All Posts Tagged With: "property rights"
More Border-Picture Economics
I suggested in the May issue that an aerial photograph of the border between barren Haiti and the heavily forested Dominican Republic was a predictor of the recent Haitian earthquake devastation. Not the earthquake, mind you, but the devastation that followed. The property-rights vacuum that encouraged Haitians to cut trees down without replanting also motivated [...]
29Jun2010 | T. Norman Van Cott | 0 comments | ContinuedDebate Over 1964 Civil Rights Act
Update: My response essay, “Context-Keeping and Community Organizing,” is here. I will be participating in an online discussion about the appropriate libertarian position on the 1964 Civil Rights Act as part of the Cato Unbound series. David Bernstein of George Mason University Law School has kicked it off with his essay here. My response will [...]
16Jun2010 | Sheldon Richman | 4 comments | ContinuedCommon Versus Government Property
A central contribution of Elinor Ostrom, which earned her a share of the 2009 Nobel Prize in economics, was to reclaim the commons as a legitimate form of property. (For more detail, see Peter Boettke’s December 2009 Freeman article.) Organization theorist Dick Langlois always makes it a practice in his European economic history class to [...]
19Apr2010 | Kevin A. Carson | 52 comments | ContinuedSowing and Reaping Devastation in Haiti
Pictures and accounts of Haiti’s earthquake devastation remind me of a November 1987 National Geographic photograph of Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic–the two nations “share” the Caribbean island Hispaniola. The photo showed a heavily forested Dominican Republic and a barren Haiti. The caption noted that Haiti was once heavily forested. I bet some of [...]
19Apr2010 | T. Norman Van Cott | 6 comments | ContinuedBotswana: A Diamond in the Rough
Over the past 40 years Botswana has been sub-Saharan Africa’s fastest-growing country and one of the fastest-growing countries in the world. Though it started off as one of the poorest countries in the world, its per capita income now compares favorably with many Mediterranean counterparts. Like most countries, the financial crisis has slowed Botswana’s recent [...]
24Mar2010 | Scott Beaulier | 3 comments | ContinuedCorporate Land Grab in Africa
Much of the modern world has been shaped, alas, by governments’ grabbing land from peasants and yeomen, whose families had worked it for hundreds of years, in order to give it to the nobility or other privileged interests. As a result, many self-sufficient farmers became tenants of politically created absentee landlords. As Ludwig von Mises [...]
12Mar2010 | Sheldon Richman | 4 comments | ContinuedSowing and Reaping Devastation in Haiti
Haitians bear the responsibility for the state of Haitian property rights. If not the Haitians, who else, pray tell?
15Feb2010 | T. Norman Van Cott | 13 comments | ContinuedThe Left, The Right, and the State
The Left, The Right, and The State, a collection of 103 essays by Llewellyn Rockwell, looks at the ways both the left and right use the State to pursue their goals. Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, argues forcefully that our liberty and property are endangered equally by left-wing and right-wing statism. As [...]
23Oct2009 | George C. Leef | 4 comments | ContinuedScience Fiction and Economic Fiction
Thomas Macaulay Boudreaux, age 12 and my only child, is a huge fan of Star Trek. Actually, even an italicized “huge” doesn’t quite capture the extent of Thomas’s fascination with, and knowledge of, the franchise. From Captain Pike through Mr. Spock to Ensign Sato, Thomas knows and loves anything and everything Star Trek. So in [...]
23Oct2009 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 4 comments | ContinuedHow “Intellectual Property” Impedes Competition
Any consideration of “intellectual property rights” must start from the understanding that such “rights” undermine genuine property rights and hence are illegitimate in terms of libertarian principle. Real, tangible property rights result from natural scarcity and follow as a matter of course from the attempt to maintain occupancy of physical property that cannot be possessed [...]
23Sep2009 | Kevin A. Carson | 13 comments | ContinuedThe Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives
Without private property rights, people have incentives to overuse an asset. Conflicting private property rights, on the other hand, create a “tragedy of the anti-commons” in which resources are underused, according to Michael Heller. In The Gridlock Economy, he treats the reader to a compelling array of examples of the tragedy of the anti-commons in [...]
19Aug2009 | Art Carden | 0 comments | ContinuedIP Debate Breaks Out at FEE
At a recent FEE seminar, a debate over intellectual “property” broke out spontaneously among Ivan Pongracic (second from right), Paul Cwik (second from left), and me (left, where I belong). Who won?
15Jun2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedIntellectual “Property” Versus Real Property
Intellectual “property” (IP) is a sleeper issue. It seems uncontroversial: Someone invents or writes something and therefore owns it. What could be plainer? But IP contains the power to destroy liberty. IP isn’t merely about rock bands preventing kids from sharing MP3s over the Internet. (See “Weird Al” Yankovic’s musical commentary, “Don’t Download This Song,” [...]
12Jun2009 | Sheldon Richman | 9 comments | ContinuedTGIF: Intellectual "Property" Versus Real Property
Intellectual “property” (IP) is a sleeper issue. It seems uncontroversial: Someone invents or writes something and therefore owns it. What could be plainer? But IP contains the power to destroy liberty. The rest of TGIF is here.
12Jun2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedMr. Obama, Tear Down This Wall!
All of us should worry, if not panic, when we remember that the walls keeping others out also keep us in.
21May2009 | Becky Akers | 69 comments | ContinuedLand-Use Controllers Never Quit
I have more than a small suspicion that those who promote urbanization will do so no matter what it does for the climate. The answer for them is always the same: more urbanization. Don’t worry about the exact question.
21May2009 | Steven Greenhut | 0 comments | ContinuedSupreme Neglect: How to Revive Constitutional Protection for Private Property
The framers of the Constitution were acutely aware that politics—even in the highly limited democracy they envisioned—could be dangerous to private property. For that reason they added the “takings” clause to the Fifth Amendment: “Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” Unfortunately, like so much other constitutional language intended to [...]
2Apr2009 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | Continued-
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