Thursday, September 15, 2016

Universal Suffrage Inherently Violates Private Property Rights

The nature of private property is that it is a form of governance. Unfortunately, this is one of the things the left can often see, while abusing horribly, but many on the right seem to have imbued property with transcendent properties. In the real world, perhaps unfortunately, the way you figure out who owns what is by observing and talking to people.

The 'conservative' myopia on this is roughly similar to the idea that wages are driven by productivity of labor, a view often touted as scientific by various economists, and one I also subscribed to until listening to Steve Keen and realizing he was describing the reality I have seen, though I suspect we differ somewhat on objectives. In my opinion, well, of course, productivity should drive wages- this is how you have functional organizations that are successful. And yet, even the most hardcore libertarian economist can find some bureaucrat somewhere who is making a lot of money- yet is not only unproductive but also often downright harmful to institution he or she is working for. Wages are, to a large extent, predicated on politics- whether it is politics within the government or within the firm, it is still political in nature. No doubt this also means that firms are a lot less healthy than we imagine the could be if they were actually capable of properly rewarding productivity. What it also means is that conservatives have been ridiculous failures counteracting the left's incursions with regard to wages.

By imagining an ought to be an is, conservatives essentially sidelined themselves, leaving the left to take over this area.

A similar situation exists with private property. Since it is the most fundamental form of governance, all subsequent political organization should be made to conform to it. Instead, we see an accretion of various and sundry political structures that contradict property rights, not least of which is universal suffrage. A beleaguered minority ends up paying for whatever was decided by 'the people.' The 'people' directly contradict the owner's rights in his property, for now he has to give up some portion of his property in order to pay for whatever nonsense the 'people' wanted.

Which would be different, of course, from property owners receiving rents for the use of their lands. Not to mention the ancient tendency for owners to dictate what sort of behavior was acceptable on his land, and to act as a judge when issues come up between people on his land.

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