Liberalism, liberal policy and private property

8/14/2019 Liberalism, liberal policy and private property

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Lieralis, lieral plicand priae prper

Stean Melnik

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Liberalism, liberal policyand private property*

by Stean Melnik

* Introductory paper or the international conerence: Property Rights in Cen-tral and East European Countries Developments ater the Transormation

Process, organized by the European Liberal Forum asbl. with the supporto the Friedrich Naumann Foundation or Freedom (Berlin, 13 November2009).


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Dr. Stefan Melnik is currently based in Germany as an independent political andeducational consultant and specialises in skills development [training methodolo-gies, communication and acilitation, basics o negotiation, confict management,advocacy] and is designing and directing courses on liberal issues, policy workshops

and international conerences on current aairs. Further elds o activity includewriting on political and economic aairs and project planning and evaluation. Pu-blications include books or articles on electoral monitoring and electoral systems(1994 onwards), rule o law (1999), the uture o organised liberalism (2000),negotiation (2001), the benets o economic liberty (2004-2009), education policy(2007-2008) and the global nancial meltdown (2009).


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Inhalt

1. Problems with property 5

2. What is property? 7

3. Liberals ocus on private property 10

4. Private property as a motor o economic development 11

5. Practical arguments or private property and against theirdismantlement 16

6. Private property and its importance or a liberal vision o society 20

6.1. Property and reedom 23

6.2. Property and rights 24

6.3. Property, society and the state 25

6.4. Property and peace 26

6.5. Property and rule o law 27

6.6. Property and liberal democracy 28

6.7. Property and economics 29

7. A system without private property cannot work 32

8. Basic literature on property rights and their importance 34


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1. Problems with property

Property is a word that people oten associate with wealth, something that is

important or those who are better o than most. Property is oten associatedwith capitalism and is seen as one o the bitter ruits o eploitation. Manyask whether private individuals should have a right to own big pieces o land,mines, lakes, orests and banks. Many opinion leaders consider property to bea materialistic concern and think that we should concern ourselves more withgiving and with compassion.

Politics is oten driven by a negative attitude towards property. It is bad to havelarge disparities in wealth. There must be something wrong with the system ipeople are able to amass large amounts o wealth. There are certain things thatproperly belong to everyone or to the nation rather than to individuals. Indeed,property is all too oten an awkward obstacle in trying to implement projectsthat are held to be benecial to the community or to society. Politicians moreoten than not have ew qualms about regulating or attaching conditions toproperty, taing it ecessively or even epropriating it or the greater good.

Theres a long tradition behind such attitudes going back to the mid-19th cen-

tury. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon claimed polemically that property is thet. KarlMar and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto proposed to abolishprivate property. The negative attitude to property is not only a tradition o theLet. Its shared with representatives o other political mainstreams. The leadingUS protestant politician and political economist in the latter part o the 19thcentury, Henry George, a critic o Marism because o its inherent dictatorialtendencies, campaigned or making land common property and likened themethods through which Americas rst amilies obtained their wealth to those

o robbers. Many Liberal politicians in the English-speaking world consideredhis ideas to be an inspiration. Finally, we should remember that some leadingliberal thinkers were unenthusiastic about the virtues o protecting property.John Stuart Mill wanted to see limits on the amount people could inherit andown land ownership when such ownership did not lead to improvement. Herepresents a school o (let) liberalism that subordinates the right to proper-ty to an equitable distribution o wealth. In the latter hal o the 20th centuryJohn Rawls, oten considered a liberal philosopher, took this concern one stepurther and even rejected a distribution o wealth and income determined by

the natural distribution o abilities and talents.


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O course, ew were as careul as Proudhon and other political philosophersand economists in distinguishing between property and possessions. For mostopinion leaders, academics and artists the two terms were interchangeable. Ac-quiring property was no more than an aspect o possessiveness, a disagreeable

human trait. Bertrand Russell uttered the amous words that it is preoccupationwith possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us rom living reelyand nobly. The psycho-analyst Erich Fromm etolled the virtues o being rat-her than o having. John Lennons song Imagineis a popular epression o thesame sentiments: Imagine no possessions []. Imagine all the people sharingall the world []. Another eample o the pervasiveness o negative attitudesin popular culture is the science ction series Star Trek and its many oshootsthat idealise lie without property: primitive societies use money. Such ideashold enormous sway over public opinion which, given the lack o schooling inbasic legal and economic concepts are readily and uncritically accepted.

Such ideas had and continue to have a proound eect on the world o poli-tics. Communist countries proceeded to collectivise the economy and abolishprivate property as we know it. There was room or limited private possessi-ons, no more. The eect was not limited to etreme variants o socialism. Bythe mid-twentieth century it was possible in some important non-communistquarters to ignore the right to property as a human right. Thus the original

version o the European Declaration on Human Rightsdid not include a rightto property. The constitutions o democracies like India and Sri Lanka did notinclude this right either. Massive redistribution became an acceptable objectiveo politics throughout the West. Epropriation o the living and the dead bythe state was hardly ever considered to be thet, as long as some decorum wasadhered to. The reasons had to be plausible and not too much could be takenaway. Many constitutions in Latin America, or instance, did and still do notallow the outright private ownership o natural resources.

There have been some corrections. The pros and cons o redistribution and con-scation are being discussed more seriously. Some countries like Austria andSweden have become more property riendly. Most signicantly, the velvetrevolution o 1989/90 has led to a complete reversal o ormer communist po-licies. Policy makers in Central and Eastern Europe and in East Asian countriessuch as China and Vietnam today acknowledge the importance o secure pro-perty rights and have legislated and encouraged privatisation accordingly.


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Despite these relatively new developments, we still encounter scepticism evenamong liberals. It is possible even today in the United Kingdom to publisha dictionary o liberal thought without reerence to property.1

Attitudes are changing but they are only changing slowly. For many propertyis still anathema and, despite its advantages in the real world, is considered toappeal to base sentiments. Is this tradition a reliable one, a good one? Why hasproperty as a concept survived the criticism? Is there something about propertythat we have overlooked?

On the ollowing pages I will try to outline the conventional liberal approachto property and, more specically, to private property and attempt to show whyproperty is so important or society and or economic progress. First o all I willlook at what property is beore proceeding to describe what the advantages oa political and economic system that protects property are.

