Property Rights

“Who Will Build the Roads?” Part 3

by Wendy McElroy August 1, 2024

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In short, a free-market approach is more practical because it is based on human nature and on demonstrated preferences. By contrast, imposed measures go against human nature: Otherwise, they would not need to be imposed. Rothbard expresses a more practical reason — one among many — why government intervention into the ...

The Never-Ending Federal Surveillance Crime Spree

by James Bovard March 1, 2024

Last December, one of the most intrusive provisions in the federal statute book was set to expire. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authorizes the National Security Agency to vacuum up trillions of emails and other data. A bevy of bipartisan members of Congress called for radically curtailing those nullifications of Americans’ privacy. But the effort to ...

Equality and Fairness for All but Property Owners

by Laurence M. Vance December 1, 2021

The grossly misnamed Equality Act is a government attack on the rights of private property, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, free enterprise, and freedom of contract. According to the official summary of bill (H.R.5): This bill prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, ...

Civil Liberties, Economic Freedom, and Property Rights

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 2021

We are living at a time when civil liberties are severely under attack from a number of directions. Two of the most obvious ones at the moment are the response by many governments to the coronavirus crisis and the rise of “critical race theory,” with its accompanying “cancel culture.” We are seeing imposed or threatened suppression of freedom of speech, ...

All the Ways the Government Can Lay Siege to Your Property

by John W. Whitehead March 3, 2021

“How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and … forcibly enter?”— Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the lone dissenter in Kentucky v. King Americans are not safe in their homes. Not anymore, at least. This present menace comes from the government and its army of bureaucratized, corporatized, ...

The Question Never Asked about Federal Lands

by Laurence M. Vance July 9, 2020

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), known as the Government Accounting Office until 2004, “is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress.” It is headed by the Comptroller General of the United States. The GAO likes to be called the “congressional watchdog” because it “examines how taxpayer dollars are spent and provides Congress and federal ...

Civil Asset Forfeiture Suffers a Crushing Defeat

by George Leef October 1, 2018

There are a few issues where Americans on both sides of our political divide are in agreement and one of them is the wrongfulness of civil asset-forfeiture laws. Under those laws (which exist at federal, state, and local levels), a person can be deprived of his property merely because a law-enforcement official suspects that it might have somehow been ...

Libertarian Lessons: Property Rights

by Scott McPherson August 31, 2018

Borrowing heavily from the Whig philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all of us have the right to our lives, to our liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness. Less than a century earlier, Locke had offered a similar theme, with a slight difference: He stated that we have a right to ...

Who Owns Your Body?

by Laurence M. Vance August 3, 2018

Norma Brickey, an eighty-two-year-old mother, has been driving the streets of Columbus, Ohio, with a sign in her car window reading, “My son needs a kidney, O positive,” followed by her phone number. Both she and another of her sons have had kidney transplants. All three suffer from polycystic kidney disease, a condition in which cysts ...

The Libertarian Angle: Eminent Domain (video)

by Future of Freedom Foundation July 18, 2018

One of the basic functions of a government is the defense of property. How does eminent domain fit within this role? Is there any place in a free society for eminent domain? FFF president Jacob G. Hornberger and Richard M. Ebeling discuss. Go to the podcast.

We’re All Trespassers Now in the Face of the Government’s Land Grabs

by John W. Whitehead May 9, 2018

“No power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent.” — John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States We have no real property rights. Think about it. That house you live in, the car you drive, the small (or not so small) acreage of land that has been passed down ...

Freedom of Contract: A Bedrock of Freedom

by George Leef September 1, 2017

Freedom of contract used to be understood as a cornerstone of civilization and a crucial element in economic progress. The Constitution’s Framers included in Article 1, Section 10, a clause stating that Congress was forbidden to enact any law impairing the obligation of contracts. And in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Congress included the freedom to enter into ...