I was invited by my friend Prof. Shawn Welnak to give a speech at Long Island University. This is a follow upon question by one of his students.From: G
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2019 2:06 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Private Property Question
Hello Dr.Block,
I would just like to reach out and thank you again for joining us last week for the colloquia. It was an incredible experience and I valued every second. I hope you had a safe trip back to New Orleans.
I would also like to pose a question. After reading the assigned readings we had I came to terms with the fact that private property just seems right to me. It has the best outcomes for many issues we face today that the government just doesn’t seem to fix. But there has to be some negatives to private property. I know that it is always beneficial to see both sides of the opinions that we hold. For example I hold freedom of speech very close to myself but I am able to see the positive and negatives which allow for me to understand why others have different opinions on it(but they still seem crazy to me). So my question is what are the negatives to having private property?
Dr. Welnak gave me the example of if someone was to privatize Central Park in NYC then someone would most likely build skyscrapers and do we really want someone to do that? I guess an issue would be that we don’t have control over who is privatizing the land and what they will be doing with that lot.
If I am going to support private property I want to be able to see why there would be faults to it, or maybe there aren’t any faults at all. I hope I am being clear enough and I hope to hear from you soon.
Best, G
Dear G:
It was an honor to interact with you and Shawn’s other students.
Yes, there are indeed negatives to the libertarian, private property, free enterprise philosophy.
For example, some people like pornography, prostitution, sado-masochism, addictive drugs, suicide, heavy gambling, etc. The market will indeed get them that. I happen to personally believe that all these things are problematic (but still should be legal). I regard this as a flaw in the system of laissez faire capitalism. The market is like a gun or a knife or a hammer: can be used for both good and bad purposes.
I don’t see the problem, however, with privatizing Central Park. Presumably, it would be owned by very acute, astute, businessmen, who would try to maximize its present discounted value. I really don’t know whether or not a few skyscrapers in it would do that, but, the market rewards profitable decisions, that serve most people, and does the very opposite for bad decisions.
Rockefeller Center has long been in private hands. They are doing pretty well with it, right? If not, it would tend to be transferred to other entrepreneurs.
Lookit, private investors are forever making mistakes. We have a profit and LOSS system. But, when they err, they lose money. If they make enough mistakes, and/or big enough ones, they go bankrupt, and their capital moves to other hands. When government is in charge, this system splutters. For example, the Army Corp of Engineers was responsible for the failure of the levies in New Orleans during Katrina. Are they still in business? To ask this is to answer it. Of course they are. They are part of the statist system. If a private firm made an error of this magnitude (1900 people died) they would not likely remain in business.
So, yes, if you compare free enterprise, peopled by flesh and blood creatures, with Nirvana, laissez faire capitalism does not look all that good. But, if you contrast it with government, it smells of roses.
Best regards,
Walter
You might want to take a peek at some of this material:
Guest editor: special two part series on Katrina for the International Journal of Social Economics (IJSE), Volume 35, Numbers 7 and 8, 2008: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=0306-8293&volume=35&issue=7;http://www.emeraldinsight.com/info/journals/ijse/cfp_katrina.jsp;
Block, 2006; Block and Rockwell, 2007; Rockwell and Block, 2010; Culpepper and Block, 2008
Block, Walter E. 2006. “Katrina: Private Enterprise, the Dead Hand of the Past, and Weather Socialism; An Analysis in Economic Geography.” Ethics, Place and Environment: A Journal of Philosophy & Geography; Vol. 9, No. 2, June, pp. 231-241; reprinted in ‘Post-Katrina: Risk Assessment, Economic Analysis and Social Implications’– edited by Harry Richardson, Peter Gordon and James Moore. Edward Elgar Publishing; http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/block_katrina-private-enterprise-2006.pdf
Block, Walter E. and Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. 2007. “Katrina and the Future of New Orleans,” Telos, Vol. 139, Summer, pp. 170-185; http://tinyurl.com/2wv8lc; http://journal.telospress.com;http://journal.telospress.com/cgi/reprint/2007/139/170
Rockwell, Jr., Llewellyn H. and Walter E. Block. 2010. “The Economics and Ethics of Hurricane Katrina” American Journal of Economics and Sociology. Vol. 69, No. 4, October, pp. 1294-1320
Culpepper, Dreda and Walter E. Block. 2008. “Price Gouging in the Katrina Aftermath.” International Journal of Social Economics; Vol. 35, No. 7, pp. 512-520;
Block, Walter E. 2004. “Me and hurricane Ivan.” September 20.
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/block/block44.html
Block, Walter E. 2005A. “Then Katrina Came.” September 3. http://archive.lewrockwell.com/block/block51.html
Block, Walter E. 2005B. “The Answer to Katrina.” September 11.
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/block/block53.html
Block, Walter E. 2005. “Smash the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.” September 22.
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/block/block55.html; https://www.lewrockwell.com/2005/10/walter-e-block/walter-block-in-exile/
Block, Walter E. 2005. “Government and the Katrina Crisis.” The Free Market. Vol. 26, No. 10, October;http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=565&sortorder=articledate
Nov 1. New Orleans, LA. Access Television, channel 77. W.C. Johnson Show Our Story. “Katrina and the aftermath.” Video: http://www.mises.org/multimedia/block/Block-OurStory-11-01-2006.wmv; orhttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2127173181969481512; Audio-only:http://www.mises.org/multimedia/block/Block-OurStory-11-01-2006.mp3;http://www.mises.org/multimedia/block/Block-OurStory-11-01-2006.wmv
8:00 am on July 29, 2019
