Property Rights

By Kathleen Marquardt

Today we hear a lot about the need for Human Rights but unless you are looking hard, you find little about property rights. Yet, property rights are human rights. Without the right to private property, we have no rights – human or otherwise.

No, that is not an exaggeration, it is fact. Look at free speech. Without the right to own the printing press and print whatever you want, you don’t have the right to speak out. You might be allowed to speak if you say what the government wants to hear, but then again, you might not.

If you don’t have private property rights, you may pay your mortgage every month and keep your house in good repair but the government could decide at any moment to give your house to someone they deem more deserving.

All of the aspects of private property that we take for granted are only there if we have that right. The right to private property is the right to own our own lives. If we cannot shut our doors and keep villains or the government out, then we do not have the right to our own bodies.

This goes for renters too. There are those who would say that the right to private property only covers those who are wealthy enough to purchase property. But we are all wealthy enough to purchase property be it clothing, automobiles or writing material. And without a right to private property those items are subject to government seizure.

As long as they pay the rent on the property, renters are protected as if they owned that property -- the government cannot take it away from them. This is not an issue of rich versus poor. In fact, the poor benefit as much or more than the rich with property rights.

In his book, The Mystery of Capital, Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto, found in his study of developing and former communist nations that the world’s poor have accumulated all the assets needed for successful capitalism, but have no access to it. Their wealth is tied up in property they own but has no asset value because there are no laws to protect it – they have no property rights which means they lack human rights.

As our governments take away more of our property rights through laws and regulations, we must make the public understand that THESE ARE HUMAN RIGHTS, DEFEND THEM.


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