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Private Property Quotes

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Private Property Quotes

“The normative principle I am suggesting for the law is simply this: No action should be considered illicit or illegal unless it invades, or aggresses against, the person or just property of another. Only invasive actions should be declared illegal, and combated with the full power of the law. The invasion must be concrete and physical. There are degrees of seriousness of such invasion, and hence, different proper degrees of restitution or punishment. "Burglary," simple invasion of property for purposes of theft, is less serious than "robbery," where armed force is likely to be used against the victim. Here, however, we are not concerned with the questions of degrees of invasion or punishment, but simply with invasion per se. If no man may invade another person's "just" property, what is our criterion of justice to be? There is no space here to elaborate on a theory of justice in property titles. Suffice it to say that the basic axiom of libertarian political theory holds that every man is a selfowner, having absolute jurisdiction over his own body. In effect, this means that no one else may justly invade, or aggress against, another's person. It follows then that each person justly owns whatever previously unowned resources he appropriates or "mixes his labor with." From these twin axioms — self-ownership and "homesteading" — stem the justification for the entire system of property rights titles in a free-market society. This system establishes the right of every man to his own person, the right of donation, of bequest (and, concomitantly, the right to receive the bequest or inheritance), and the right of contractual exchange of property titles. Legal and political theory have committed much mischief by failing to pinpoint physical invasion as the only human action that should be illegal and that justifies the use of physical violence to combat it. The vague concept of "harm" is substituted for the precise one of physical violence. Consider the following two examples. Jim is courting Susan and is just about to win her hand in marriage, when suddenly Bob appears on the scene and wins her away. Surely Bob has done great "harm" to Jim. Once a nonphysical-invasion sense of harm is adopted, almost any outlaw act might be justified. Should Jim be able to "enjoin" Bob's very existence? Similarly, A is a successful seller of razor blades. But then B comes along and sells a better blade, teflon-coated to prevent shaving cuts. The value of A's property is greatly affected. Should he be able to collect damages from B, or, better yet, to enjoin B's sale of a better blade? The correct answer is not that consumers would be hurt if they were forced to buy the inferior blade, although that is surely the case. Rather, no one has the right to legally prevent or retaliate against "harms" to his property unless it is an act of physical invasion. Everyone has the right to have the physical integrity of his property inviolate; no one has the right to protect the value of his property, for that value is purely the reflection of what people are willing to pay for it. That willingness solely depends on how they decide to use their money. No one can have a right to someone else's money, unless that other person had previously contracted to transfer it to him. Legal and political theory have committed much mischief by failing to pinpoint physical invasion as the only human action that should be illegal and that justifies the use of physical violence to combat it. (1/2)”

“It is all very well to have some internal sense of oneself as an individual, but that sense must correspond to an external reality. Part of that external reality is property. The fact that something belongs to me and not to everyone increases my sense of myself as someone in particular. For Hegel that sense of individual particularity is intrinsic to the modern moral order. Indeed "the right of the subject's particularity to find satisfaction, or--to put it differently--the right of subjective freedom, is the pivotal and focal point in the difference between antiquity and the modern age." The fact that others do not take my property--that they regard it as mine--is also a way in which they recognize me as an individual. It is precisely this recognition that the slave, the bondsman, and the serf lack. That the right to own private property, to control some corner of the world, is universal in the modern state is for Hegel part of its glory. (p. 155)”