2. What is property?

Property is an all-embracing concept that doesnt simply mean land and thebuildings that might be on that land as common usage o the term mightoten suggest. It is anything that people can use, control or dispose o thatlegally belongs to them. Property always represents ownership o somethingspecic like a house, a business, a savings account, a clock or a patent that isprotected by law.

There are, o course, dierent types and categorisations o property. We distin-

guish between immovableproperty, especially land, and other orms o propertytermed movable or personal property. Real property relates to land and impro-vements (anything that has been added to the land that increases its value buildings, or instance).

The distinction between immovable or real property on the one hand, and mo-vable or personal property on the other, is an important one. Real property canbe mortgaged and the lender, through the transaction, gains rights that canbe enorced with relative ease. Land or the buildings on it cannot be moved.

1 Duncan Brack and Ed Randall (eds), Dictionary of Liberal Thought, London: Politicos Publi-shing, 2007.


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Its ar more dicult to secure a loan with a movable object as collateral (suchas a car or a TV set) because a debtor can easily remove or hide the object inquestion rom the creditor.

Another distinction is between tangibleand intangibleproperty. Tangible proper-ty includes things such as real estate, cars, urniture, clothing and pets. Eamp-les o intangible or abstract property include bank accounts, stocks, bonds andintellectualproperty (eg, patents, copyrights and trademarks). The distinction isalso one o great signicance because o the relative ease o securing propertyrights or tangible or physical objects and the requent diculties encounteredin doing the same or some intangible objects. There is a erce debate amongliberals on whether rights to one orm o intangible property, intellectual pro-perty, should be the same as those pertaining to physical property.

Finally, another signicant distinction may be made: between productivepro-perty, the kind that can create more property, as in the case o land and capital,and personal property which is used or consumed. When the economic eectso property are discussed, we usually mean productive property.

Property, as I have already hinted above, diers rom possession, a term otenand wrongly used as a synonym or property. Possession reers to the physical

control o assets without a ormal title to them: it is ownership not protectedby law. Inormal property may be understood in this sense: as a possession. Thedistinction between property and possession (or inormal property) is etreme-ly important. The ormer is ormally acknowledged and protected by law andthis gives the owner important economic advantages that do not apply to thelatter. This is something that Hernando de Soto points out in his trailblazingbook, The Mystery of Capital.

I wish to draw readers attention to other important characteristics o the con-cept o property:

One is exclusion. Rights and responsibilities associated with property onlyhave a real meaning i they can be assigned to particular individuals or entitiescomposed o individuals to the eclusion o others. You cannot sell or lend so-mething unless you have the right to do so and no-one else. It is impossible todetermine who is responsible or the use o an object i you cannot determineownership o that object precisely.

Another is the impossibility o drawing a line between sel-ownership and ow-nership o material and immaterial objects. The term encompasses everything


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that properly belongs to a person including lie and liberty. You can only ownproperty i you yoursel are ree to do so. This is also o importance in the areao intellectual property. You can only own thoughts and inventions i you areree to do so and can enorce appropriate rights. This continuum between sel

and objects owned goes back to John Locke and the beginnings o systematicthought on the subject o property. John Locke argued in 1689 that every manhas a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himselbeore proceeding to elaborate as ollows: The labour o his body, and thework o his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removesout o the state that nature hath provided, and let it in, he hath mied hislabour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes ithis property.2

Documentation is another signicant and central aspect o property. This ishighlighted by the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto. This may be in theorm o a title (in the case o real estate), registration (eg, in the case o mo-tor vehicles), a certicate, an account or a receipt, to mention a ew eamples.All serve to prove ownership. Such documentation, i it is to ull its unctiono proo, must be mind riendly (transparent and easy to ollow) and readilyaccessible by interested parties.

So, summing up, property refers to the right of the owner or owners, properlydocumented, formally acknowledged by public authority and protected bylaw, both to exploit assets, whether material or immaterial, to the exclusi-on of everyone else and to dispose of them by sale or otherwise. It ollowsthat private property can be transerred only with its owners consent and inaccordance with the law.

When we talk about property rights we are reerring to the ollowing:

a) to use and control the use o property;

b) to benet rom the property (eamples: mining rights, rental payments,interest);

c) to transer or sell the property; and

d) to eclude others rom the property.

2 Two Treatises of Government, 1689, ed. by Thomas Hollis (London: A. Millar et al., 1764),Book 2: Of Civil-Government, Chapter V, 27.


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3. Liberals focus on private property

Liberals emphasise that property must mean private property. Indeed, when li-

berals write about property, they oten assume that the term property properlyreers to private property and that any other kind o property, state, publicor community property is something entirely dierent.

It is important that property can be assigned to a real entity, not an abstractone. An individual or a company (= run by a group o individuals) are real en-tities. The general public and the state are abstractions or, i we are kinder,we may say that these entities are o a dierent nature. It is more dicult toassign meaningul rights and responsibilities pertaining to property to them.

Liberals are acutely aware o the problems that arise when ownership cannotbe determined in a straightorward manner. The British economist and politicianSamuel Brittan comments that when there is no ownership, as in the case oairspace, pleasant vistas or the ocean bed, there is no market and eploitersand destroyers can escape without paying a price. With property that is notprivate, the results deriving rom their use are similar: Where the communitydoes in some sense own resources such as the national road space, it inficts

harm by not behaving like an owner and instead allowing ree, and thereorewasteul, use o scarce assets. It is not property rights but their absence thatis anti-social.

The concept o private property, in contrast, is much clearer in the sense thatdirect relationships eist between the owner and the object o ownership and,that the owner is directly accountable or the use o that object. The denition,demarcation, documentation and legal protection o property are all superfuo-

us i there is no private property. They only make sense i property is owned byprivate entities, many o them. Without private property it would be impossibleor human beings to establish and secure their rights and hence their reedom.This is an argument I will return to later.

Another important consideration or liberals is that private property, robustlyenorced, has urther important attributes apart rom the eclusive right to thechoice o use o a resource as the economic philosopher Armen A. Alchianpoints out. One is the eclusive right to the services o the resource. Thus,

or eample, the owner o an apartment with complete property rights to theapartment has the right to determine whether to rent it out and, i so, whichtenant to rent to; to live in it himsel; or to use it in any other peaceul way


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[]. I the owner rents out the apartment, he also has the right to all the rentalincome rom the property []. Another is the right to echange the resourceat mutually agreeable terms. A private property right includes the right to de-legate, rent, or sell any portion o the rights by echange or git at whatever

price the owner determines (provided someone is willing to pay that price). I Iam not allowed to buy some rights rom you and you thereore are not allowedto sell rights to me, private property rights are reduced. They are an integralpart o the right to private property and together they provide a huge numbero options in the use o property. Restrictions on any o these options amountto a restriction o private property.

