BOUNDARIES OF ORDER
Private Property As a Social System
Butler Shaffer
Copyright © 2009 Butler Shaffer
Copyright © 2009 Butler Shaffer
All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles.
Published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute
518 West Magnolia Avenue
Auburn, Alabama 36830
ISBN: 978-1-933550-16-9
Dedication
To the
Remnant
Saying
Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.
— Will Durant
Preface
I have long been interested in discovering whether social conditions can exist that maximize both individual liberty and societal order. Conventional wisdom insists this is not possible; that order and liberty are inconsistent values that must be balanced one against the other. We are told we must sacrifice some liberty in order to maintain order in society; that to believe otherwise is to engage in flights of idealistic fancy or utopian visions.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Introduction
Property is the most fundamental and complex of social facts, and the most important of human interests; it is, therefore, the hardest to understand, the most delicate to meddle with, and the easiest to dogmatize about.
—William Graham Sumner
What do the concepts of the following chart have in common, and what relevance do they have to this book?
Abortion
Airport/subway security checks/searches
Animal rights
Anarchy
Banking
Begging/panhandling
Book-burning
Chapter 2: The Eroding Structure
Chapter 3: Foundations of Order
Foundations of Order
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.
— Max Planck
Chapter 4: Boundary: What Can Be Owned
Boundary: What Can Be Owned?
“That dog is mine,” said those poor children; “that place in the sun is mine.”
—Blaise Pascal1
Chapter 5: Claim: The Will to Own
Claim: The Will to Own
Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own.
— e.e. cummings
