This post is the seventh in a series.
While I have long understood the importance of property rights, my understanding has reached a much deeper level over the past decade. During that time, I have written nearly one-thousand blog posts, OpEd articles, and policy papers. I have written three books and conducted dozens of workshops on property rights.
The workshops proved to be extremely beneficial. They enabled me to develop my skills in explaining an issue. More importantly, then allowed me to identify confusions among the participants, as well as address disagreements and challenges.
One of the workshops that I held was “The Virtues of Property Rights.” The workshop consisted of seven, three-hour sessions. In each session, we would begin with a discussion of a particular virtue. We would then examine how that virtue applied to production and trade. Then, we would discuss how violations of property rights make the practice of that virtue impossible. To be clear, I do not mean that property rights violations completely prevent the practice of the virtues. I mean, that within the realm that the violation applies, practicing the virtue is impossible.
As an example, consider the virtue of independence—the virtue of placing no consideration above one’s own judgment. Land-use regulations demand that a property owner surrender his own judgment about the use of his land. He can’t use his land as he deems best, but only as zoning officials will permit. In the realm of using his land, a property owner cannot practice the virtue of independence. Considerations other than his own judgment necessarily enter into the equation.
We would end each session with a discussion of how property rights violations foster vice. For example, zoning demands that a property owner must subordinate his judgment to the ideas, feelings, and concerns of others. While the property owner may not practice the vice of second-handedness, zoning is founded on the premise that individuals should not be free to act on their own judgment regarding land use. When it comes to the use of his land, his judgment is secondary to that of others.
Most zoning boards seek public input for land-use issues, and the hearings become a magnet for activists, neighbors, and other non-owners of the land in question. The very nature of zoning requires the ideas, feelings, and concerns of non-owners be given equal or more consideration that the desires of the property owner.
Virtue is necessary to produce the values required to live. Property rights are necessary to be virtuous.