4. Private property as a motor of economic development

Can we measure the eects o robust protection o private property? This is animportant question because there is little point in arguing or property rights ithey cannot be shown to have a benecial eect or individuals and or societyas a whole. There is an enormous amount o anecdotal evidence o the benetso private property, but we also have empirical studies that demonstrate qui-

te clearly that i property rights are unrecognised, lacking or underdeveloped,the level o both economic reedom and economic well-being is low. Given theeperience o the communist countries o Central and Eastern Europe and omany authoritarian developing countries, this is what we would epect.

In the Index of Economic Freedom the actor property rights

measures the degree to which a countrys laws protect private property

rights and the degree to which its government enorces those laws. Italso assesses the likelihood that private property will be epropriatedand analyzes the independence o the judiciary, the eistence o corrup-tion within the judiciary, and the ability o individuals and businessesto enorce contracts. The more certain the legal protection o property,the higher a countrys score; similarly, the greater the chances o go-vernment epropriation o property, the lower a countrys score [].3

3 2009 Index of Economic Freedom, Washington: Heritage Foundation & New York: WallStreet Journal, 2009 p. 449.


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Property rights are one o 10 economic reedoms; the other nine being businessreedom, trade reedom, scal reedom, government size, monetary reedom,investment reedom, nancial reedom, reedom rom corruption and labourreedom, all o which are given equal weight.

More economic reedom goes hand in hand with higher levels o sustained eco-nomic growth, with higher levels o human development and with lower un-employment, to mention only a ew indicators o successul development. Thelevel o protection o private property is at the same time a good indicator othe level o economic reedom a countrys citizens enjoy. The results or 2009show that all 15 countries that are economically most ree have scores o 90or over (out o 100) or their respective property environments. At the oppositeend o the table, the 15 least ree countries that were rated 30 or less, 11 othem 10 or less.4 This is perhaps not surprising because encroachment on otherreedoms actually represents encroachment on ones property rights. Thus, orinstance, an encroachment on nancial reedom amounts to a restriction oproperty rights pertaining to relevant assets.

The Index of Economic Freedom notes a massive drop in scores or propertyrights in the time since it was inaugurated in 1995, attesting to the urgency oaddressing property rights issues in developing countries in particular:

The large drop in average scores or the economic reedom componentmeasuring property rights and respect or the rule o law is alarming.A majority o the worlds countries score below 50 on property rights.Better perormers cluster around a score o 70, and the best economicperormers score 90 or above on this component. The 20 countries whosescores on this component have improved over the lie o the Inde haveseen their per capita GDPs grow almost twice as ast, at over 3.5 percent

per year, as the countries whose property rights scores ell.5

The Economic Freedom of the World inde6 produces similar results. Proper-ty rights are one o the ve major areas that the inde attempts to measure.Here again the scores correspond with the overall scores or economic ree-dom. Those countries with low scores or legal structure and security of proper-ty rights typically had bottom rankings or economic liberty; those with high

4 Ibid, pp. 6 & 10.

5 2009 Index of Economic Freedom, p. 21.6 Economic Freedom of the World 2008 Annual Report, Vancouver: Fraser Institute and Eco-

nomic Freedom Network, 2008. Digital version available rom: www.reetheworld.com, pp.185-6.


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scores were countries that enjoy high levels o economic reedom. The authorscomment that

Freedom to echange [] is meaningless i individuals do not have

secure rights to property, including the ruits o their labour. When in-dividuals and businesses lack condence that contracts will be enorcedand the ruits o their productive eorts protected, their incentive toengage in productive activity is eroded. Perhaps more than any otherarea, this area is essential or the ecient allocation o resources.Countries with major deciencies in this area are unlikely to prosperregardless o their policies in the other our areas.7

The results o 2009 International Property Rights Index(IPRI) track those o themore general indices o economic reedom. It compares the perormance o 115countries representing 96 % o the worlds GDP.

A total o ten variables are included in the inde divided into the three maincomponents:8

1) Legal and Pliical Enirnen (LP)

Judicial independence Political stability Rule o law Control o corruption

2) Psical prper rigs (PPR)

Protection o physical property rights

Registering property Access to loans

3) Inellecal prper rigs (IPR)

Protection o Intellectual Property Rights Patent Protection Copyright Piracy

7 Ibid, p. 6.8 International Property Rights Index 2009Report, op. cit., p. 15.


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IPRI iniles Aerage GDP per capia

Top 20 % $ 39,991

2nd quintile $ 23,982

3rd quintile $ 11,748

4th quintile $ 4,891

Bottom 20 % $ 4,341

IPRI shows that a high level o protection o (private) property is itsel a goodindicator o economic perormance: the higher the level o protection, the gre-ater average GDP per capita and vice versa.9

A look at the net table shows that those countries with the highest scoresare liberal democracies as one would epect given the posited relationshipbetween private property, reedom and democracy and are prosperous at thesame time. At the other end o the table we have countries that ace enormousdiculties not only in terms o democracy but also in terms o political stabilityand economic perormance.

Property rights and GDP: the relationship between IPRI and GDP per capita(with tted line)

Source: International Property Rights Inde 2009 Report, op. cit., p. 29.

9 International Property Rights Index 2009Report, op. cit., p. 29.


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Countries by overall IPRI rankings: best and worst scorers

Source: International Property Rights Index 2009 Report, op. cit., p. 20.

The studies mentioned do not establish causal relationships. They highlighttrends. But the way in which rm protection o property goes hand in hand

with good economic perormance is certainly no pure coincidence.

