Freedom in One Lesson

56.

The Two Commandments

For years, I have told my public-policy classes that the biggest problems stemming from government come from violations of two of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s possessions” and “Thou shalt not steal.” Coveting is a significant impetus behind the intention to harm others to benefit oneself; stealing is the action triggered by coveting.

If government makes its central task the prevention of such violations, it can advance the general welfare by more effectively protecting all of our property from theft and better enable the voluntary relationships that property rights make possible. National defense protects you and your property from international hostilities, and police, courts, and prisons protect you from your neighbors. Unfortunately, government has become an accepted way to violate what it is supposed to defend.

I was always proud of my “two commandments” approach, but then I discovered that I was not the first to come up with it. Leonard Read, in “ To Each His Own,” from his 1968 book Accent on the Right (Read 1968), lays out the importance of those two commandments for any real civilization.

Thou shalt not steal! To know that stealing is wrong again implies knowledge of an alternative that is right: in this case, to each his own, usually referred to as private ownership. The ancient taboo against stealing presupposes that an individual has a right to the fruits of his own labor.

Recognizing as evil the taking of that which belongs to another certainly antedated The Decalogue by many centuries. . . .

. . . “Thou shalt not covet” is even more basic than “thou shalt not steal”; if no one coveted the possessions of another, there would be no thievery. But the cure of covetousness—counting one’s blessings—requires a state of awareness rarely achieved unto this day. . . .

To refrain from stealing is the genesis of civilizations! Only two points need to be understood . . . for this assertion to ring true. First, civilizations rise and fall with the rise and fall of individual freedom. Second, individual freedom rises and falls to the degree that private ownership—the absence of stealing—is respected and adhered to. Individual freedom is out of the question wherever and whenever private ownership does not prevail!

. . . Creative outbursts—the mark of civilization—bear a direct correlation with increase in individual freedom. . . .

This private ownership thesis rests, fundamentally, on a defensible assumption, namely, that one person has as much right to his life as any other. If an individual has a right to his life, it logically follows that he has an equal right to sustain his life, the sustenance of life being the fruit of one’s own labor or what can be obtained for it in peaceful exchange. Conceding the foregoing, we must conclude that livelihood is but the extension of life.

Thus, to steal is to take life. Not to steal is to respect life; it is to endorse and to hold sacrosanct the institution of private ownership.

. . . It is self-evident that no civilization could be born without the observance of this taboo. The institution of private ownership—to each his own—has spawned all civilizations!

. . . Were [thievery] the general practice, we would quickly descend into another dark age. A resort to law would be useless; the gendarmerie also would be thieves! . . .

While the institution of private ownership has been given lip service over the centuries, by the people and governments alike, actual observance has been more of form than of substance. . . . Few among us understand that private ownership can be universally endorsed in principle and completely obliterated in practice. Nor is it widely understood that the forcible taking of income, beyond that required for the principled functions of government, has the same eroding effects on private ownership as stealing. Legalizing the compulsory transfer of control still amounts to the destruction of private ownership.

It takes no mental giant to realize that individual freedom and, thus, the flowering of civilization are possible only where private ownership prevails. Merely imagine owning absolutely nothing required for your own livelihood. Your life would be in the hands of others.

Read sees the twin sins of coveting and theft as the greatest threats to civilization. The latter, motivated by the former, undermines the fundamental basis of the voluntary arrangements that create civilization—private property. He also knows that government is powerless to stop people from coveting. To refrain from coveting requires individual moral commitment and growth. Government could even worsen the situation by offering itself as a vehicle to convert covetousness into public policy. As a result, Read recognizes that the essential function of government is to maintain the principle of “to each his own” and that any time government fails to defend citizens from invasion or itself infringes on their rights, it acts as an impediment to civilization rather than its servant. As Read so succinctly puts it, “To each his own is a fundamental maxim for civilized men!”