By: R.J. Moeller

Continuing on in our on-going series that will help to clarify the basic, fundamental concepts of the free market system, here is Part II of "Free Market Essentials":

Private Property (and Property Rights)-

The term “private property” can conjure up images of a foreboding “No Trespassing” sign in a Scooby-Doo cartoon. In a sense, this is completely fair and accurate, for “private property” essentially means that an individual owns something to the exclusivity of others. Or in other words, it’s yours and no one else has claim to it unless you say so. (So stay out, you meddling kids.)

The alternative to being able to (legally) own something that someone else cannot take or use without your consent is tyranny. It is collectivism, socialism, and communism.

Now I know what I'm about to say is the boiling down of centuries of meaningful thought and discourse on the matter, but so much of the modern disagreement over the importance of “private property” can be explained by the differences in worldview between two particular people: the Brit John Locke (17th century) and the Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau (18th century).

The constitutional and cultural fascination with personal freedom and liberty that is, as Charles Krauthammer describes it, "uniquely American", comes from the school of Locke. Building upon the same Judeo-Christian beliefs our Founders articulated, specifically that man is "endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights”, Locke maintained that while we all enter the world with the same “natural rights”, the individual could (and should) claim ownership over something as simple as a piece of fruit they themselves climbed a tree to pick.

In his Second Treatise on Government, Locke states:

God gave the world to men in common; but since he gave it them for their benefit, and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed He meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational, and labor was to be his title to it.

This is a very basic and simple concept: If a man works, he should be compensated. If he buys, he should own. If he owns, then someone else cannot take.

But some, like our current president, are not happy with that kind of "selfish" set-up. Men like Karl Marx, and before him, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, did not care for the defining accent mark of the history of mankind to be put over the individual and his or her rights.

Rousseau believed that in order for a society to truly progress, individuals needed to forfeit their claims to natural rights, individual liberty, and the entire concept of private property. He taught that man derived his purpose from the collective.

From this type of thinking we get socialism, Marxism, and leaders like Hugo Chavez.

Private property, and the property rights that logically spring forth from it, is the basis of economic, political, and religious freedom. It gives the individual a vested interest, a meaningful stake, in the world, nation, state, town, and neighborhood around him. It creates incentives to work harder, save more, and spend wisely.

To deny that human beings are hard-wired to respond to incentives is counter-intuitive and a key reason for why Left-of-Center thinking is inherently flawed.

Rousseau wasn't the only Frenchman to weigh in on the matter of private property (and property rights). Some Frenchies, like 18th century economist and political scientist Frederic Bastiat, knew that Rousseau (and later Marx, Chavez, and Obama) was wrong. We close with a quote from Bastiat's legendary treatise, The Law:

Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

(Check back later this week for Part 3 on "Division of Labor")