The Constitution, Property Rights, and Climate Change

QUORA: According to the U.S. Constitution, one of the government’s essential roles is to protect property. Climate change and rising sea levels put some property at risk of flooding. What do conservatives want to do about this?

My answer:

Let me start by stating unequivocally that I am not a conservative. I speak only for myself. 

As to the question, it’s true that one of the government’s essential roles is to protect property. That is made crystal clear in the 5th and 14th Amendments, as well as throughout the Federalist Papers. But that protection extends only to human predators, be they the government, domestic criminals, or foreign enemies. Natural processes, like sea level rise, are outside the scope of government. And, yes, climate change and sea level rise, even if partially linked to human activities, is a natural process. Man is part of nature, and like all life forms, man has a particular mode of survival, which is to apply his mind and labor to altering, re-shaping, and improving the natural conditions of nature to his own benefit. But natural processes are not human predators, and thus don’t fall under the essential government role to protect anyone’s property.

Of course, the U.S. government can and does tax its citizens to build seawalls, dikes, sand dunes, and the like to protect coastal properties from the seas. We can argue whether or not the government should be doing it. But, to my understanding, that is not authorized anywhere in the Constitution. 

Elsewhere, Dennis Manning Answered, in part:

The Preamble to the Constitution lays out the basics of essential roles…to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for common defense, promote general welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty for us and future generations. Defense of the nation is not the same as protecting property. That is not the government’s role.

My reply:

I generally agree with everything beyond the first paragraph, which is completely erroneous in its conclusion—”protecting property . . . is not the government’s role.”

What is Justice, if not to secure rights to persons and property? What, exactly, does “the blessings of liberty” mean, if not the right of property, without which no other rights, including the right to life, are possible? If you’ve ever read the Federalist Papers, the Constitution’s definitive resource, you would know that the protection of property rights is a primary goal of the government. E.G. Federalist 54: “Government is instituted no less for protection of the property, than of the persons of individuals. The one as well as the other, therefore may be considered as represented by those who are charged with the government.” John Locke, the Founders’ most cited Enlightenment philosopher and the originator of the concept of unalienable individual rights, understood property rights to be inextricably linked to man’s rights. Man, Locke argued, has a fundamental natural right to his own person, and by logical extension to the product of his own labor, and that the government’s job is to secure those Natural Rights to Property, along with Life and Liberty, through its laws.

As to the Constitution:

The 5th Amendment states “. . . No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The 14th Amendment states “. . . nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

And what exactly does “the common defense” (“defense of the nation”) mean, if not protecting the rights of its citizens, including their private property? 

Related Reading:

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay

The Primacy of Property Rights and the American Founding -- David Upham for FEE

Property Rights and the Constitution -- Cato Handbook for Policymakers

Abortion Rights and Majority Rule

A Washington Post op-ed, Women are not ‘community property,’ a Georgia judge rules, echoes a fundamental American principle: individual rights to life, liberty, and property are inalienable and precede government. Ruth Marcus, quoting extensively from Judge Robert McBurney’s decision overturning a Georgia abortion law that prohibits abortion once there is a “detectable human heartbeat,” writes:

“Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote,” McBurney wrote. “Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have.” 

Bravo! This is exactly the point. It’s why the blather about leaving this decision up to individual states gets things wrong. The choice is for the woman to make, not the government, at any level. [My emphasis]

Marcus is a solid Leftist on most issues. As such, she is not a consistent defender of inalienable  individual rights (to put it mildly). 

I posted this comment:

“Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote.”

Absolutely! Protecting our liberties from democracy is fundamental to Americanism. And it goes for all of our fundamental individual rights, including rights to free speech, property, and free trade. But the Democratic Party was founded on the primacy of majority vote, and has held that reactionary position since 1828, when it held that the enslavement of a racial minority should be determined not by reference to the principle of inalienable individual rights promised in Declaration of Independence, but to popular vote in each state.

To this day the Democratic Party still adheres to its horrifying anti-American roots. To wit:

President Joe Biden: “The fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland: "The right of all eligible citizens to vote is the central pillar of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow.” 

Vice President Kamala Harris: “And the freedom that unlocks all the others: the freedom to vote.”

Well, by its own long-held totalitarian democratic principles, the Left should be cheering the end of Roe. Leaving a woman’s fundamental right to her own body to the whims of state voters is exactly what “The fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow” looks like.

And, what about a woman’s, or anybody’s, other property? I couldn’t address this point explicitly due to word limitations. But, as John Locke understood, “every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his.” The Founders concurred. The fundamental right to property begins, but does not end, with the functions of one's body. Property rights extend open-endedly to encompass the results of the work of one's mind and body. A woman's body is not subject to majority vote. Neither is the money I earn or the house I buy with that money, or a businessman's pricing policies. All of these rights are linked. You violate one, and you violate all.

