The Independent Institute: Kyle Swan- 'Private Property Rights'

Source:The Independent Institute- Thank you, Kyle Swan!

"Professor Kyle Swan talks about private property rights at the 2016 Challenge of Liberty Summer Seminar held in Santa Clara, California." 

From The Independent Institute

Libertarian Economist Walter Williams once said something that I actually agree with, he was talking about property rights and extended them to one's self and one's body, that the individual has complete control of their own body and therefor gets to decide what's done with their body. What they can eat, what they can drink, what they can smoke, even who they can have consensually have sex with. Even if the sex is homosexual sex, taking money to have sex with someone else in a consensual way.

Property rights is not just about money and material wealth, but about how we can spend our own money short of using our money to have someone beat up or murdered, or spending our money in order to have something stolen from someone else. And that includes spending our money to gamble even at casinos or private card games. (To use as examples) That private property rights just doesn't cover one's home, or car, or personal possessions, like a business that they may own. But ourselves as individuals and our own bodies. Short of hurting an innocent person with our body or other property like money.

This is really the main difference between a liberal democracy like America with guaranteed constitutional and individual rights that include property rights as I just mentioned and living in a Marxist-Communist state like North Korea (to use as an example) where individualism is essentially outlawed. Where the state (meaning the national government) owns everything in society. Including where the people live and work, even shop.

Even social democracies like Britain that are very socialist as far as how their national government and economy works, have a high degree of property rights in their country. They just aren't guaranteed especially under a constitutional system which is what we have in America. Property rights are the rights for individuals to control and operate what they actually own including their own bodies.

Our property rights are guaranteed in America under both the Fourth and Fifth amendment's in the Constitution. That can't be interfered with by the state (meaning government) without probable cause. That the state views what someone is doing as a threat to bodily harm or financial harm to an innocent person. 

I'm not talking about an anarcho state (meaning anarchy) where everyone can essentially do whatever they want including hurting innocent people. And then it's left up to the victim to decide what should happen to their predator and left up to the victim to inflict whatever consequences on their predator.

What I'm talking about a federal republic in the form of a liberal democracy where property rights including to one's self are guaranteed short of hurting innocent people with our property. 

As much as so-called Progressives in America today (Socialists in reality) complain about property rights, private property, and individualism in America and that too much in their view is left up to the individual to decide how they should live, they take advantage of our property rights and free speech everyday. And you can say the same thing about the Christian-Right in America but their complaints about our property rights tend to be more about our personal freedom and our freedom to make our own lifestyle choices, instead of our economic freedom.

But that's just one thing that is great about America that one doesn't even have to believe in property rights and either personal or economic freedoms, or either of them in order to take advantage of them and live with them. People who don't believe in free speech (just one property right) can use their First Amendment rights to make the case why censorship is necessary to outlaw speech that they disagree with and that offends them.

Because the censors whether they are political correctness warriors or Christian-Conservatives who are offended by certain forms of entertainment, have the same free speech rights as people who believe in free speech. Who are free speech nuts like myself (to borrow a phrase from Kirsten Powers and Jeffrey Lord) Just as long as we're not using our free speech rights to incite violence or irresponsibly libel innocent people. That property rights extend to everyone including people who don't believe in them. 

You can also see this post at The Daily Times, on Blogger.