The Erosion of Property Rights

Those who take this dismissive view of property rights not only promote their own vision but often also filter out the opposite vision of property rights, or distort it as just a defense of existing “entrenched wealth,” so that much of the public does not even learn what the issue is, making the question of how to resolve the issue moot.  Once property rights are reduced by verbal virtuosity to simply a special benefit for a privileged few, these rights are then seen as less important than benefits to the larger society.  It follows from this that property rights must often give way in clashes with other rights, when the issue is posed as opposing courts’ exalting “property rights over human rights” or posed as property rights versus “the public interest.”

Such arguments, however, make sense only within the framework of the vision of the anointed.  Otherwise, there is no clash between property rights and human rights because (1) property itself has no rights and (2) only human beings have rights.  Any clash is between different sets of human beings.  Property rights are legal barriers to politicians, judges or bureaucrats arbitrarily seizing the assets of some human beings to transfer those assets to other human beings.

Those who see surrogate decision-makers with both the right and the duty to make “income distribution” more equal or more just see property rights as a barrier that should not stand in the way of that over-riding goal.  As the ideas of the Progressive era intellectuals became dominant in the law schools and in the courts during the second half of the twentieth century, property rights have been eroded by judicial decisions, and the ability of government officials to over-ride the rights of property owners has been justified on grounds of a greater public interest, supposedly for the benefit of the less fortunate.  However, here as elsewhere, because certain notions fit the vision there has been remarkably little attention to whether they also fit the facts.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.279