Private Property Is the Solution, Not the Problem

Nobody Washes a Rental Car

Monday, June 11, 2012—To protect something, unite authority and responsibility.  Let someone take a well-defined economic interest in preserving it, or else suffer the Tragedy of the Commons.

• From TownHall Finance: Property Means Preservation
• From Jonathan Adler, guest-blogging at The Atlantic: Property Rights and the Tragedy of the Commons.
• Ibid., Property Rights and Fishery Conservation.
• Ibid., How Property Rights Could Help Save the Environment.
• Also Adler: Back to the Future of Conservation (pdf).
• And a success story, from the Reason Foundation.  Predictably, it's exactly the kind of success that Congress wants to kill: the kind of success that doesn't revolve around them.

Property rights are basic to any kind of law that allows freedom. Freedom requires responsibility: liberty under law, two parts inseperable. Using property rights to protect the environment closes the circle of benefit and responsiblity, which makes them unpalatable to an age that detests responsibility and seeks to punish those who accept it.