Property rights

Like all well-informed, reasonable people today know, private property rights create and protect while "collective property" decreases and destroyes. However, we are not all well-informed or reasonable. Some must be taught, which in itself is okay but can sometimes be hard. How can you teach an old dog new tricks? How can you teach a socialist the laws and virtues of the free market, and thereby the advantages of private property?

One of the strongest advocates of private property-rights is Hernando de Soto, an economist who has long irritated the Left with his success in teaching the leaders of the poor states of the world to welcome private proparty rather than despise it. How so? Here is a short answer to that question:

In explaining property rights as vital to prosperity, de Soto makes plain that it is the system of property law, not just physical possession, which confers most of the value to property in the marketplace. This is true because ownership is much more than possession. It is a process of buying, selling, renting, and collateralizing that goes on constantly, and effective rules can only come from a legal process common to everyone in the marketplace. Local customary rules are not sufficient to create either a wide or efficient market.

This we must teach the Left. It is still being said that governments should own this and control that in the name of e.g. environmental protection. Nothing could be further from the truth (except socialism as an ideal but that's another story). The Right is to blame for this ignorance. We must teach the Left or accept their horrible doings!