Pigeons and Property Rights; D. G. Smith

I don't remember the name of the organization that was rallying that day, but they were a scruffy looking bunch, and they seemed to be in unani mous agreement that anyone who had more than five dollars on his person was in league with the devil. A particularly shrill female was addressing the group as I approached. I immediately sensed what was coming, having heard such oratory before. I knew that within three minutes I would hear the stirring words: "Property rights must give way to human rights." There would be, of course, an excess of n's in the word human. As it turned out, Mr. Smith is a writer living in Santa Maria, California. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal the speaker didn't disappoint me, and the elongat ed word human-n-n-n-n soon echoed through the park with the audibility of a thousand iron bells. I heard the rest of the speaker's message, which could be encapsulated into the thought that all suc cessful people should be executed without benefit of trial, and then returned to the bench and com pleted my rendezvous with the pigeons. When the bread-crumb supply was depleted, I said another farewell to Los Angeles and began the pleasant three-hour drive to my home in Santa Maria, where people in a less harried environment seem to have no problem with the concept of property rights.

The simple truth is one that the Far Left seems to miss with predictable regularity, this being that without property rights there can be no human rights. So let's look at these rights. We talk, for example, of freedom of the press, but this is a political concept and has no meaning whatever without economic freedom. If an indi vidual cannot own a printing press and a building in which to house that press, there just isn't going to be any free dissemination of information. If the same individual cannot employ the people who operate that press, who write the words that go onto it, and who deliver those words to the con sumer, then there is no free press, regardless of governmental statements to the contrary. A gov ernment-owned printing press in a government owned building managed by government employ ees is nothing more than a very large house organ. It is a somewhat sophisticated version of the king's messenger tacking up the newest regulations in the town square.

Or let's look at the concept of religious freedom when the government owns all the church build134 THE FREEMAN • APRIL 1991 ings. It is not truly a house of worshipwhen Big Brother is taking attendance, when indeed he holdsthe onlykey to the building. Cantherebefreedomofspeechwhenno citizen is allowedto criticizehis rulerswhen standingon governmentproperty,and all propertybelongsto the government?Can there be freedomof assem bly if peoplehave no placeto assemble? PoliticalFreedomIs Dependent on EconomicFreedom Propertyrightsarethecornerstoneofallhuman rightsbecausepoliticalfreedomis totallydepen dent upon economicfreedom.A totalitariangov ernment can issue a constitution, as many have done, but human rights are only paper and ink when they are not supportedby the right to own property.The Soviet Constitution,for example, even in those dread, dark days of Joseph Stalin, guaranteedmanyofthe rightsfoundin the United StatesConstitution,withthe rathernotableexcep tion that a citizen couldn't exercise these rights whileon governmentproperty.

Political rights are much like paper money, whichhas lastingvalueonlywhenbackedwithsil ver or gold. If not, it is just paper. Politicalrights must be backed by economic rights. When this doesn'thappen,we havenothingmorethan a per sonal guarantee from a man in a checkered suit who sellssnakeoil from the backof a wagon. The strident ladyin the park didn't understand this and neither did the motleyband of admiTers who eggedher on, but it is one of the immutable facts of life that all the rhetoric of the worldisn't goingto change.Somethingsjust aren't open for debate. Wednesdayfollows Tuesday,dogs chase cats, days are shorter in winter,and people who are forbidden to own property have no rights ~ill D 135 The Roots of the Liability Crisis by James L. Payne S wapping stories about the outrages going on in American courts these days is like playing "Can you top this?" There seems to be no limit to either the size of the awards or the frivolity of the lawsuits. This system of sue, sue, sue costs us billions in lawyers' fees and insurance premiums.