In other words, rights to material and intellectual property extend from right to person. Of course, the Left routinely violates property rights in the economic realm, and increasingly threatens rights in the intellectual realm. Where is their outrage when Kamala Harris proposes price controls and wealth taxes, or the Biden Administration creates a “Disinformation Governance Board?”

Memo to the Democrats: Be careful what you wish for. You’ve long preached the supremacy of democracy over inalienable individual rights. The overturning of Roe v. Wade, which returned the right to reproductive freedom to state voters, is exactly what your democracy worship means. You can’t cancel the foundational principles of the Declaration of Independence in your quest for your statist Progressive policies, and then call on them when it’s convenient. Either you adhere to them or you pay the price.

I have long ago decided that I would never vote for a Democrat, at least on the national and state levels. The Democratic Party’s historical support for slavery, democracy fundamentalism (in direct opposition to our constitutionally limited republic), white supremacy, the KKK and lynching, Jim Crow, and socialism. That, to this day, it has not changed its ideological and philosophical stripes compels me to write off the party as the central focus of anti-Americanism. I don’t expect that to change in my lifetime.

Related Reading:

In SCOTUS’ Draft Opinion Overturning Roe Abortion Ruling: Double Standards of Left and Right Exposed

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

The Dangerous Totalitarian Premise Underpinning the Justice Department’s Suit Against Georgia’s New Election Law

The Truth about Harris’s Proposed Tax on Unrealized Capital Gains

On the Candidates’ Disastrous Price Policies—and Harris’s Moral Obscenity

Senator Mike Lee is Right: America ‘is not a Democracy’

America; Democracy or Republic or Both--Why it Matters

Right to Abortion, Not Others' Wallets

Mamaroneck, NY’s Tree Law Smacks of Theocracy: Climatism Has No Place in the Politics of a Free Society

In ‘My Property, My Trees’: New Tree-Cutting Law Divides N.Y. Town, the New York Time’s Hilary Howard reports on a law in Mamaroneck, New York, that regulates tree removal on private property. Requiring property owners, including homeowners, to get a permit to remove a tree is disturbing enough from a pro-liberty standpoint. But what really got my attention were the rationalizations at the forefront of the new law. Howard reports:

When Robert Herbst returned to his hometown about 30 miles north of New York City in 1992, he wanted his children to be immersed in the lush greenery of his childhood. But over the decades, he noticed more trees coming down to make way for bigger houses.

Mr. Herbst, a lawyer, and other like-minded residents of Mamaroneck, N.Y., view the vanishing trees as a serious threat in the era of climate change.

“We should be protecting trees for our own survival,” said Jacob Levitt, a dermatologist who lives in Mamaroneck. “It’s suicidal not to do it.”

But some residents say they should have the right to remove any and all trees on their properties to make way for more sunlight or a home expansion, or simply because they want them gone.

“People want to landscape the way they want to landscape,” said Eve Neuman, a realtor who lives in the area.

Herbst and Levitt are leaders in the war on tree removal. But, what right do these men and their cohorts have to use the coercive power of the state to impose their values on everyone else? None. Enter “climate change.” 

I wrote these comments, which were not published because the comment section of the article was closed before I could get to it. :

“[V]anishing trees [are] a serious threat in the era of climate change. ‘We should be protecting trees for our own survival. It’s suicidal not to do it.’”

How does one answer such Chicken Little hysteria? You can’t, any more than you can rebut “It’s God’s will.” Yet such quasi-religious rhetoric is used to justify trampling people’s sacred property rights, without any evidence that cutting down a tree would violate the rights and/or safety of anyone else.

If you can use climate change—or “the climate crisis”—as a God-like justification for trampling individual rights to cut a tree on one’s own property by law, then what dictatorial scheme can’t be justified by it? On that standard, none of our liberties are safe. Faith is impervious to reason and morality. But that’s the point, isn’t it? “Climate Change” is the newest calling card of totalitarianism. America beat back tyranny in the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWs 1 & 2, and the Cold War—only to give up our freedom to the likes of  “tree advocates?”   

In the Constitution it is written that no law respecting the establishment of religion shall be made. The Founders well understood the threat of theocracy. Yet a new secular religion—Climatism—is exactly what is being established by this law. Totalitarian theocracy is the ultimate goal of anyone who raises climate change as a justification for rights-violating laws. It's a reincarnation of The Divine Right of Kings, and the Separation of Religion and State should apply here. End the madness.