There are many other ways o establishing quantiable relationships betweenproperty rights and economic objectives that support liberal arguments in avouro protecting and enhancing the protection o private property. I would just liketo point to two areas in which the evidence or the benecial eects o privateproperty rights or the pernicious eect o lack o them is overwhelming:

An eample or the benecial eects o private property rights requently cited

and empirically measurable is that o conservation o shing and orestry re-sources. Where these resources dont or no longer belong to the commons theeect is considerable. In the countries that have introduced property rights to

Ran Cnr IPRI

1 Finland 8,7

2 Netherlands 8,5

Denmark 8,5

4 New Zealand 8,3

Sweden 8,3

Germany 8,3

Norway 8,3

8 Switzerland 8,2

Australia 8,2

10 Austria 8,1

Iceland 8,1Singapore 8,1

13 Ireland 8,0

14 Canada 7,9

15 United Kingdom 7,8

United States 7,8

17 Japan 7,6

18 Belgium 7,5

19 Hong Kong 7,3

20 France 7,2

Luembourg 7,2

22 Portugal 7,1

Ran Cnr IPRI

94 Nepal 3,9

Montenegro 3,9

96 Cameroon 3,8

Macedonia 3,8

98 Ethiopia 3,7

Armenia 3,7

100 Serbia 3,6

Nicaragua 3,6

Bolivia 3,6

Moldova 3,6

104 Albania 3,5Nigeria 3,5

Paraguay 3,5

107 Azerbaijan 3,4

108 Bosnia-Herzegovina 3,3

109 Chad 3,2

Venezuela 3,2

Guyana 3,2

Burundi 3,2

Zimbabwe 3,2

114 Angola 2,8

115 Bangladesh 2,5


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sh within their 200 mile zones in the orm oindividual transferable quotas(ITQs), stocks o sh have regenerated and grown. Two notable eamples o suchsystems in operation are to be ound in New Zealand and Iceland. In the vastmajority o the worlds seas and oceans in which property rights have not been

established, however, stocks o sh are in steep decline. Similarly orest coverin many countries in which orests are privately owned has increased duringthe course o the last century whilst commons or state-owned orest cover, inthe tropics or instance, has declined sharply.10

Hernando de Soto has attempted to assess the cost o lack o ormalized propertyrights, the typical situation in developing countries. He calculates that the totalvalue o real estate held but not legally owned by the poor o the Third Worldand ormer communist countries is at least $9.3 trillion about twice as muchas the total circulating U.S. money supply or almost as much as the total valueo all the companies listed on the main stock echanges o the worlds twentymost developed countries. It is more than twenty times the total direct oreigninvestment in all these countries in the 10 years ater 1989. These are enormousassets in the contet o development i they can be mobilized.

5. Practical arguments for private propertyand against their dismantlement

There are a host o arguments in deence o property which help to eplain resultslike the ones presented in the previous section. Moreover, there are a numbero arguments that point to the importance o private property or the kind osociety liberals want and to the intrinsic value o private property or human

beings without having to look at its economic benets. The latter pertain tothe kind o arguments the singer and song writer Frank Zappa would have hadin mind when he said that Communism dont work cause olks wanna ownstu. A politician might choose to ignore them, but does so at his/her peril.

The rst o these is that an eings d n see e ale ae dwi prper. It seems to be in the nature o humans to own goods. It isprobably a myth that primitive societies do not have systems o ownership in

10 For an overview o the subject, see Johan Norberg, Use it or lose it - The environmental casefor property rights. Paper presented at Freedom, Commerce and Peace, A regional Agen-da, Tbilisi, Georgia, 27 October 2006; aaccessed: 30.12.2007, available under http://www.johannorberg.net/?page=articles&articleid=155.


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place or that they have no awareness o private ownership. An indication othis is the act that there are terms such as stealing, thet or vandalismin most cultures and languages, and religious or legal injunctions against them.They wouldnt eist without a concept o property and the idea that some

things are rightully owned by individuals or groups o people. Indeed, modernanthropologists generally seem to accept that prper is a niersal eare an clre.11

Priae prper is essenial

because it refects human needs and is an inseparable part o human culture

because, connected with the above, humans have a strong sense o justice that

is related to possessions and the idea o rightul ownership

or establishing realistic prices

or preventing wasteul use o resources

or establishing accountability

or a ree market economy (this ollows rom the 3 previous points)

because o the incentives it creates or stewardship and entrepreneurship

Human beings are possessive and possessiveness is a strong trait, perhaps evenan instinct, that helps to ensure survival and to secure identity. There are manyindications that this is the case and to ignore the trait, as many political projectsin the past have, is olly. Sealing r eprpriain prper elicis srng,radical and einal respnses in most people and cultures. We have many

eamples today o people seeking justice and o governments attempting toresolve issues arising rom epropriation many generations ago. Most ormercommunist countries still ace claims or restitution rom the descendents ovictims, although generations may have passed.

11 For an overview o some o the relevant insights and literature see Pipes, p. 77 . This doesnot mean, however, that there are no cultural dierences in the treatment o property.Normal behaviour with respect to property in one society may not be normal in another. Theapproach to property in European countries can be very dierent. Some European countries

impose death duties, others do not, to take one eample. Failure to declare taable incomeis treated as a crime in Germany but as a civil oence in Switzerland because o completelydierent approaches to citizens rights with regard to their property in German and Swisslegal traditions.


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Important gains rom a high level o respect and protection o property aregreater cohesion and eciency or both the political and economic systems.In an environment in which property is rarely violated, society will benet. AsDavid Hume pointed out, relationships between people will be characterised by

mutual trust rather than by mutual suspicion. There are ew reasons to resortto separation, to segregation and to the creation o ghettoes, the prime purpo-se o which is to provide security. In economic terms one major benet wouldbe a reduction o direct costs or protecting property, ie, it helps one to avoidwasteul use o resources.

People epect the state to provide security and protect property. I this does nothappen because o deciencies in the law or in law enorcement citizens willlook or alternatives. The creation o gated communities is such an alternativeand an indication that the social contract based on protection o private pro-perty is breaking down and that the state is no longer meeting its obligations.Such developments lead to a dangerous erosion o citizens condence in andidentication with the state.

There are urther reasons why private property promotes social cohesion. It im-ports a sense o ownership not only with respect to the object owned but alsowith respect to the environment in which it eists. A person who owns a house

in pleasant surroundings has a strong interest in maintaining these surroun-dings. People mow the grass in ront o their house despite the act that thisgrass might belong to the municipality. Why? Because the pleasant surroun-dings enhance the value o the house.

Property helps in the development o sel-esteem: Im the owner o a housethat is pleasant and in good repair. People will respect me because o the eortI invest in contributing to a valued neighbourhood.

It helps citizens to develop a sense o why crime is wrong because crimesagainst property, like vandalism, are directly eperienced. The vandal has bro-ken something that belongs to me.

This list could be etended but the important point is that civic spirit isstrongly infuenced by property and interest in maintaining that property.

