Property rights: essential but not sufficient

In spite of what some readers may think, I am a radical supporter of property rights. I am inflexible in my support of the principle. I have been told I'm an extremist on the topic.

This means I have thought hard, for a long time, about the foundation and consequences of property rights-- where they come from and where they lead. If they have limits and if so, where those limits might lie.

This has led me to see property rights (with regard to real estate) as absolutely essential, but not sufficient. These property rights are a slice of the pizza, maybe all but one thin slice, not the whole thing.

If you don't have absolute rights to, and ownership of, your body, no matter where it is, you have no property rights whatsoever. Nor any other kind of rights for that matter if people are right when they say all rights are property rights in one way or another.

All property rights grow out of your right to your body. And, like it or not, that includes the immediate contact surface of your body; your "personal space". I have described this in the past as the bubble surrounding you, from your clothing inward. Without this zone, you have a right to your naked body and nothing else.

To insist that real estate rights trump these self-ownership rights is to put the cart before the horse. It is to focus on the leaves while saying the trunk and branches don't matter.

Nothing I'm saying implies you can damage (or credibly threaten to damage) any private property around you, it doesn't mean you own any private property outside your sphere of "personal space"-- *any private property where your body may be that isn't property you own (As in, if you are standing in your neighbor's house or in Walmart, you have no claim to those properties. You only own yourself and your "personal space" immediately adjacent to your body. You can't reach out and stuff something that belongs to someone else into your pocket and then claim it is yours now-- your action violated their property. Your ACTION)* [between the *s edited for clarity], and it doesn't mean you can become a squatter on that property. If you have right-of-way, you still have right-of-way even if you are asked to leave-- but why hang around longer than you have to? Get out without hesitation.

I have said a lot on this topic over the years; there's no way for me to say it all again, or to even find everything that needs to be part of this post. If you are interested in digging deeper, try the "Property Rights" tag and sift through those posts.

You may not agree with me, and that's OK, but if I were to characterize my view in any other way, I would be lying to you. And I don't do that-- I won't do that on any topic. It's not me. For good or bad.

Relevant recent links:
Right-of-way
Right-of-way and (sometimes) guns
"Possession"

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Writing to promote liberty is my job.
I hope I add something you find valuable enough to support. If so...
YOU get to decide if I get paid.

"Possession"

One of my earliest independent libertarian realizations, around the time I was a pre-teen or young teen, was that simple possession-- of anything, anywhere-- could never be a real crime; a wrong. That for something to be wrong, it had to be used in a way which harmed someone. There had to be possession plus harmful action. Possession was passive; there was no harm. Unless the thing you possess is radioactive or emitting toxic fumes ("active" being the key), obviously.

It was the action alone, never the possession.

And being "offended" by the presence of something isn't the same as being harmed by it. If you are offended, you are violating yourself and no one else is responsible for that.

My parents always watched "the news" and every evening I was hearing reports that someone had been arrested for "possession"-- usually of drugs, but sometimes of other objects.

At that time, I was still a supporter of prohibition. I had never heard anyone question it in the slightest way and it wasn't an important issue to me.

Even so, the realization dawned on me that this wasn't a real crime. It couldn't be. They possessed something but hadn't hurt anyone with it, or even threatened to do so. I hadn't thought of the concept of counterfeit "laws" at that time, but I instinctively knew that any rules against possessing anything-- and not against actually doing something harmful with it-- were wrong.

Later I stopped making imaginary distinctions between what people did in the name of government and what they did as individuals. If it's wrong for government to do it, it doesn't become OK just because you're not a government employee acting on behalf of government.

This, along with my independent recognition around the same time that "property taxes" were unethical, formed the foundation of my later libertarian thinking.

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Writing to promote liberty is my job.
I hope I add something you find valuable enough to support. If so...
YOU get to decide if I get paid.