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This Website is Dedicated to Alvin Alexander Cheyne January 10, 1921 - June 17, 2005 |
Property
rights become privileges
By Mark Hillman,
The
Anyone
who has grown up on a farm or ranch hears this maxim: "Take care of
the land, and the land will take care of you."
A farmer or rancher who doesn't take care of the soil will soon find that the soil won't produce enough to make ends meet.
But you don't need to be
a farmer or rancher to understand the importance of private property
rights. What's more, property isn't simply a piece of land or a home.
Property is anything you own - your clothes, your car, your business.
For most, our possessions
come from how we choose to utilize our own unique time, skills and
labor, and are selected to meet our specific needs. Moreover, because
our possessions are our own, we take care to maximize their use.
Public and private lands
illustrate well the stewardship incentives of genuine ownership.
Theoretically, we all own parks, open space, forests and such. Yet
without paid employees to keep them clean and safe, our public lands
would be overgrown, littered with garbage, and overrun by
"owners" who enjoy them too much.
By contrast, most private
property owners regularly tend to their property. Even owners who never
plan to produce anything from their land often invest time and money to
improve its appearance.
Once you've made a piece
of property your own, for someone to take it from you by force is
nothing less than theft - not just theft of your property, but of the
time and hard work that you exchanged to purchase it.
Who would do such a
thing? Too often, the answer is our government. But let's not forget
that government isn't organic. Government responds to the public. When
government seizes your property or changes the rules to make your
purpose for it illegal or unprofitable, it's often your fellow citizens
using government to do their dirty work.
Back in 2003, I sponsored
a bill with then-Rep. Shawn Mitchell, R-Broomfield, to restrict the use
of eminent domain by local governments. In several cases around the
At the same time, the
town of Telluride - in a case now before the state Supreme Court -
condemned a prime parcel just beyond its city limits for precisely the
opposite reason: to prevent its development.
Although the owners in
these cases were offered compensation, the point remains that, for
financial or sentimental reasons, they did not want to sell their
property - in some cases, at any price.
Viewed from a property
rights framework, if I am a guest on your property, it's your choice to
allow smoking or not. If you are a guest on my property, the choice is
mine. If we are both guests of a third party, the choice is neither
yours nor mine but the property owner's.
Simply because we
outnumber the property owner, we have no right to impose our will on
someone else's property. Yet the legislature put the will of the
majority ahead of the rights of property owners.
When a mere majority,
which has no investment of time or labor nor any legitimate stake in
your property, can seize it for their own purposes or regulate it into
financial ruin, property ownership has become a privilege, not a right.
Mark Hillman http://www.markhillman
com is a wheat farmer and former state senator.
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NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted
material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those
who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for
non-profit
research and educational purposes only. For more information go
to:http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
Source:
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_6742213