Another important gain policy makers must be aware o is the act that property

ownership not only gives people a stake in their environment and a peaceulenvironment protects and preserves property but also make them less depen-dent on others and, in particular, the state. In very practical terms: i a pen-


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sioner owns his or her apartment, pensions do not need to cover rents. Whenthe state o Singapore, or instance, encourages the ownership o real estate,it does so in the knowledge that more citizens owning their residences meanlower public ependiture in the eld o social security. Perhaps an underlying

reason or greater social stability in times o crisis in countries like the UnitedKingdom and Switzerland are related to high levels o ownership o real estateamong their respective populations.

Another set o practical arguments pertain to the stewardship private propertypromotes. Secre prper rigs create economic incentives that would other-wise not eist and thereby elici eair a is enecial n nl r ewners r scie a large.

One o these arguments relates to care and maintenance: wners ae an in-cenie l aer wa e wn. I they dont care or an item they own,it will deteriorate. I a car is serviced regularly, it will stay in good conditionand working order. I a house is looked ater properly, it will continue to ullits purpose and be a good place to live in. The incentive is not only an aesthe-tic one: that a well-serviced car or a house well looked ater are pleasant tolook at, are nice to drive/use or are comortable. The maintenance o propertyalso serves to maintain their value on the market. A deective car or a dama-

ged building will etch lower prices on the market, ie, the ailure to look atera piece o property leads to loss. In the case o public property, things are notthe same. Occupants o council houses do not have the same incentive to lookater the place they live in because they have little to gain or lose when theymove out. Few people who damage public property without a qualm wouldwillingly damage a car they own themselves.

Perhaps more importantly or the economy priae wnersip encrages pe-

ple deelp eir prper and se i prdciel. Being able to use anddispose o it as they see t, it is worth individuals while to invest eort intodeveloping property so that it not only maintains its value, as with maintenance,but that its value or the income derived rom its use increases.

One o the mistaken assumptions o those who oppose property is that it isnot benecial or non-owners. There are very ew members o society withoutproperty but, more importantly in this contet, e se prper as a rleenes ers, the propertyless, directly. Using property by selling it or using it

to generate an income will only work i there is a corresponding need to buy orrent that property. This means that the needs o both parties must meet in orderto initiate and complete a transaction. The seller must be prepared to meet the


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demands and preerences o the buyer; the buyer must be prepared to acceptthe terms o the seller. The transaction, when it occurs, is one o mutual benet.The same argument applies to labour. Oering the service o your labour (yourproperty in the Lockean sense o the term) is subject to the same mechanism.

I you improve and ocus your qualications in accordance with the demandso potential customers, you will nd employment more easily.

Another argument or private property at a practical level concerns the carer, cnserain , as well as prden and ecien se resrces. I aresource promises to yield substantial or higher revenues at a uture point intime, it is put aside or this purpose.

6. Private property and its importancefor a liberal vision of society

Private property as a central subject o liberal concern warranting separate andthorough treatment is, arguably, a relatively recent phenomenon. Indeed, someargue that the lack o thorough treatment may have something to do with the

act that early liberals took the concept or granted and considered the advan-tages o private property or the political and economic order to be sel-evident.One commentator, or instance, writes that

It was probably a coincidence that the most infuential treatise oneconomics was written at a time when private property was at the peako its prestige. In any event, Adam Smith did not think it necessary tosay much about the subject. He did reer to the sacred rights o private

property, however, and his contemporaries made similar comments [].In a treatise on economics, thereore, it was perhaps superfuous toinsist that the institutions already secured by the common law were thenecessary oundations o economic analysis. No one disagreed [].12

Until the middle o the nineteenth century, that is.

Later on, with the intellectual onslaught waged by socialists and others againstproperty, liberals ound themselves on the deensive. One could argue that the

12 Tom Bethell, The Noblest Triumph Property and Prosperity through the Ages, New York: StMartins Press, 1998, p. 93.


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lack o thorough treatment might have contributed to the ease with which so-cialists were able to campaign against private property. Many contemporariesailed to appreciate the importance o property and there were ew concertedand systematic rebuttals o the socialist standpoint. There was also the pro-

blem that John Locke had suggested that private ownership, which is eclusive,should be linked to there being enough and as good or others which is inact a sharp-edged weapon in the hands o the enemies o property.13 To addto the conundrum some liberals went as ar as to endorse egalitarian ideals asI have already shown.

Two authors, in particular, have contributed to a greater understanding o theimportance o private property in eplaining development and economic suc-cess: the historian o Polish origin, Richard Pipes, who eplained the dierentpolitical and economic trajectories o England and Russia in terms o their re-spective treatment o property rights, and the Peruvian economist Hernandode Soto who has attempted to describe how and why private property and in-stitutions that eectively enorce and protect property rights determine eco-nomic progress.14

De Soto claims that the poor inhabitants o Third World and ormer commu-nist nations

do have things, but they lack the process to represent their propertyand create capital. They have houses but not titles; crops but not deeds;businesses but not statutes o incorporation. It is the unavailability othese essential representations that eplains why people [] have notbeen able to produce sucient capital to make their domestic capi-talism work.

This is the mystery o capital. Solving it requires an understanding owhy Westerners, by representing assets with titles, are able to see anddraw out capital rom them. One o the greatest challenges to the humanmind is to comprehend and gain access to those things we know eistbut cannot see [].

13 See Anthony de Jasay, Property and its Enemies, parts 1-3. especially part 1: Design Faults

in Lockes Theory of Property Taint Ownership with Guilthttp://www.econlib.org/library/Co-lumns/y2003/Jasayenemy.html, Liberty Fund, Inc. 2003.

14 The titles o the books by Pipes and de Soto can be ound in the list o basic literature atthe end o this introductory survey.


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[] only the West has the conversion process required to transorm theinvisible to the visible []. Westerners take this mechanism so comple-tely or granted that they have lost all awareness o its eistence [].It is an implicit legal inrastructure hidden deep within their property

systems o which ownership is but the tip o the iceberg. The rest othe iceberg is an intricate man-made process that can process assetsand labour into capital []. Its origins are obscure and its signicanceburied deep in the economic subconscious o Western capitalist nations[].

So ar, Western countries have been happy to take their systems orproducing capital entirely or granted and to leave its history undocu-mented [].15

De Soto has attempted to close the purported knowledge gap by analysing andeplaining how a successul system o ormalised private property rights works,pinpointing the deciencies o inormal systems o property and suggestingwhat reorms might useully consist o.

