Walter Williams: Self Ownership is the Foundation of Freedom

The great economist Walter Williams explains the ethics of private property: (courtesy of lewrockwell.com) [bold added]

My initial premise, when looking at all human issues, is that each of us owns himself. I am my private property, and you are your private property. If you agree with that premise, then certain human actions are moral and others immoral. The reason murder is immoral is that it violates private property. Similarly, rape and theft are immoral, for them, too, violate private property. Most Americans will agree that murder and rape violate people’s property rights and are hence immoral. But there may not be so much agreement about theft. Let’s look at it.

Theft is when a person’s property is taken from him — through stealth, force, intimidation, threats or coercion — and given to another to whom it does not belong. If a person took your property — even to help another person who is in need — it would be called theft. Suppose three people agreed to that taking. Would it be deemed theft? What if 100,000 or several hundred million people agreed to do so? Would that be deemed theft? Another way to ask these questions is: Does a consensus establish morality?

Self-ownership can offer solutions to many seemingly moral/ethical dilemmas. One is the sale of human organs. There is a severe shortage of organs for transplantation. Most people in need of an organdie or become very ill while they await an organ donation. Many more organs would become available if there were a market for them. Through the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, Congress has made organ sales illegal. Congress clearly has the power to prevent organ sales, but does it have a right? The answer to that question comes by asking: Who owns your organs? One test of ownership is whether you have the right to sell something. In the case of organs, if it is Congress that owns our organs, then we have no right to sell them. That would be stealing from Congress.

People have the right to take chances with their own lives. People do not have a right to take chances with the lives of others. That is why laws that mandate that cars have brakes are consistent with liberty and seat belt laws are not. You might say, “Aha, Williams, we’ve got you there because if you don’t wear a seatbelt and you have an accident and turn into a vegetable, society is burdened with taking care of you!” That’s not a problem of liberty. It’s a problem of socialism. Nobody should be forced to take care of me for any reason. If government assumes the job of taking care of us, then Congress can control just about every aspect of our lives. When I was a rebellious teenager, my mother frequently told me, “As long as you’re living in my house and I’m paying the bills, you’re going to do as I say.” That kind of thinking is OK for children, but not for emancipated adults.

I have only touched the surface of ideas of self-ownership. The immorality associated with violation of the principle of self-ownership lies at the root of problems that could lead to our doom as a great nation. In fiscal 2015, total government spending — federal, state and local — was about $6.41 trillion. That’s about 36 percent of our gross domestic product. The federal government spent $3.69 trillion. At least two-thirds of that spending can be described as the government’s taking the property of one American and giving it to another. That’s our moral tragedy: We’ve become a nation of people endeavoring to live at the expense of others — in a word, a nation of thieves.

This applies universally and not just to the Americans.

Quote of the Day: The State Owes its Existence to Civilization

Primitive (“tribal”) societies are primitive not because they don’t have states, but because they don’t have a developed tradition of private property. This necessarily results in economic autarky and extreme poverty. Autarky and poverty in turn result in both inter-tribal biological competition (constant warfare) and the fact that there is not enough wealth to support a parasitic state. It is private property and the division of labor that led both to a decline in inter-tribal warfare and enough wealth in societies for parasitic states to feed off.

The state owes its existence to civilization, not vice versa.  And the wars that interrupt the process of civilization have been made more frequent and more bloody by the encroachment of the state on market-and-civil society.

This is from Mises Institute editor Daniel James Sanchez at the Mises Blog logically refuting the misleading comparison of the levels of violence between state and pre-state societies.

Cuba Opens Door to Capitalism

In a world of bizarre contradictions, while Wall Street Occupy protestors hanker for socialism—perhaps Cuban style—Cuba appears to be inching her way towards Capitalism by laying the seeds of private property.

From the New York Times,

Cuba announced a new property law Thursday that promises to allow citizens and permanent residents to buy and sell real estate — the most significant market-oriented change yet approved by the government of Raúl Castro, and one that will probably reshape Cuba’s cities and conceptions of class.

The new rules go into effect on Nov. 10, according to Cuba’s state-run newspaper, and while some of the fine print is still being written, the law published on Thursday amounts to a major break from decades of socialist housing. For the first time since the early days of the revolution, buyers and sellers will be allowed to set home prices and move when they want. Transactions of various kinds, including sales, trades and gifts to relatives by Cubans who are emigrating, will no longer be subject to government approval, the new law says.

“To say that it’s huge is an understatement,” said Pedro Freyre, an expert in Cuban-American legal relations who teaches at Columbia Law School. “This is the foundation, this is how you build capitalism, by allowing the free trade of property.”

Cuban officials would disagree; they argue that they are carefully protecting socialism as they move toward economic reform, and the new law includes some provisions that seem aimed at controlling both speculation and the concentration of wealth. Owners will be limited to two homes (a residence and a vacation property) and financing must go through Cuba’s Central Bank, which will charge fees, which have not been determined. And a tax of 8 percent will be split by the buyer and seller.

