“Public Property”

“Since ‘public property’ is a collectivist fiction, since the public as a whole can neither use nor dispose of its ‘property,’ that ‘property’ will always be taken over by some political ‘elite,’ by a small clique which will then rule the public—a public of literal, dispossessed proletarians.”

“If, for example, the planners running a socialist economy are responsible individuals, they will have to set terms for the legitimate use of public property; this will require them to define men’s permissible course of thought and action. They will have to specify the scientific theories worthy of laboratory research, the inventions worthy of economic investment, the art worthy of public funding, the men worthy of employment and promotion in every field from ditchdigging to college teaching, the dissent worthy of being aired on the (publicly owned) streets, in the (publicly owned) meeting halls, and in the (publicly owned) press. (For a partial example of this approach, in a semisocialistic country, study the volumes of regulations issued by Washington, the volumes defining what businessmen, physicians, educators et al. must, can, and cannot do when they spend federal funds.) If the planners are irresponsible men, however, independence on the citizen’s part is equally impossible: such men will demand anything or nothing and then switch the setup the next hour or month. They will act according to their whim of the moment, which thus becomes the basic law of the citizen’s life. (For example, study the ceaseless, senseless changes through the years in all the above federal regulations.) Either way, the planners in matter become totalitarian dictators. To the men whose lives are being thus planned, independence is not a life-sustaining virtue. It is a threat when confined to the soul and, in action, a crime.”

• “Property Rights and the Crisis of the Electric Grid” (An article by Raymond C. Niles in The Objective Standard)
• “The Property Status of Airwaves” (An article by Ayn Rand in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, available for purchase from the Ayn Rand Bookstore)
• “The perils of public parks” (Blog entry by Tom Bowden)
• “Florida case highlights erosion of property rights” (Blog entry by Tom Bowden)
• “Are shopping malls ‘public spaces’?” (Blog entry by Tom Bowden)
• “How can we most effectively weaken property rights?” Part 1 and Part 2 (Blog entries by Tom Bowden)