“Physical Invasion The normative principle I am suggesting for the law is simply this: No action should be considered illicit or illegal unless it invades, or aggresses against, the person or just property of another. Only invasive actions should be declared illegal, and combated with the full power of the law. The invasion must be concrete and physical. There are degrees of seriousness of such invasion, and hence, different proper degrees of restitution or punishment. "Burglary," simple invasion of property for purposes of theft, is less serious than "robbery," where armed force is likely to be used against the victim. Here, however, we are not concerned with the questions of degrees of invasion or punishment, but simply with invasion per se. If no man may invade another person's "just" property, what is our criterion of justice to be? There is no space here to elaborate on a theory of justice in property titles. Suffice it to say that the basic axiom of libertarian political theory holds that every man is a selfowner, having absolute jurisdiction over his own body. In effect, this means that no one else may justly invade, or aggress against, another's person. It follows then that each person justly owns whatever previously unowned resources he appropriates or "mixes his labor with." From these twin axioms — self-ownership and "homesteading" — stem the justification for the entire system of property rights titles in a free-market society. This system establishes the right of every man to his own person, the right of donation, of bequest (and, concomitantly, the right to receive the bequest or inheritance), and the right of contractual exchange of property titles. Legal and political theory have committed much mischief by failing to pinpoint physical invasion as the only human action that should be illegal and that justifies the use of physical violence to combat it. The vague concept of "harm" is substituted for the precise one of physical violence. Consider the following two examples. Jim is courting Susan and is just about to win her hand in marriage, when suddenly Bob appears on the scene and wins her away. Surely Bob has done great "harm" to Jim. Once a nonphysical-invasion sense of harm is adopted, almost any outlaw act might be justified. Should Jim be able to "enjoin" Bob's very existence? Similarly, A is a successful seller of razor blades. But then B comes along and sells a better blade, teflon-coated to prevent shaving cuts. The value of A's property is greatly affected. Should he be able to collect damages from B, or, better yet, to enjoin B's sale of a better blade? The correct answer is not that consumers would be hurt if they were forced to buy the inferior blade, although that is surely the case. Rather, no one has the right to legally prevent or retaliate against "harms" to his property unless it is an act of physical invasion. Everyone has the right to have the physical integrity of his property inviolate; no one has the right to protect the value of his property, for that value is purely the reflection of what people are willing to pay for it. That willingness solely depends on how they decide to use their money. No one can have a right to someone else's money, unless that other person had previously contracted to transfer it to him. "Legal and political theory have committed much mischief by failing to pinpoint physical invasion as the only human action that should be illegal and that justifies the use of physical violence to combat it.”

“Legal and political theory have committed much mischief by failing to pinpoint physical invasion as the only human action that should be illegal and that justifies the use of physical violence to combat it." In the law of torts, "harm" is generally treated as physical invasion of person or property. The outlawing of defamation (libel and slander) has always been a glaring anomaly in tort law. Words and opinions are not physical invasions. Analogous to the loss of property value from a better product or a shift in consumer demand, no one has a property right in his "reputation." Reputation is strictly a function of the subjective opinions of other minds, and they have the absolute right to their own opinions whatever they may be. Hence, outlawing defamation is itself a gross invasion of the defamer's right of freedom of speech, which is a subset of his property right in his own person. An even broader assault on freedom of speech is the modern Warren-Brandeis-inspired tort of invasion of the alleged right of "privacy," which outlaws free speech and acts using one's own property that are not even false or "malicious." In the law of torts, "harm" is generally treated as physical invasion of person or property and usually requires payment of damages for "emotional" harm if and only if that harm is a consequence of physical invasion. Thus, within the standard law of trespass — an invasion of person or property — "battery" is the actual invasion of someone else's body, while "assault" is the creation by one person in another of a fear, or apprehension, of battery. To be a tortious assault and therefore subject to legal action, tort law wisely requires the threat to be near and imminent. Mere insults and violent words, vague future threats, or simple possession of a weapon cannot constitute an assault18; there must be accompanying overt action to give rise to the apprehension of an imminent physical battery. Or, to put it another way, there must be a concrete threat of an imminent battery before the prospective victim may legitimately use force and violence to defend himself. Physical invasion or molestation need not be actually "harmful" or inflict severe damage in order to constitute a tort. The courts properly have held that such acts as spitting in someone's face or ripping off someone's hat are batteries. Chief Justice Holt's words in 1704 still seem to apply: "The least touching of another in anger is a battery." While the actual damage may not be substantial, in a profound sense we may conclude that the victim's person was molested, was interfered with, by the physical aggression against him, and that hence these seemingly minor actions have become legal wrongs. (2/2)”

“There is no precept of the natural law commanding men to appropriate all things in such a way that each person is assigned his own separate portion...it nonetheless left it up to men's judgement whether to make all things proper or only certain ones, and whether to possess some things in common while leaving the rest available to all, yet in such a way that no one could claim them for himself alone. And so the law of nature is understood to approve all agreements men have introduced concerning things, provided they do not involve a contradiction or disturb society.”