Nonetheless, experts and Cuban residents — who have been expecting the law for months — say the law’s implications are likely to be far-reaching. In a country defined by limited change and pent-up demand for freedom of all kinds, they argue, the law will probably open a Pandora’s box of benefits and risks.

Of course politicians will hardly admit to their policy failures. Nonetheless, Cuba’s latest market based reforms will likely be modeled after China’s communism draped with capitalism.

To quote the great Ludwig von Mises in Liberalism (p.87),

The continued existence of society depends upon private property, and since men have need of society, they must hold fast to the institution of private property to avoid injuring their own interests as well as the interests of everyone else. For society can continue to exist only on the foundation of private property. Whoever champions the latter champions by the same token the preservation of the social bond that unites mankind, the preservation of culture and civilization. He is an apologist and defender of society, culture, and civilization, and because he desires them as ends, he must also desire and defend the one means that leads to them, namely, private property.

(hat tip Justin Ptak Mises Blog)

Despite The Disaster, Japan Reports Less Incidence Of Looting

Despite the horrible disaster, Professor William Easterly posits a very interesting observation and asks, why has there been no looting in Japan?

I quote Prof. Bill Easterly’s entire terse post... (bold highlight mine)

Amidst the heartbreaking devastation in Japan, many have noticed (especially this blog from the Telegraph) how much social solidarity — and little stealing — there has been. The Telegraph blogger Ed West notes vending machine owners giving out free drinks, in contrast to large-scale looting after Katrina.

Economists have been saying for a while that trust is a good candidate to be a major determinant of development. Think how much contract enforcement is critical to make trade and finance possible. Think how much easier contract enforcement is when nobody tries to cheat. This is supported by empirical studies correlating per capita income with a measure of trust, like that shown below, which is computed as …oh forget that, the current example is much more compelling.

Responding to tragedy, the Japanese have resources because they are rich, and it was their social solidarity that helped get them there.

While it may be argued that Japan’s homogenous society-a strong sense of group and national identity and little or no ethnic or racial diversity-could be attributed to such social cohesion, this idea of 'homogeneity' isn’t entirely true as such differences exists in Japan, like in all societies, as Harvard University professors Theodore Bestor (anthropology) and Helen Hardacre argues.

The economic development paradigm based on “Social solidarity that helped get them there” is perhaps what Henry Hazlitt explained in his The Foundations of Morality (quoted by Bettina Bien Greaves) as, (bold emphasis mine)

For each of us social cooperation is of course not the ultimate end but a means … But it is a means so central, so universal, so indispensable to the realization of practically all our other ends, that there is little harm in regarding it as an end in itself, and even in treating it as if it were the goal of ethics. In fact, precisely because none of us knows exactly what would give most satisfaction or happiness to others, the best test of our actions or rules of action is the extent to which they promote a social cooperation that best enables each of us to pursue his own ends.

Without social cooperation modern man could not achieve the barest fraction of the ends and satisfactions that he has achieved with it. The very subsistence of the immense majority of us depends upon it.

In short, a culture of (trust) social cooperation brought about by the interdependence of people founded on the division of labor, respect for private property and voluntary exchanges is what has mostly led to Japan's civil society that has greatly reduced the incidences of violence and theft even during bleak moments.

When Vice Isn't A Crime: The Philosophical Flaws Of Prohibition Laws

One of the main reasons society have been allured to prohibition laws is due to the popular fallacy that presumes baneful behavior from so-called vices that leads to crime.

In short, people tend to oversimplistically associate vice with crime-even if both are different.

Vices are acts by which man hurts himself in pursuit of short term happiness, whereas crimes are acts by which man hurts or harms the personal property of another.

Lysander Spooner in a fantastic philosophical discourse disproves such popular fallacies... (all bold emphasis mine)

``But it will be asked, "Is there no right, on the part of government, to arrest the progress of those who are bent on self-destruction?

``The answer is that government has no rights whatever in the matter, so long as these so-called vicious persons remain sane, compos mentis, capable of exercising reasonable discretion and self-control. Because, so long as they do remain sane, they must be allowed to judge and decide for themselves whether their so-called vices really are vices; whether they really are leading them to destruction; and whether, on the whole, they will go there or not.

``When they shall become insane, non compos mentis, incapable of reasonable discretion or self-control, their friends or neighbors, or the government, must take care of them, and protect them from harm, and against all persons who would do them harm, in the same way as if their insanity had come upon them from any other cause than their supposed vices.

``But because a man is supposed, by his neighbors, to be on the way to self-destruction from his vices, it does not, therefore, follow that he is insane, non compos mentis, incapable of reasonable discretion and self-control, within the legal meaning of those terms. Men and women may be addicted to very gross vices, and to a great many of them — such as gluttony, drunkenness, prostitution, gambling, prize fighting, tobacco chewing, smoking, and snuffing, opium eating, corset wearing, idleness, waste of property, avarice, hypocrisy, etc., etc. — and still be sane, compos mentis, capable of reasonable discretion and self-control, within the meaning of the law.

