The Philosophy of Liberty: Property

Who owns you? Does anyone other than you have the right to tell you what you can do to your body, or with your property? This video explores the fundamental concepts of Frederic Bastiat and John Locke on the issue of individual liberty and ownership of person and property.

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Original video source: TheF4FS YouTube channel

Translated by Dražen Jeftenić

(see video below transcript)

Transcript:

And not the philosophy of liberty: property!

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself the question who owns you? There can really only be two answers: A. You own yourself. or B. Someone else (another individual or group of people) owns you. The concept of self ownership asserts that each person by virtue of being a human being has the absolute right to control his or her own body and remain free from outside interference.

Our founding fathers believed that self ownership was a self evident truth. This lead them to conclude that every individual has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As John Locke stated... not that John Locke. John Locke stated in sixteen eighty nine: "Every man has a property in his own person. This no one has a right to, but himself." Lock also believed that since man own himself, he also owns the fruits of his labor. In order to live our lives, exercise our liberty, and pursue happiness, we must wrestle with the elements found in our environment.

In their natural state, many raw materials have no real value. By mixing his labor and creativity with natural resources, these raw materials are now transformed into more useful goods necessary for his survival and his enjoyment. What does that look like? You can cut down trees and build a log cabin. Pick apples and make an apple pie. Or in a more modern context buy numerous electrical and mechanical components the build things like computers, cell phones and time machines. OK, maybe that's going a little far, but you get the point.

The bottom line when it comes to physical resources, someone must control them in order to put them to productive use. The question then is who? It's either: 1.) The individual who brings resources out of the state of nature and into productivity. Or 2.) They belong to another individual: your neighbor, your mother in law, the bully down the road. Or group of individuals: The Congress, the IRS, the United Nations etc. Or 3.) in a communal fashion these resources belong to the world, an equal share for every individual in the entire human race.

Is it really feasible that every individual owns some equal portion of the earth. And who decides which poor soul gets the 1/6 billion piece of land in the middle of the Sahara desert. Is it even possible for property to be productively owned in this manner? Not likely. It would be just a matter of time before these resources would be handed over to a small group of representatives for oversight. That basically takes us right back option two. Ultimately individual ownership and control of property is the only logical solution to ensure that natural resources achieve their highest productive potential.

So where that leave us? First: we own our bodies; second: we own our property. And as Frederic Bastiat once wisely stated: "Life, liberty and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." In other words, the original purpose of government was to protect the property rights of individuals against aggression.

Next time we'll take a look at one of Bastiat's favorite topics: legal plunder. Which, we are sad to learn, does not involve vikings.