Nearly forty years ago I read Ayn Rand’s essay “Man’s Rights,” for the first time. I was new to Rand’s writing, and indeed free market thought in general. Rand’s claim that, “Without property rights, no other rights are possible,” struck me as a gross exaggeration. I became determined to discover whether that claim was true. For many years I studied history, economics, and current events, often with a focus on property rights. I don’t recall when, but I eventually came to the conclusion that Rand was not exaggerating. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
Over the next two weeks, I am going to share, as best as I can recall, the intellectual journey that has resulted in me defending property rights for more than three decades. I will also share stories of my activism during that period.
When my journey began, I knew very little about philosophy or economics. I had studied history in high school and college, but usually from the perspective of knowing when certain events occurred. My understanding of why those events occurred was superficial at best. It had previously never occurred to me that ideas give rise to political movements, wars, and other important historical moments. And so, I began to study history from the perspective of the dominant ideas.
It took a while, but I slowly began to see that history is, as the philosopher Leonard Peikoff has put it, a philosophical laboratory. Ideas are introduced into the culture, usually by a small group of people. If those ideas aren’t challenged, they can slowly become mainstream. And many of those ideas ultimately result in new laws, a large percentage of which violate the right to property.
As an example, the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 provided government subsidies for the construction of a transcontinental railroad. Subsidies were required because the railroads saw no economic benefit to building such a railroad. The West was sparsely populated and could not support a railroad. Subsidies encouraged an economic activity that made no sense. As a result, the railroads charged high prices to stay in business. Farmers complained and demanded that railroad rates be regulated. The result was the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887.
This series of government interventions was set in motion by a doctrine called Manifest Destiny, which held that the United States was destined to occupy the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific. A transcontinental railroad was a key component of implementing the doctrine. Politically, the result was the violation of property rights through both subsidies and regulation.
I could see the same trends regarding other property rights issues, including land-use regulations, occupational licensing, pro-union laws, and much more. A problem, whether real or imagined, would be identified, and the “solutions” invariably involved violating someone’s property rights.
In my next post, I will examine some of my early efforts in the realm of property rights and free enterprise.
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