June 03, 2008 ... :

Even a two-year old understands private property
better than the state.

by
Charles Smyth
© June 03, 2008.
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Every day, all over the world, the scenario of little John and Jimmy engaging in mano-a-mano combat in order to settle a dispute over who is to get the use of the monster-truck, plastic bricks or cuddly toy, etc., calls for adult arbitration and/or intervention. Sometimes this is simply a matter of calming the antagonists down and redistributing scarce resources, and sometimes it requires that they be physically removed from the field of conflict, their toys put in the box, and they be confined to their respective corners.

Although little John and Jimmy do not own their toys by virtue of individual, productive effort, they have been led to understand that, through the act of specific giving, specific toys belong to specific parties. And, from the perspective of those who have done the giving, this is how it is intended to be considered, but may have to be modified to accommodate the necessity of unforeseen circumstances in which the concept of sharing is deemed to be the appropriate remedy to insufficnet supply-on-demand, to meet demand.

From strictly within the context of the family, this is a tolerable situation, since there is no clear title to such property, and the recipients have yet to develop any indpendent judgment based on knowledge, to be able to enter into agreements of temporary or permanent exchange. But, by the time they have reached seven or eight years of age, they will have progressed sufficiently to exchange a pencil case for a pack of football cards, for example, but will still be under adult supervison when the value of the exchange is too siginificant vis-à-vis the provisioning adult. For example: a good pair of leather shoes for a pair of tatty trainers. A state of affairs which will continue until sixteen or eighteen years of age has been achieved.

And so, our two-year olds have matured to adulthood and are now free, in a free society, to make judgements based on hard earned knowledge for their own benefit: The Ferrari beckons. There's their beautiful wives/partners and beautiful houses, etc, etc... Not quite.

After all: Who assumed the responsibility to provide the means with which to acquire knowledge. Who assumed the responsibility to provide the medical treatments to keep them alive and well up to this point. Who will permit them to have beautiful wives/partners, and/or beautiful houses, and on what terms.

This 'Who' is the state, which, by way of decades of deliberately mis-integrating the principles of family life and business management practice, has now become, for all intents and purposes, the ultimate gamekeeper-turned-poacher.

All over the world, in western style democracies which are supposed to represent the zenith of freedom, freedom has almost reached its nadir. Property owners are only so in name, since they are rapidly losing any right to the use, disposal and capital value of any property acquired through individual productive effort, in order to pay for future state programmes and policies. Formerly known as Facsim, which is now operating under the 'Full Camo' of stakeholder capitalism.

Under stakeholder capitalism, businessmen and business women who refuse to participate in stakeholder capitalism, or have become, by way of retrospective legislation, in conflict with the principles and ethics of stakeholder capitalism, get vilified at best: Jack Welch, for example. Or become criminalized and/or jailed including the forfeiture of significant wealth, at worst: Conrad Black, possibly EADS' Tom Enders, etc. As a preventive action, others have decided to take the path of least resistance and hand the majority of their property and wealth over to charity in exchange for public adulation, an institutional honour. Bill Gates was so happy with his honorary degree from Neelie Kroes, he went native in Davos.

However, this state-redistribution of scarce resources in order to maintain the peace and to reinforce the authority of the state is destructive in the long run. Unlike the situation pertaining to the two-year olds, little John and Jimmy, whose gifted property is simply a means of gaining pleasure in the short run, and the value of which, in that regard, is always changing, property in the adult sphere has ramifications beyond the short time preference for pleasure only. In the more significant instances, property is also the means by which an income is to be earned including the means which value of earnings may be saved. For example, tools and machinery, a car or truck, a home, a farm of land, etc.

When the state acts like little John and Jimmy's mom or dad with regard to property such as this, it is effectively eating its own feet to stay alive. For once the accumulated capital of the state has been consumed, the state must fall, whether it be the UK, the US or the EU. It happened in Russia in about two decades after the fall of the Tsar and the rise to power of the communists. Not that the Tsar's reign was particularly beneficial vis-à-vis the wealth and happiness of Joe Russia. More contemporaneously, the mismanagement of President Robert Mugabe has been responsible for the destruction of what was reputed to have been the 'bread basket' of Africa, in barely more than five years. But, he is eighty-two years of age, after all, so perhaps he is enjoying a second childhood in the luxury of the EU and the Far East, which Zimbabweans dying at thirty-five, must suffer.

Two-year olds insticntively understand the value of their property as it pertains to their short time prefernce for pleasureable gratification, with the consequences from enforced sharing or temporary loss of ownership being inconsequential to their wellbeing or future happiness. But, as adults who have earned property through productive activity and have paid taxes to the state to secure the right to its use, disposal and capital value, the impact rapidly tends towards impoverishment at best, and death at worst, whichever comes first.