David

Karki

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November 6, 2007

Without Private Property Rights, Other Rights Don’t Mean Much

Private property is quietly under assault in America today. The ability of a person or entity to purchase land or a building and do with it what they freely choose has never been more restricted. In fact, one could make a persuasive case that truly private property doesn't really even exist. That between health and environmental regulations, taxes and zoning ordinances, government controls your property and that title deed is scarcely worth the paper it's printed on.

Consider:

“McMansions.” This is a term derisively used by liberals whose class-warfare beliefs are offended by someone building a bigger or more ostentatious home than they think the owners should, given the location and size of the lot. Typically, this involves an older inner-ring suburban plot being redeveloped, with a 1950s or ’60s era rambler being replaced by a much larger new home.

The point here is not necessarily to defend the specific act of someone building a house that all but fills the lot from border to border, to where virtually no yard is left. Frankly, such a thing strikes me as rather silly.

Rather, it's that a neighbor hasn't the right to dictate what you can and cannot build on your own property. Should the residents of a neighborhood not wish a parcel near them so redeveloped, they should take up a collection and buy it themselves. Failing that, if the presence of a “McMansion” so offends them, then the ultimate recourse is to move. But to presume that they can dictate what someone else must or must not do within their own land eviscerates the entire concept of truly private property.

Smoking Bans. Simply put, bars and restaurants are not public places. They are the property of the person or corporation that owns it, not of the government. And they should be free to cater to whichever clientele they choose, be it smokers, fatty food lovers, you name it.

If you don't like it, your recourse is to work somewhere else or go somewhere else with your customer dollars. I know this bothers some people, but you don't have to go in there! If enough folks choose not to do so, and enough good employees and business are lost, eventually the owner will make a change. Back where I come from, this is called the free market in action.

Property taxes. When you have to pay government a fee, and they eventually seize your property from you if you go without paying it long enough, are you not, in principle, renting rather than owning? When you own something, it is yours – period. There is no requirement to pay anyone else for the continued possession or use of it, with consequences for not doing so. To the extent that we must routinely pay off government to keep what is already “ours,” it is for all practical purposes not ours but theirs. They own and we rent.

And insofar as paying for infrastructure goes, by all means cut off access to those conveniences if someone hasn't paid for use. Make them dig their own well and sewer rather than connect to the existing water and septic systems. Make them generate their own electricity and so forth. And make parents pay for their children's education themselves instead of taxing everyone else. All of this will minimize if not eliminate the need for a tax that eviscerates private property, and turns us all into serfs.

“Wetlands.” When government can declare your property “wetlands” or a “navigable waterway” simply because you left the garden hose running too long, then it's effectively theirs and not yours. The Founding Fathers anticipated this, including in the Fifth Amendment the Takings Clause, which says that when government requires land, it must be purchased at market value and that citizens cannot be deprived of property without due process of law, so that the owner isn't injured financially or otherwise.

But government has done a total end-run around this, by re-defining words in ridiculously broad fashion and then “regulating” rather than purchasing property. This is nothing more than common theft by tyrants, and it completely obliterates the Fifth Amendment as well as any pretense of truly private property.

We need to rediscover what private property is all about, and understand that even though someone may do something with, on, or to their property we don't like, it's not our place – and certainly not government's place – to force the owner to stop. The moment this ceases to be so, we will take a large step back from civilization toward something far more primitive.

Private property has existed for many centuries longer than the Constitution or even capitalism. The Eighth Commandment is “Thou Shalt Not Steal.” There can be no such thing as stealing if there isn't first such a thing as private property. And without property rights, the rest of them don't mean very much.

© 2007 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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