Property

The most controversial of the three natural rights to defend life, liberty and property, is the defense of property. It is therefore often assumed that this is the weakest and least significant of these rights. Life and liberty, it is argued, is clearly more important than mere property, and some go on to argue that only life and liberty are true rights.

However, people arguing that defense of property is not a natural right while still accepting life and liberty to be natural rights, are failing to see the relationship between these three rights. They never ask the simple question why anyone would bother to take away somebody’s life or liberty.

Only deeply irrational people would ever kill or enslave someone for the sole purpose of doing just that. If there is to be any rationale behind an act of murder or enslavement it must be to either defend oneself, or to get at the property, or property/service generating ability of the person being violated.

People who have no desirable qualities, skills or intellect, posess no incriminating evidence against other people, and posses no property have simply no reason to fear that any rational being will violate their freedom or take their life. There is simply nothing to be gained from killing or enslaving such a person. Only people with desirable qualities, skills, knowledge or property have reason to be fearful of others in a rational society. Those who possess no such qualities or knowledge may still have good reasons to be fearful, because they have nothing to sell and must rely entirely on charity for survival. However, they do not need to fear that rational others will take their lives or put them in chains.

The only rational reason for murder is either self defense or theft of property. If there is no reason to fear a person, killing that person is in fact theft. And the same argument holds for enslavement.

However, fear may be a fear of being exposed as a criminal as well as fear of being exposed to crime. If a person is in a position to expose someone as a criminal, that person may indeed be in danger of loosing her life or liberty, but the root of the conflict is always property, because the crime being exposed is either a cover up for another crime, or a crime against property. Crimes committed by rational people are always ultimately theft of property or enslavement for the purpose of gaining a service or property.

The interesting conclusion from this is that property, far from being the least important natural right, is in fact the most important, and the right to life and liberty simply follow as natural consequences.

Using recent history to test this conclusion we can look to the fate of the Soviet Union and that of China. Both countries were seriously dysfunctional towards the end of the 20th century and in great need of reform. The leaders of the Soviet Union chose to give people freedom but virtually no property rights, while China gave people property rights but held back on the other two liberties. The result of these deviating policies turned out to produce widely different outcomes.

While the Soviet economy collapsed after a few years following its reform, China prospered to the extent of becoming a world economic power. A weak democracy emerged out of the ruble of the Soviet Union. Powerful people grabbed hold of all the property they could lay their hands on, power got concentrated in an oligarchy which in turn became suppressed and controlled by central political figures. The tendency in Russia today seems to be towards central control and dictatorship, and oppression of the general public.

China on the other hand avoided economic collapse and social unrest, and managed to preserve its centralized government. However, strong property rights have lead to an increasing need for free communication and public debate. The government tries to hold this back, but is in fact forced to gradually loosen their iron grip on the population. Trade and commerce demand public debate and freedom of speech in order to function well and an ultimate consequence of this is that politics too becomes a matter of pubic debate. China is gradually becoming freer and this can not be stopped without seriously damaging the Chinese economy.

While Russia seems to be on its way towards dictatorship, China is moving towards democracy.

Weak property rights lead a country towards less freedom, while strong property rights leads towards greater freedom. With history also showing that weak property rights result in more poverty while strong property rights lead to more wealth, we can predict that Russians will become increasingly poor and enslaved while the Chinese will become increasingly rich and free if no radical change of policies are implemented in these two countries.