``And so long as they are sane, they must be permitted to control themselves and their property, and to be their own judges as to where their vices will finally lead them. It may be hoped by the lookers-on, in each individual case, that the vicious person will see the end to which he is tending, and be induced to turn back.

``But if he chooses to go on to what other men call destruction, he must be permitted to do so. And all that can be said of him, so far as this life is concerned, is that he made a great mistake in his search after happiness, and that others will do well to take warning by his fate. As to what may be his condition in another life, that is a theological question with which the law, in this world, has no more to do than it has with any other theological question, touching men's condition in a future life.

``If it be asked how the question of a vicious man's sanity or insanity is to be determined, the answer is that it is to be determined by the same kinds of evidence as is the sanity or insanity of those who are called virtuous, and not otherwise. That is, by the same kinds of evidence by which the legal tribunals determine whether a man should be sent to an asylum for lunatics, or whether he is competent to make a will, or otherwise dispose of his property. Any doubt must weigh in favor of his sanity, as in all other cases, and not of his insanity.

``If a person really does become insane, non compos mentis, incapable of reasonable discretion or self-control, it is then a crime on the part of other men, to give to him or sell to him the means of self-injury. There are no crimes more easily punished, no cases in which juries would be more ready to convict, than those where a sane person should sell or give to an insane one any article with which the latter was likely to injure himself."

Read the rest of lenghty but highly insightful treatise here.

In other words, prohibition unworthily sacrifices personal liberty and private property for control.

Again Spooner, ``The object aimed at in the punishment of vices is to deprive every man of his natural right and liberty to pursue his own happiness under the guidance of his own judgment and by the use of his own property"

Halili Kho Sex Video Scandal: A Case of Political Opportunism

A short commentary on the Katrina Halili-Dr. Hayden Kho Sex video scandal.

It is quite dumbfounding how media and politicians have turned in haste an isolated problem into some sort of a collective spectacle or "national" crisis-as Senators and the Palace has joined the fray. And some of them have used the opportunity to scream for new legislation/s to curb so called abuses.

This isn't about "offensive to public morals" - the cyberspace has hundreds if not thousands of sites that cater to pornography, sex videos or "voyeurism". And these include some locals.

Moreover, through the years police enforcement hasn't been able to contain the sale of lewd "illegal" DVDs as scandals upon scandals have emerged.

Besides, this problem isn't anything new-anyone remember the Betamax scandal of a local politician and a sexy movie star?

This only goes to show how our officials have little understanding of the cyberspace or they are not being forthright or have other latent interests.

The main difference in this scandal is that those involved have been public personalities, if not celebrities. And given the proximity of the national elections, the sensationalism surrounding the incident seem like an egregious opportunity to generate broad publicity mileage.

Going back to the case, the issue again is NOT about morality but about the violation of the aggrieved party's private property.

If it can be established that the perpetrator willfully deceived the other party to broadcast their private tryst in breach of trust then there should be an indictment.

And it can also be seen from the context of client-confidentiality if such circumstances have existed.

For instance, the recent sex scandal in Hong Kong saw the arrest of a computer technician who spread the private videos he illicitly obtained when his actor client brought the computer for repair; where the so called "voyeurism" or sex video wasn't disseminated by the participants but by a third party.

In any case, passing fickle laws to curb "this" and "that" has only worsened the problems by creating legal loopholes, fostering bureaucratic inefficiencies, opened opportunities to extortion, bribery and corruption, and has increased profit margins for politically backed operators which sustains the business of "illegality".

Moreover, the proposed law is a form of state expansion which could be utilized as an instrument to suppress the freedom of speech and expression.

Don't forget that each new law comes with attendant expenses that funds the bureacracy for its implementation-all at the expense of the taxpayer and the costs to do business here.

In short, people pay for the mischiefs, profligacy, grandstanding and wrong policies by politicians through higher consumer prices, lack of jobs and poverty.

What may be seen as a popular may in fact be an illusion, learning from Thomas Sowell, ``Televised congressional hearings are not just broadcasts of what happens to be going on in Congress. They are staged events to create a prepackaged impression.

``Politically, they are millions of dollars’ worth of free advertising for incumbents, while campaign-finance laws impede their challengers from being able even to buy name recognition or to present their cases to the public nearly as often.

``The real work of Congress gets done where there are no cameras and no microphones — and where politicians can talk turkey with one another to make deals that could not be made with the public listening in.

``To be a fly on the wall, able to listen in while these talks were going on, would no doubt be very enlightening, even if painfully disillusioning. But that is not what you are getting in video footage on the evening news.

``Some might argue that, in the absence of the cameras, many people might not know what is going on in Congress or in the courts. But being uninformed is not nearly as bad as being misled.

``For one thing, it is much easier to know that you are uninformed than to know that you are being misled."

Don't be misled.