Despite what has been said so ar, however, it is wrong to assume that proper-ty constitutes a blank spot in the liberal consciousness. Many liberal thinkers

do treat property as a serious concern even i only in passing. The intricaciesmight not always be clear but there is a consensus that a liberal order cannoteist without private property and that there are many reasons why this is thecase. We will now look at them.

For some liberals property is the most signifcant aspect o liberalism. Thisis the case with the amous economist and political philosopher, Ludwig vonMises, the ounder o the so-called Austrian School of Economics. In his words

the program o liberalism [], i condensed into a single word, would have toread: property, that is, private ownership o the means o production []. Allthe other demands o liberalism result rom his undamental demand.16 Manyliberals, classical liberals, or instance, would agree. Most economic liberals andlibertarians would certainly do so.

15 Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital, pp. 6-8.16 Liberalism in the Classical Tradition, 3rd edition, San Francisco: Cobden Press and New York:

The Foundation or Economic Education, Inc., 1985 (German edition, 1927), p. 19.


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6.1. Prper and reed

Other liberals might not be as categorical but they still regard property asbeing central to liberalisms core value and objective: reedom. Ludwig von Mi-

ses disciple and Nobel Prize Laureate Friedrich A. von Hayek sees property as aguarantor o reedom (in its meaning o absence o coercion by the state):

The recognition o private [] property is [] an essential conditionor the prevention o coercion, though by no means the only one. Weare rarely in a position to carry out a coherent plan o action unlesswe are certain o our eclusive control o some material objects; andwhere we do not control them, it is necessary that we know who does iwe are to collaborate with others. The recognition o property is clearlythe rst step in the delimitation o the private sphere which protectsus against coercion [].17

In an earlier work Hayek was more orthright and unequivocal:

our generation has orgotten is that the system o private property isthe most important guarantee[my italics, SM] o reedom, not only orthose who own property, but scarcely less or those who do not.18

Hayek is not only concerned with the recognition o private property but alsowith its dispersion. He points to a urther important link between private pro-perty and reedom: between the (wide) dispersion o private property, on theone hand, and reedom rom dependency, another important aspect o ree-dom, on the other:

The decisive condition or mutually advantageous collaboration bet-

ween people, based on voluntary consent rather than coercion, is thatthere be many people who can serve ones needs, so that nobody hasto be dependent on specic persons or the essential conditions o lieor the possibility o development in some direction. It is competitionmade possible by the dispersion o property that deprives the individualowners o particular things o all coercive powers.19

17 The Constitution of Liberty, Chicago: The University o Chicago Press, 1960, all p. 140.18 The Road to Serfdom, London and Henley, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979, p. 78.19 The Constitution of Liberty, op. cit., p. 141.


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6.2. Prper and rigs

I we consider certain political rights and civil liberties to be an epression oreedom, the right to private property is one o these epressions. But a number

o liberal thinkers go a step urther. They see the right to priae prper ase s cenral rig as a guarantoror even a necessary precondition orthe enjoyment o urther rights. Indeed, one might even see all rights as beingproperty rights. This point is made by Murray Rothbard when he writes [] theconcept o rights only makes sense as property rights. For not only are thereno human rights which are not also property rights, but the ormer rights losetheir absoluteness and clarity and become uzzy and vulnerable when propertyrights are not used as the standard. He goes on to say that

there are two senses in which property rights are identical with humanrights: one, that property can onlyaccrue to humans, so that their rightsto property are rights that belong to human beings; and two, that thepersons right to his own body, his personal liberty, is a property rightin his own person as well as a 'human right'. But more importantly orour discussion, human rights, when not put in terms o property rights,turn out to be vague and contradictory [].

[For eample, SM], there is no such thing as a separate 'right to reespeech'; there is only a mans property right: the right to do as he willswith his own or to make voluntary agreements with other propertyowners.

In short, a person does not have a 'right to reedom o speech'; what hedoes have is the right to hire a hall and address the people who enterthe premises. He does not have a 'right to reedom o the press'; what

he does have is the right to write or publish a pamphlet, and to sellthat pamphlet to those who are willing to buy it (or to give it away tothose who are willing to accept it). Thus, what he has in each o thesecases is property rights, including the right o ree contract and transerwhich orm a part o such rights o ownership. There is no etra 'rightto reedom o speech' or ree press beyond the property rights that aperson may have in any given case.20

20 Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, chapter 15 (Human Rights As Property Rights),New York & London: New York University Press, 1998, p. 113-114 (originally published bythe Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N.J. in 1982.


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The key that unlocks human rights and makes them real is thus the reedomto own and echange property or economic reedom, a term that Rothbardconsiders to be a synonym or this reedom.21

Pipes, who bases his arguments in avour o private property on historical evi-dence, comments that the right to property in and o itsel does not guaran-tee civil rights and liberties. Notwithstanding this proviso, however, privateproperty,

has been the single most eective device or ensuring both, because itcreates an autonomous sphere in which, by mutual consent, neither thestate nor society can encroach: by drawing a line between the publicand the private, it makes the owner co-sovereign, as it were. Hence, itis arguably more important than the right to vote.

He goes on to warn that the

weakening o property rights by such devices as wealth distributionor purposes o social welare and intererence with contractual rightsor the sake o civil rights undermines liberty in the most advanceddemocracies even as the peacetime accumulation o wealth and the

observance o democratic procedures conveys the impression that allis well.22

6.3. Prper, scie and e sae

There are urther contets in which private property plays a central role in li-beral thought. One o them is society and the state. The idea, a very old one,is that society and the state eist because o the need to secure possessions.

Prper is seen as e asis scie and e rainale r law and gern-en. David Hume, a philosopher o the Scottish Enlightenment, saw property which he dened as stable possession derived rom the rules o justice23 as the raison dtreand glue o human society. Its cohesion is guaranteed bymeans o clear rules pertaining to property. In his words:

21 By Murray N. Rothbard, For a New Liberty The Libertarian Manifesto, San Francisco: Foand Wilkes, 1973, revised edition 1978, pp. 68-69.

22 Property and Freedom, p. 281.23 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, reprinted from the Original Edition in three volumes

and edited, with an analytical index, by L.A. Selby-Bigge (Oord: Clarendon Press, 1896).Part II o Book III (O Morals), section III, O the rules, which determine property.