The term “climatism” is not mine. The term was first coined by Robert Bryce, as far as I can tell. Bryce roots the term in economic terms: Environmentalism, Bryce observes, “has morphed into the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex.” That’s true enough. But I see something deeper. I see the tentacles of religious dogma and authoritarianism wound through the entire movement. Climatism fits the bill very nicely, in my view. “Follow the money,” says Bryce in explaining Climatism’s grip on policy. But religion provides something far more consequential—and dangerous—moral firepower. Replace God with Climate Change, and you have a new superior power to submit to. And just as “God’s will” is determined by faith leaders who claim to speak for God, and thus must be unquestioningly obeyed, so we have “climate experts” who claim to speak for “the fight against climate change,” and unquestioningly obeyed. Neither authority requires evidence. Any dissident is heretical, which makes you a sinner—or a climate denier on the moral level of a neo-Nazi. . . a holocaust denier.

Of course, like all manifestations of statist assaults, the best moral and practical defense is individual rights.

Related Reading:

‘Climate Crisis’: The Dem’s Path to Totalitarian Socialism

New U.N. Study Shows Climate Catastrophists Getting More Open About their Totalitarian Designs

Environmentalism In America Is Dead: It has been replaced by climatism and renewable energy fetishism. by Robert Bryce

QUORA: 'How do capitalists defend inheritance? Isn't inheritance unfair?'

 QUORA: “How do capitalists defend inheritance? Isn't inheritance unfair?”

This is one of the easiest QUORA questions I’ve answered. Here is my answer:

“Property rights” is the right of use and disposal. As Investopedia defines it:

Property rights give the owner or right holder the ability to do with the property what they choose. That includes holding on to it, selling or renting it out for profit, or transferring it to another party.

My emphasis. Assuming your estate is property legitimately earned and legitimately acquired by you, it is your right to transfer it as you choose, upon your death, according to the instructions in your will. It’s as simple as that.

Here’s a question for you: If it is unfair for someone of your choice to inherit your property, then on what basis can you claim it is fair for someone not of your choosing to receive it?

Related Reading:

Is Inheritance anti-Capitalist and anti-Merit?

Does Inherited Money Ruin Lives?

Inheritance Taxes, Inequality, and the Economy

QUORA: 'How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game -- Answers and Replies [Part 2, Political Philosophy]

Recently, I posted an answer to the Quora* question, How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game?, which is also available on my 1/14/21 blog post. I followed that up by posting a reply to Pascal Morimacil’s answer, available on my blog post of 2/3/21. I then had a conversation with Morimacil. Before I get to that, Morimacil’s answer is reposted here in full:

The basic idea is that if you consider every transaction individually, without looking at anything else, then it kinda seems like both people are better off, since they agree to the trade.

So for example, you pay rent for the right to exist somewhere, and then someone else lets you exist without evicting you. It’s said to be win-win. So, a creation of wealth.

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You could analyze a mugging that way, and declare it to be a win-win wealth creating situation.

The victim is paying for the right to exist, and the mugger lets them exist without shooting them. Win-win. If the victim thinks the price is too high, they can just decide not to pay.

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You kind of have to ignore the gun, or the threat of eviction

And if you also ignore a lot of other things, like pollution and so on, and rising wealth inequality, well, at some point you are just deciding that money changing hands means things are getting better for everyone.

You can read my reply here, also posted to my blog on 2/3/21. A back-and-forth ensued with Morimacil, which I will post in stages by subject. The subjects are economic, epistemological, and political philosophy. We started with the economic aspect, specifically Morimacil’s landlord/mugger analogy. My economic exchange (Part 1) is posted on 3/8/21. On political philosophy, specifically Capitalism, Morimacil answered:

And if you also ignore a lot of other things, like pollution and so on, and rising wealth inequality, well, at some point you are just deciding that money changing hands means things are getting better for everyone.

My reply:

As to the last two points touched upon, wealth inequality is a natural consequence of the varying productive abilities and personal circumstances of human beings, when left equally free to flourish by the justice, political equality, liberty rights, and constitutionalism of capitalism. Productive work and trade, to the extent it is free of aggressive force as it is under capitalism, expands the amount of wealth, as happens with the renter and the landlord. Trade doesn’t merely divide up a fixed quantity of wealth, like what happens between the mugger and his victim.  Under capitalism, wealth inequality is not a proof of zero-sum economics, but a progressive consequence of the win-win nature of capitalism--that an individual’s economic success is tied not to theft but on the diversity of productive ability to create value for others. Those who create the most value for the most people tend to be more wealthy than those who produce less value for fewer people. As long as every transaction is consensual and freely judged by each to be a net gain, it is win-win, not zero-sum. Pollution is a side effect of industry and is resolvable through technological innovation and proper law. History has shown that capitalist economies are much better at alleviating pollution than centrally planned (socialist) economies because technological innovation and proper (rights-protecting) law are features of free markets, not dictatorships. The same freedom of capitalism that facilitates economic progress facilitates solutions to pollution. Today we live in the cleanest ever environment for humans, especially in the U.S., not in spite of but because of the prosperity.

