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PURPOSES
My
first aim was to describe the controversy over rights
to property and explain why so many people are so infuriated.
I tell a lot of stories, and I could have told many,
many more.
I
wanted to go further, though, and provide intellectual
ammunition for people involved in these battles. This
requires going beyond the horror stories and putting
the issues into a broader context of history, political
philosophy, and basic economics. The book examines the
philosophy underlying Americans' dedication to the idea
that people have a right to private property, describes
the current attacks on this right, and explains why
these attacks are a very bad thing.
The
scope of the work is broad. PROPERTY MATTERS
examines the relationship of old issues affecting real
estate to new questions of intellectual property. It
connects the conflict over "the national commons"
-- the public lands of the West -- with struggles over
wetlands, endangered species, water, urban land use,
historic preservation, rails-to-trails, forfeitures
and other issues. The book strongly favors better
protection of rights to property, but does not underestimate
the difficulty of defining these rights in concrete
cases, or the problems of reconciling the conflicts
among them.
PROPERTY
MATTERS also looks at deep problems of the political
system. Conflicts over property provide a useful lens
for examining the growth of rational ignorance as a
dominating fact of political life, the impact of sound-bite
politics, the excesses of single-mission agencies, the
declining legitimacy of many government institutions,
the theory of public choice, the importance of property
rights as a device for mediating political conflict,
the many sins of the legal profession, and the influence
of prisoner's dilemma problems.
The
Kirkus Review says that the conclusion contains,
"some uncommonly sensible suggestions on ways to
stem the statist tide that, if unchecked, could swamp
property rights." I am flattered, and hope
they are right.
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