“The issuing power [of money] should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

“The true patriot scrutinizes the actions of his own government with unceasing vigilance. And when his government violates the morality and rightness associated with principles of individual freedom and private property, he immediately rises in opposition to his government.”

“But the instinct of hoarding, like all other instincts, tends to become hypertrophied and perverted; and with the institution of private property comes another institution-that of plunder and brigandage. In private life, no motive of action is at present so powerful and so persistent as acquisitiveness, which unlike most other desires, knows no satiety. The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has got, and not till then.”

“The True conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it. The most serious threat to our institutions comes from those who refuse to face the need for change. Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative.”

“Private property has made us so stupid and partial that an object is only ours when we have it, when it exists for us as capital ... Thus all the physical and intellectual senses have been replaced by ... the sense of having.”

“I grew up in Pittsburgh, where you couldn't even see the noon sun in the sky, and that whole city was cleaned up without the federal government needing to be involved. I think we would have been much better served from the start if people would have better understood the principles of private property.”

“The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.”

“As the liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life, health, liberty, and private property against violent attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil. A government that, instead of fulfilling its task, sought to go so far as actually to infringe on personal security of life and health, freedom, and property would, of course, be altogether bad.”

“The Conservation Buck Challenge was designed to engage and mobilize the hunting community to preserve the outdoor experience for future generations. Our members will be ambassadors for ethical hunting, respect for private property rights, support for conservation funding and programs that give our children the chance to learn the valuable lessons of nature.”

“Whatever open-border libertarians think about immigration law, once the immigration scofflaw steals, trespasses, or vandalizes private property, said alien is guilty of crimes. To say, moreover, that the state's laws made masses of men and women commit such crimes is to voice the philosophy of determinism, not individualism.”

“Quotas are a perfectly logical, if diabolical, extension of the regulation of private property courtesy of the Civil Rights Act, whereby in an attempt to shape American society in politically pleasing ways, people have been coerced into liking, hiring or renting against their will or better judgment.”

“Politics and the affairs of State are dissociated from the orbit of the individual, and in so far as they cannot be repossessed as his living private property they must be rendered impotent.”

“Gays have become colossal bores. Once interesting and iconoclastic, all they seem to crave nowadays is the State's pension and seal of approval. They ought to go back to the days of the Stonewall Riots, when the police's violations of privacy and private property were the object of their anger and activism.”

“Let us then repeat and firmly fix this main point: the evil, the root evil, of that to which the term Capitalism has come to be applied, is neither its functioning for profit nor its dependence upon legally protected private property; but the presence of a Proletariat, that is of men possessing political freedom, but dispossessed of economic freedom, and existing in such large numbers in any community as to determine the tone of all that community.”

“And these great natural rights may be reduced to three principal or primary articles: the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property; because as there is no other known method of compulsion, or of abridging man's natural free will, but by an infringement or diminution of one or other of these important rights, the preservation of these, inviolate, may justly be said to include the preservation of our civil immunities in their largest and most extensive sense.”

“All the controversialists who have become conscious of the real issue are already saying of our ideal exactly what used to be said of the Socialists' ideal. They are saying that private property is too ideal not to be impossible. They are saying that private enterprise is too good to be true. They are saying that the idea of ordinary men owning ordinary possessions is against the laws of political economy and requires an alteration in human nature.”

“It is also true that the less possible it becomes for a man to acquire a new fortune, the more must the existing fortunes appear as privileges for which there is no justification. Policy is then certain to aim at taking these fortunes out of private hands, either by the slow process of heavy taxation of inheritance or by the quicker one of outright confiscation. A system based on private property and control of the means of production presupposes that such property and control can be acquired by any successful man.”

