I have seen a few comments — none on LRC, I am pleased to say — that equate the TSA’s prohibiting its employees from accessing Internet sites that deal in “controversial opinion” with the right of an employer to control its workplace.   The analogy fails for one important reason: it presumes that a governmental agency can claim rights derived from the principle of private ownership of property.  Whatever resources the state employs in its operations have come about through theft (i.e., from the forcible deprivation of an owner’s property interests).  A private employer puts an enterprise together through his or her own resources, or in soliciting other owners to voluntarily invest in the firm.  To regard the state’s organizations as functional equivalents of marketplace systems — by virtue of employing people to carry out its activities —  is to confuse form over substance.  Such thinking underlies the popular mindset that treats the business system as indistinguishable from a free market system.  One might just as well argue that a mugger acquires a “property” interest in his spoils that ought not be taken from him!

The Best of Butler Shaffer