Next
week, according to a report in the New York Times, hundreds of English
"ramblers" -- walkers -- are planning to celebrate the "Mass Trespass" of 70
years ago, when a group of ramblers ignored bailiffs, police and gamekeepers
to demand free access to a high plateau in northwestern England that
landowners had sought to close off for the use of fee-paying grouse shooters.
For decades, Britain's stout common law tradition that a man's home is his castle posed a high barrier to such schemes. But the perception that open spaces are dwindling motivated Parliament to pass a law recently opening 4,000 square miles of nonagricultural, privately owned land to those seeking recreation.
England being England, freedom will survive and not too much trash will be left behind on Squire Jones' property. But the clash illustrates how property rights are gradually being undermined even in their mother country. Similar environmental pressures are leading to erosion of property rights in this country as well.
Fortunately the current U.S. Supreme Court has taken a fairly strong stand against the more blatant offenses. Seven years ago, in a landmark case, the high court ruled against a suburban Portland, Ore., community's effort to force a small shop owner to set aside 10 percent of his property as a bike and walking trail as a condition for approving an expansion of his shop.
But environmental and other pressures virtually ensure that the temptation to nibble away at property rights will continue. It's never explained why those who think there is a public right to use private property shouldn't be required to at least pay for the privilege. The grouse shooters were paying for access to the property in question in England. Why not the walkers?
The answer seems clear: The ramblers of the world think they have a right to a free lunch -- and the sooner the better. It's no accident that the organizer of the first Mass Trespass was an avowed communist. In the Marxist view, private property is theft -- a violation of some imagined state of nature in which all property was held in common.
Never mind that even Native Americans developed fairly clear systems of property rights -- say, to particularly fertile fields or fishing banks -- when there was more demand than supply. The fact is that there are no free lunches. Each nibbling away of property rights is a blow to economic productivity, because it makes investors less certain than they otherwise would be that they will be allowed to realize the fruits of their investment. Over the long term, this means less investment, less innovation -- and less wealth and economic security for everybody.
Nor does the accumulation of property by government necessarily insure a better environment: witness the monumental degredation of Russia's land, air and water under communism. When land is owned by everybody, nobody has much incentive to treat it well.
It's not even true that government always acts in the public interest. A recent hilarious example in the news is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's plan to spend $17 million to clear-cut 4,000 old cypress, pine and eucalyptus trees on San Francisco's magnificent Presidio property to restore a long-absent coastal weed called lessingia. The weed, it turns out, is an annual -- and thus will have to be replanted every year.
But the main point -- one that is largely ignored these days -- is that property rights do serve a higher good. As every school child knows, or used to know, private ownership of property gradually forced English sovereigns to extend political rights to increasing numbers of people. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution understood from long experience that property rights and freedom go hand in hand. In their view, government was more likely to constitute theft than private property.
Thomas Bray is a Detroit News columnist who is published on Sunday and Wednesday. He can be contacted at (313) 222-2544 and at letters@detnews.com