“Economic activity, especially the activity of a market economy, cannot be conducted in an institutional, juridical or political vacuum. On the contrary, it presupposes sure guarantees of individual freedom and private property, as well as a stable currency and efficient public services.”

“Private property works like circuitry in electronics, or piping in hydraulics. It conveys wages to the owners of labor power, as well as the various forms of nonwage property income to the owners of capital. In itself, it is no more responsible for maldistribution of purchasing power than the science of bookkeeping is responsible for bankruptcy.”

“When capital owners are few, the private-property conduits of necessity create vast savings reservoirs for those few. If there were many owners, the same conduits would broadly irrigate the economy with purchasing power.”

“It is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property.”

“It has been the fashion to speak of the conflict between human rights and property rights, and from this it has come to be widely believed that the use of private property is tainted with evil and should not be espoused by rational and civilized men... the only dependable foundation of personal liberty is the personal economic security of private property. The Good Society.”

“If history could prove and teach us anything, it would be the private ownership of the means of production as a necessary requisite of civilization and material well-being. All civilizations have up to now been based on private property. Only nations committed to the principle of private property have risen above penury and produced science, art, and literature. There is no experience to show that any other social system could provide mankind with any of the achievements of civilization.”

“One ideological claim is that private property is theft, that the natural product of the existence of property is evil, and that private ownership therefore should not exist... What those who feel this way don't realize is that property is a notion that has to do with control - that property is a system for the disposal of power. The absence of property almost always means the concentration of power in the state.”

“Liberalism makes this mistake in regard to private property and Marxism makes it in regard to socialized property... The Marxist illusion is partly derived from a romantic conception of human nature... It assumes that the socialization of property will eliminate human egotism... The development of a managerial class in Russia, combing economic with political power, is an historic refutation of the Marxist theory.”

“We hold that the ownership of private property is the right and privilege of every American citizen and is one of the foundation stones upon which this nation and its free enterprise system has been built and has prospered. We feel that private property rights and human rights are inseparable and indivisible. Only in those nations that guarantee the right of ownership of private property as basic and sacred under their law is there any recognition of human rights.”

“The very foundation of private property and free contracting wears away in a nation in which its most vital, most concrete, most meaningful types of private property and free contracting disappear from the moral horizon of the people.”

“The slave states of Western world are an outgrowth of monopolistic capitalism - an economic system which is opposed to the wide distribution of private property in many hands. Instead, monopolistic capitalism concentrates productive wealth among a few men, allowing the rest to become a vast proletariat.”

“Possession properly has two faces, two aspects: we all have a right to private property, but this is accompanied by our responsibility for its righteous use. These two things (which should be inseparable) are frequently divided today. Everyone admits that the farmer who own a horse is obligated to feed and care for it, but in the case of stocks and bonds, we often forget that the same principle should prevail.”

“Monopolistic capitalism is to blame for this; it sunders the right to own property from responsibility that owning property involves. Those who own only a few stocks have no practical control of any industry. They vote by postcard proxy, but they have rarely even seen "their" company. The two elements which ought to be inextricably joined in any true conception of private property - ownership and responsibility - are separated. Those who own do not manage; those who manage; those who manage and work do not control or own.”

“Private property is held sacred in all good governments, and particularly in our own. Yet shall the fear of invading it prevent a general from marching his army over a cornfield or burning a house which protects the enemy? A thousand other instances might be cited to show that laws must sometimes be silent when necessity speaks.”

“It must be assumed and established as a principle, that the right of private property must be regarded as sacred. Wherefore, the law ought to favor this right and, so far as it can, see that the largest possible number among the masses of the population prefer to own property.... But if the productive activity of the multitude can be stimulated by the hope of acquiring some property... , it will gradually come to pass that, with the difference between extreme wealth and extreme penury removed, one class will become the neighbor to the other.”