Dear Friends,
It seems to me that there are three general practices that government can follow, in the area of property rights, of it’s citizens and non citizens; They are, government protects the property and free use of it‘s citizens and non citizens, government can allow the corrupt to usurp the property and rights of the politically weak while protecting the usurper from any negative consequences, or government can be the usurper.
Governments that are the usurper of property include but are not limited to, Nazi Germany, The United Soviet Socialist Republic, Cambodia, North Korea, with many others far too numerous to count, modern examples including, Cuba, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe among others. Clearly an historic group of countries contributing much to the historical annuls, the combined knowledge base and lore of humanity, the true misery, visited on a people who follow an ethos based on jealousy.
These countries all had, (have) a declining standard of living. The governments of these countries are united, in their usurping of private property rights, of their citizens and non citizens. Regardless of the original motives behind the government’s usurping property rights the result, universally, is misery.
Other countries have a semi rule of Law, where there is Law, but it is selectively applied. Countries with oligarchal capitalist systems follow this path. Mexico is a glittering example of an oligarchal capitalist country that has a system of Law but it is selectively applied.
The results of the Mexican practice is large scale poverty along with corruption in, government, business and the population. Perhaps the reason is that, if a drug lord killed a person’s son, for example, there would be no government attempt to prosecute the drug lord or any of his minions. If however the person who suffered a real loss takes matters into his own hands and retaliates killing the drug lord and the minions that were directly involved in his son‘s murder, rest assured, that person would be tried to the utmost limits of the Law, and made an example of.
What is the incentive for the average person in such a system?
The last system is where government holds the property rights of individuals equally and as freehold. There are no examples in the world today, of this right government, all falling into some level of the others. Historic examples include the US, Denmark, and England among few others.
History emphatically shows that where this is the state of affairs, government protects property rights of it’s citizens and non citizens, the standard of living increases dramatically. Reading the writings of Voltaire and Hume shows the advancement of the standard of living of the human race directly as a result of the enlightenment. The advent of the Market System could not have happened where government does not protect property rights. It’s not hard to understand why, when Denmark vociferously claimed they would protect, even the property rights of the hated Jews, was where and when the Market System came into being.
The thing I find wonderful, is that the standard of living of people, not even involved in the market system, standard off living went and continues to, go up. Like a desert getting slowly flooded. Plants and animals gather where the water is deepest, but water leeches through the sand, nourishing other places. Especially where there is some attempt to protect property rights… We find cacti and succulents. Imagine how much better it would be if those countries that practice usurpation or allow usurpation changed course?
If they started actually protecting, equally, access to property, including the means of production, controlling the avarice of the Elite, making equal demands of all citizens and holding the powerful to the same Law the weak are held to, Imagine how much better the lot of Mankind would be. Everywhere.
Why not?
