Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Private Property Right Economic Freedom by Chandra

Whenever people, experts and policy makers even legal pundits, it is the basic rights if any man living for their livelihood. I first thought of the private property is alright for the person who owns the land. What about the masses who is not owner of any single property. This is thinking in stage one only.

Think if any one says, the same masses do not own any land or private property. Did they not live on this earth? It means obviously they are part of our society and have some sort of same private property right where they are all living with others and share the common private property right which the Government supposes to ensure by all means. Therefore, it is the basic human natural order or right to have private property and thereby allocate the resources do to their (people) business with others and create wealth to enrich better standard of life and the same for every body else’s.

Even economist Thomas Sowell has also written elsewhere about this idea. Particularly in his book on “Applied Economics Thinking beyond State one”

Many experts have written excellent pieces on this topic. There is scholarly one here by liberal economist Walter E. Williams.

Indeed it is worthy to note the below lines:

“As Thomas Sowell writes in Knowledge and Decisions, “It is precisely those things which belong to ‘the people’ which have historically been despoiled—wild creatures, the air, and waterways being notable examples. This goes to the heart of why property rights are socially important in the first place. Property rights mean self-interested monitors. No owned creatures are in danger of extinction. No owned forests are in danger of being leveled. No one kills the goose that lays the golden egg when it is his goose.”

 Aristotle said, “What is common to many is taken least care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than for what they possess in common with others.” What he is saying is that private property rights force people to internalize externalities, which is just a fancy way of saying that a person’s wealth is held hostage to his doing the “socially responsible” thing—wisely using the planet’s scarce resources. Private property rights induce the homeowner to take into account the effect of his current use of the property on its future value. That is why we expect a homeowner to give better care to a house than a renter. A homeowner has a greater stake in what a house is worth ten or 20 years later. An owner would more likely make sacrifices and take the kind of care that lengthens the usable life of the house. He reaps the reward from doing so, or pays the penalty for not doing so. Owners require security deposits against damage to make renters share some of their interests in the property”.

It is not surprise if any one mentions that in India we lost that private property rights from our Constitutional Fundamental Rights way back in 1978. Originally, the right to property was also included in the Fundamental Rights; however, the Forty-fourth Amendment, passed in 1978, revised the status of property rights by stating that "No person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law."

Perhaps one can say the present SEZs land issues across the states is directly related to unavailability of private property right under fundamental right.

It is also interesting some you could read the following articles.

The right to property  by ] 

Kaushik Das


Property rights attack continues by Walter E. Williams. 

Chapter 4: Private Property Rights 

A Constitution Based On Property Rights? by Parth J. Shah

A Second Republic | There Can Be No Collective Property by Sauvik Chakraverti 


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