Morimacil came back with:

And then you talk about how wealth inequality is because of productive ability, but a passive income is not production.

Rent seeking enables people to get income and then more wealth, based on how much wealth they own, not on how productive they are.

Then you try to say "creating value" instead, but again, not evicting people isn't "creating value".

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And then you are trying to say that laws about environmental protection are not planned, and that them being enacted at the country level isn't centralization?

Also kind of sweeping aside all the pollution and environmental issues that popped up in the last couple of centuries, and pretending that capitalism is great, because it can create problems, and then commodify people's needs?

Morimacil obviously doesn’t know the difference between government central planning and objective law. I posted this rebuttal:

Capitalism, to distill it down to its essentials, is individual political, economic, and intellectual freedom, secured by objective law. Objective law—law that is clearly defined and clearly implemented—can include rational environmental law. That is not central planning, but its opposite--the protector of the rights-respecting citizen’s freedom to plan and govern his own life without coercive interference. It is why human life has gotten so dramatically better, longer, safer, and cleaner over the past 250 years--and continues on its upward trajectory to this day (despite temporary setbacks like the Covid-19 pandemic). Central planning, in fact, is not law at all. It is the absence of law--and of individual rights. It is arbitrary rule of men over men which leaves no room for people to plan and govern their own lives.

This is Morimacil’s attempt at defining Capitalism philosophically:

Capitalism is the arbitrary rule of owners over others. With a government that is coercive, and working for the owners.

People do all sorts of things within any system, but that’s what capitalism is fundamentally about.

Here is my reply:

You’re almost right. Ownership, or private property, doesn’t give you control of others. But it is your means of controlling your own destiny. And it protects you from those who would control you. A government in a capitalist system definitely protects owners, by coercive means if necessary, from criminals who would take others’ property. And it’s not arbitrary rule, but rule of objective law. A government for securing property rights is certainly one thing that “capitalism is fundamentally about,” though it is not the most fundamental aspect of capitalism, which is more broadly to protect individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness equally and at all times. Ownership, or proper, rights is in large part what makes Capitalism the only moral social system.

The right to acquire, keep, and use private property is vital to human life and flourishing. It is not only materially valuable. It is spiritually vital. Your property reflects your thought, convictions, and values. It is part of your identity and self-esteem and self-ownership. Property ownership is not only a means of pursuing your happiness. It fosters mutual respect and peaceful coexistence among people by establishing boundaries. Private property fosters shared prosperity through trade. Without rights to the product of your efforts, no other rights are practicable. If you don’t have absolute ownership and control of what you earn, then someone else does. Then your life is at others’ mercy. All rights, including rights to free speech, matters of conscience, protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, et al, are meaningless.

The enemies of private property are enemies of humanity. Marx, the arch enemy of private property, ignited a trail of human devastation that even religion can’t match. Marxist regimes impoverished a billion people and killed 100 million innocents in their attempts to build propertyless societies. A government that does not “work for the owners” by protecting ownership rights is not a legitimate government. It is a criminal enterprise working for thieves and looters, including rent deadbeats.

Related Reading:

Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st Century America by Timothy Sandefur  

The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein  

QUORA: ‘Why has modern capitalism risen in the West?’

QUORA: ‘How do capitalists justify the inequality/high disparity part of a capitalistic society that a socialistic system tends to stop?’

QUORA: 'Can certain forms of capitalism be made to work for the people instead of just the elite?'

QUORA*: ‘Is it fair to claim that capitalism does not create better lives, but simply shifts the suffering somewhere else?’

QUORA: 'Why do people think capitalism is ethical?'

QUORA: ‘Is it fair to say capitalism has killed more people than communism?’

QUORA *: 'How is capitalism good despite the fact that it creates higher and lower classes?'

QUORA: '[W]hy do we ignore all the examples of capitalism failing, like the major divide between the wealthy and the poor in the US?'

QUORA: ‘Given that I live in a capitalist society, how can I avoid having my labor exploited?’

QUORA: "Is having an 'Anarcho-capitalist' society possible?"

On ‘Capitalist Government’ and Corporate Bailouts

QUORA: ‘Is capitalism voluntary?’

 

QUORA: ‘Is fascism a capitalist ideology?‘

 

QUORA: ‘Can democracy survive capitalism?’