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is the only solution men have yet discovered to the problem o recon-ciling individual reedom with the absence o confict. Law, liberty, andproperty are an inseparable trinity. There can be no law in the sense ouniversal rules o conduct which does not determine boundaries o the

domains o reedom by laying down rules that enable each to ascertainwhere he is ree to act.27

Armen A. Alchian also emphasises this point, eplaining that i people have se-cure property rights, there is no reason to resort to violence in order to secureones needs and wants:

Well-dened and well-protected property rights replace competition byviolence with competition by peaceul means. The etent and degree oprivate property rights undamentally aect the ways people competeor control o resources. With more complete private property rights,market echange values become more infuential. The personal statusand personal attributes o people competing or a resource matter lessbecause their infuence can be oset by adjusting the price.28

Basically, liberals maintain that the point o society is to provide security andenable peaceul echange or its members. Such security etends not only to

the person but to that persons property. The unction o law is to ensure thatproperty is protected. I we bear in mind the relationship between reedomand property, it ensues the unction o law is to protect reedom by protectingproperty.

6.5. Prper and rle law

However, law is not enough. A iale scie ased n secre prper rigs

and the peaceul echange o property reires that everyone has an equal stakein that society. This can only be the case i the law treats everyone equally andthere are no other means o adjudicating conficts other than by law. There mustbe rule o law. The unction orle law, a central principle o liberalism, is toensure that this is done impartially or the benet o all and not o a powerulelite or any other minority. In this were not the case, law would be arbitrary.I law is only applied or some, others and their respective property would nolonger be secure. This is what Hume had in mind when he wrote that the

27 Friedrich A. von Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty(3 Volumes), London: Routledge & KeganPaul, 1973, Vol. 1, p. 107.

28 Property Rights, op. cit.


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establishment o the rule, concerning the stability o possession [] [is]absolutely necessary to human society []. The convention concerningthe stability o possession is entered into, in order to cut o all occasionso discord and contention; and this end would never be attained, were

we allowed to apply this rule dierently in every particular case [].

The government [] must act by general and equal laws, that are pre-viously known to all the members and all their subjects29

Harry Burrows Acton similarly stresses the importance o equality beore thelaw, arguably the most important element o rule o law, in the interest o allproperty holders or not to uphold this principle would destroy reedom:

A system o private property established in the interests o specicpersons, and varied to suit their demands, would inringe individualreedom, since those not so beneted would be coerced in the interestso the avoured owners and hence would not be ree. Governmentalcoercion should always be in order to uphold rules.30

6.6. Prper and lieral decrac

Many liberals see priae prper as a necessar cndiin r pliical pl-ralis and lieral decrac. Martin Wol, a contemporary journalist and in-ormed epert on economic aairs, writes that

Private property is [] a necessary condition or political pluralism. Apolitical entity [] that controls all a countrys resources, through thestate, is unlikely to allow any opposition access to the means o cam-paigning against it. Worse, i all economic decisions are political, loss

o power threatens a loss o livelihood. Power becomes the only routeto wealth. This is not just lethal or the economy. It is also lethal ordemocratic politics, which becomes a orm o civil war. It is only whenpolitics are not a matter o personal survival that a stable democracyis conceivable.31

29 A Treatise of Human Nature, op. cit., Part II o Book III (O Morals), section III.

30 The Morals of Markets and Related Essays, edited by David Gordon and Jeremy Shearmur,Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1993, p. 195.

31 Martin Wol, Why Globalization Works The Case or a Global Market Economy, New Haven:Yale University Press, 2004, p.30.


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6.7. Prper and ecnics

Finally we turn to economics. Liberals, and economic liberals in particular, havehighlighted the signicance o property or a market economy. More recently,

a number o seminal studies, including those by Pipes and de Soto mentionedabove, have identied secure prper rigs as a r ecnic dee-lpen. It is this aspect o property that has led to a complete re-evaluationo property and its role in society.

According to Tibor R. Machan, when we talk about ree markets, we talk aboutreedom o trade and this

presupposes property rights. I no such rights eist, then there is noneed or or opportunity to trade. People could just take rom otherswhat they want and would not need to wait or agreement on terms.Or, alternatively, i everyone owned everything, no one could ever trade.Everyones permission would be required or every transaction.32

The late Bernhard Heitger o the Kiel Institute for World Economics observesthatproperty rights are at the heart o any economic activitynobody will becomeeconomically active i he can be cheated out o the ruits o his eorts. In ad-

dition, meaningul prices and ecient use o resources require secure propertyrights.33 Today such statements seem to state the obvious but these realitieswere overlooked by proessional economists or a long time. Heitger commentsthat traditional growth theory

makes no mention o incentives and private property rights; they aresimply taken as given. In reality this is not the case. Obviously, manycountries o the Third World lack secure and well-established private

property rights and there are many graduations between secure andinsecure property rights, so that in act there are diverging incentivesto work, invest, and innovate.34

32 By Tibor R. Machan, In Defense of Property Rights and Capitalism, in: The Freeman, Ideas

on Liberty, vol. 43, no. 6, June 1993, http://www.ee.org/publications/the-reeman/article.asp?aid=1848.

33 Cato Journal, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Winter 2004).34 Ibid.


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Lierals arge a priae prper

is the most signicant aspect o liberalism

is an integral part o and a guarantor o reedom

is thus also a guarantor o political rights and civil liberties

is the rationale or society and is the reason or government and law

requires the rule o law

preserves peace and osters cooperative behaviour

is a necessary condition or pluralism and liberal democracy

is the oundation or development and a ree market economy

allows the ecient utilisation o resources, especially knowledge and is hence the

key to innovation

Hernando de Soto came to the same conclusions when comparing the per-

ormance o capitalist and developing economies. He believes that there is noalternative but capitalism or successul development it is the only game intown35 and that capitalism is characterised by secure and ormally recog-nised property rights. The challenge acing mankind is to ensure that it worksor the majority o mankind which, at the moment, it does not.

The International Property Rights Index, in the development o which Hernandode Soto is involved, outlines the si economic unctions o a unctioning system

o property system as ollows:

[ing] the economic potential o assets by describing their value on pa-per.

[integrating] dispersed inormation into one consistent network o syste-matized representations.

[making] people accountable, linking assets to their owners and making

them easily identied and localized.

35 The Mystery of Capital, op. cit, p. 226.


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[making] assets ungible so they can be moved, be more accessible and begiven dierent unctions.

[networking] people by lowering the costs o connecting assets in epanded

markets.

