and the choice is between the state and the individual.
Let’s start with public health.
FDA decides which drugs you can take and which ones you can’t – even if you are dying. Until recently, you could not even try an unapproved drug to save your life. Today, you can try one if you:
”have exhausted all approved treatment options and are unable to participate in a clinical trial to access certain drugs that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”
Let’s imagine a scene like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest where a dying man, Mr. McMurphy, goes to FDA and speaks to Dr. Ratched.
McMurphy: Look Doc, my doctor says I might only have a month or more. I just want to try it.
Dr. Ratched: Please understand: We do not impose certain rules and restrictions on you without a great deal of thought about their therapeutic value.
McMurphy: But I heard that some people on this drug are already feeling better.
Dr. Ratched: At some time—perhaps in your childhood—you may have been allowed to get away with flouting the rules of society. That foolish lenience on the part of your parents may have been the germ that grew into your present illness. I tell you this hoping you will understand that it is entirely for your own good that we enforce discipline and order."
McMurphy: But….
Dr. Ratched with a tight smile: What if everyone wanted to try whatever drug they thought might cure them? Let’s talk about this at a later date, that would be better, wouldn’t it?
Who owns the right to decide what to do with our property, including “our bodies, our labor and our ideas” has been discussed for at least 300 years. Between 1690 and 1754, two philosophers laid down conflicting opinions about property. John Locke was first, writing that man has “a title to perfect freedom” … “not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate….”
Six decades later, Jean Jacques Rousseau challenged this notion saying, “You are lost if you forget that the fruits are everyone’s and the Earth is no-one’s.”
In 1848, Karl Marx went with Rousseau in The Communist Manifesto and wrote, “the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence, “Abolition of private property.” Another philosopher was adamantly opposed to Marx. Friederich Hayek wrote, “The system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.”
The idea that we own something starts in childhood. When children receive their first teddy bear or doll, they want to own it and when another child tries to take it, they will either fight for it or cry. In fact, a third of adults admit they can’t part with a childhood toy.
Prior to the formation of the United States, Puritans, English Protestants, discovered in 1609 that private property was necessary if the colony was going to succeed. They tried to set up a common store and every colonist got one share regardless of the amount of work they did. Their leader, William Bradford, noticed that not a lot of work was getting done so he assigned each family a plot of land that they owned. Productivity surged when colonists owned both their land and their own labor. China found the same thing, at least for a while, in the 1990s.
In the U.S. Woodrow Wilson wrote an essay in 1887 where he advocated for “a trained bureaucracy that has the expertise and the will to oppose popular opinion when they deem it necessary.” He distrusted democracy saying it had empowered “thousands upon thousands of the ‘selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn, or foolish,” who come from a mix of different nationalities.” Instead, he believed we could have a bureaucracy of the “wise hundreds” to lead them. He was a complicated person who also said, “I do not want a government that will take care of me, I want a government that will make other men take their hands off me so I can take care of myself.” Either way, regulations are clearly about property rights and the movement has been to remove them from business owners and assign them to government.
Each year, the Federal Government publishes between 3,000 and 4,500 regulations and each regulation usually has more than one command in them. Right now, just from the federal government, U.S. businesses face over one million commands that replace their decisions.
Children are not property, but we fight over who has the right to make decisions for them, particularly when it comes to education. In a losing bid for the gubernatorial election in Virginia, Terry McAuliffe said parents should have no role in directing the education of their children. A Loudon County mother felt otherwise: “The fact that parents have to advocate and fight for their parental right is absolutely absurd."
The same thing is even more hotly contested with abortions, who owns the right to terminate a pregnancy, woman, or the state and when does ownership of that right change, if ever.
Finally, there is wealth and inheritance. Two incentives to work hard even as we get older is accumulate wealth to provide for one’s own retirement at the end of life or for our spouses and children after life ends. A number of European countries tax wealth including Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, and Austria. Great Britain and some states in the United States, also have a tax wealth. Taking private property right for control over private wealth remains an attractive target for governments.
No matter the context, property rights are the foundation of freedom and prosperity and discussion of these rights, where they should belong to individuals and where they should belong to the state, ought to begin with calling them by their name.