Property Rights

Francis Beckwith explains the many threats to natural rights that have evolved out of political authorities' refusal to recognize the meaning and importance of religious rites. 

At what point does a "trivial" violation of property rights become a major problem? There is not an easy answer.

In my view the language of “homesteading” of persons (i.e., children) is best abandoned. Retaining it causes confusion, and nothing essential to the theory is lost by giving it up.

One point to make here is that there is over 70 percent more submerged land in the US than the total amount of dry land in this country. That is, the federal government owns more submerged land than the total amount of land in the fifteen states.

Acton: “Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end…not for the sake of a good public administration…but for the security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.”

Decentralized decision-making is critically important in potential emergency situations, because only property owners have the skin in the game that that forces people to think long and hard about the consequences and side effects of their actions.

The Left has often claimed that privatization is a neoliberal scam. But actual experience suggests privatization schemes have improved access to goods and services while raising productivity and real incomes.

The Left has often claimed that privatization is a neoliberal scam. But actual experience suggests privatization schemes have improved access to goods and services while raising productivity and real incomes. 

Financial engineering doesn’t create any real wealth.

Rothbard’s principal conclusion that libel and slander laws have no place in libertarian law is correct. But how does a reputational right operate? Who, properly, owns such a right? Is this property right alienable—transferable, and how would this work in practice?