[protecting] transactions by securing not just the assets but also transac-tions.36

An important economic argument used by liberals is that priae prper en-sres e ecien ilisain resrces, especiall the resource onw-ledge. It is important to stress this point, not least because o its relevance orthe current discussion o intellectual property rights. The amous liberal eco-nomist and Nobel Prize winner Milton Freedom eplains why:

the only way in which you can be ree to bring your knowledge to bearin your particular way is by controlling your property. I you dont con-trol your property, i somebody else controls it, theyre going to decidewhat to do with it, and you have no possibility o eercising infuenceon it. The interesting thing is that theres a lot o knowledge in thissociety, but [] that knowledge is divided. I have some knowledge; you

have some knowledge; he has some knowledge. How do we bring thesescattered bits o knowledge back together? And how do we make it inthe sel-interest o individuals to use that knowledge eciently? The keyto that is private property, because i it belongs to me, you know, theresan obvious act. Nobody spends somebody elses money as careully ashe spends his own. Nobody uses somebody elses resources as careullyas he uses his own. So i you want eciency and eectiveness, i youwant knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the

means o private property.37

36 IPRI, p. 45.

37 Interview conducted with Milton Friedman on 1 October 2000 and published on PublicBroadcasting Service website devoted to its production entitled Commanding Heightshttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitetlo/int_miltonriedman.html.


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7. A system without private property cannot work

A central shortcoming o any alternative to private property is what Garrett

Hardin termed the tragedy o the commons in an article published in 1968.When anything is held in common, with all or many people as "owners" andwith access, there is a tendency or sel-interested and rational individuals toincrease eploitation o the resource or their own individual benet. That indi-vidual receives the ull benet o the increase but, at the same time, the costsare spread among all users. In the end the commons are ruined and so are thepeople using it.38 As Hardin pointed out, this is a trait o all commons, and heconsidered public ownership to have the characteristics o commons. In a laterarticle he pointed out that whenever a distribution system malunctions, weshould be on the lookout or some sort o commons. Fish populations in theoceans have been decimated because people have interpreted the reedom othe seas to include an unlimited right to sh them. The sh were, in eect, acommons.39

The only viable alternative is the allocation o property to specic owners witheclusive rights o use. Using roads as an eample he contrasted the dierentoutcomes o private and public ownership:

Congestion on public roads that don't charge tolls is another eam-ple o a government-created tragedy o the commons. I roads wereprivately owned, owners would charge tolls and people would take thetoll into account in deciding whether to use them. Owners o privateroads would probably also engage in what is called peak-load pricing,charging higher prices during times o peak demand and lower pricesat other times. But because governments own roads that they nance

with ta dollars, they normally do not charge tolls. The governmentmakes roads into a commons. The result is congestion.40

The ormer USSR presents us with a grand eample o ailure due to lack oprivate property. A well-know book published shortly ater the collapse o thecommunist system and using material that had become available as a result

38 This idea was originally published in Science, December 1968: Vol. 162. no. 3859, pp. 1243-1248; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ull/162/3859/1243.

39 Tragedy of the Commons, entry in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economicspublished onlineby the Liberty Fund, Inc., (Library o Economics and Liberty, http//www.econlib.org/library/Enc/TragedyotheCommons.html)

40 Ibid.


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oGlasnostdescribes ecological and environmental destruction without par-allel. This destruction was the result o public ownership that translated intoa system that I would describe as one in which no-one is responsible, no-onepays and no-one cares. There was no real accountability. The authors quote the

chairman o the State Committee for the Protection of Nature (Goskompriroda)who in 1989 observed that the ultimate eplanation or what was wrong inthe USSR was that in the United States the land has masters, whereas in ourcountry it belongs to the state that is, to nobody.41 Where private ownershipwas possible, things were dierent. Thus, or instance, on their private plots just 1 to 2 percent o all land armers produced about two-thirds o thepotatoes and eggs and about 40 percent o meat, meat and vegetables consu-med in the mid-1960s.42

Redistribution o property is or modern socialists an others an alternative toabolition. Some advantages o private property can be maintained whilst ensu-ring that vast disparities are eliminated. This is something that David Hume calledequalisation. He predicted that all such attempts would ail because they

[] are really, at bottom, impracticable; and were they not so, wouldbe etremely pernicious to human society. Render possessions ever soequal, men's dierent degrees o art, care and industry will immediately

break that equality. Or i you check these virtues, you reduce societyto the most etreme indigence; and instead o preventing want andbeggary in a ew, render it unavoidable to the whole community.43

Equalising property is the same as the socialist objective o equalising outcomes.To ensure that possessions are equal leads nowhere because dierent humanbeings produce dierent results even i the starting point is the same. The alter-native checking the virtues or, to add another actor, lessening the incentives

undermines the oundation o economic progress, entrepreneurship. Needlessto say, attempts to control the distribution o property directly or indirectly haspernicious eects that rival those o the abolition o private property.

41 Cited in: Ecocide in the USSRby Murray Feshbach and Alred Friendly (London: Aurum Press,1992), p. 49.

42 Ibid., p. 50.43 An Enquiry into the Principles of Morals, Section III. O Justice, part 2. Tet derived romthe edition o 1777, web edition published by The University o Adelaide Library (eBooks@Adelaide); http://etet.library.adelaide.edu.au/h/hume/david/h92pm/h92pm.zip.


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8. Basic literature on property rightsand their importance

Armen A. Alchian, Property Rights, The Concise Encyclopedia o Economics,http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PropertyRights.html.

Tom Bethell, The Noblest Triumph Property and Prosperity through the Ages,New York: St Martins Press, 1998.

International Property Rights Index 2009 Report, study conducted by Anne Chan-dima Dedigama, Washington DC: Property Rights Alliance, 2009.

Garrett Hardin, Tragedy of the Commons, entry in The Concise Encyclopedia ofEconomicspublished online by the Liberty Fund, Inc., (Library o Economics andLiberty, http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/TragedyotheCommons.html).

Stephan Kinsella, Against Intellectual Property, Washington: Auburn, Alabama:Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008.

Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom, New York: Alred A Knop, Inc., 1999.

Hernando de Soto, The mystery of capital: why capitalism triumphs in the Westand fails everywhere else, London: Bantam Press, 2000.

Adam Thierer and Clyde Wayne Crews (eds.), Copy Fights: The Future of Intelle-ctual Property in the Information Age, Washington: Cato Institute, 2002.


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Liberalism, liberal policy and private property