Abstract
There once was a little girl with a curl. According to the nursery rhyme, “when she was good, she was very, very good; when she was bad, she was horrid.”
Much the same can be said about this book.
What are the very, very good parts? It is a thorough, lively, and almost encyclopedic defense of private property rights. In this benighted age, there are not too many of those around. Ranging far and wide, Bethell shows the benefits of private property throughout history and in virtually every corner of the globe. He demonstrates how the institutions of private property can solve environmental problems, were responsible for the success of the industrial revolution in England, and how the lack of them accounted for the failures of the USSR, feudalism, and the third world. His explanation of the Irish famine is alone worth far more than the price of admission. Standing head and shoulders over many purely economic defenses of this institution, Bethel’s book also demonstrates the virtues of property rights on political and moral grounds.
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Notes
- 1.
Again, I am limiting this to the legal realm. If I make a promise to you, but then break it, this might well be “unjust.” But since this does not involve an uninvited border crossing, or the initiation of violence, it is not taken cognizance of by the libertarian legal system as “unjust.”
- 2.
All otherwise unidentified page citations such as this refer to the Bethell book.
- 3.
I would not bring up this issue in a review of a book ostensibly on private property rights if not for his gratuitous attack on statelessness (339).
- 4.
All throughout his book, Bethell waxes indignant about the use of force and compulsion as the enemy of freedom, liberty, and private property rights. (See, for example, 76, 84, 137, 192.) Why does this well-justified antipathy not apply to the government?
- 5.
- 6.
In the view of Bethell (25), “some goods are naturally managed by the states—those that are needed to provide for the common defense, for example, or for administering justice and enforcing the law. Such goods are natural monopolies.”
- 7.
Elsewhere, Bethell (12) equates anarchy with, of all things, “tyranny.”
- 8.
Surely, the present situation of anarchy between the some 200 presently constituted nations of the world would have to be opposed by anti-anarchists such as Bethell. This logically implies that he favors a one world government (with China and India, the most populous countries, together controlling global politics). If not, and I suspect not, then this author must rescind his opposition to anarchism.
- 9.
As Spooner ([1870] 1966) shows, the only difference between a gang and a government is better public relations on the part of the latter.
- 10.
Bethell (9) also sees “private property (as) a compromise between our desire for unrestricted liberty and the recognition that others have similar desires and rights.” But this is a very perverse way to interpret “liberty.” Liberty, used in this context, is a synonym for “license,” for the right of the individual to do whatever he wants to do, even if it violates the equal liberties of others. Who, with this definition, could favor liberty? Who could be a libertarian? Surely, a more reasonable definition of liberty (utilized in this review) is the right to do with your own property whatever it is you wish, provided only that this doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s similar liberty. Nor is Bethell’s dismissal of libertarianism only implicit. On the contrary, he (25) goes so far as to characterize this philosophy, along with Marxism, of all things, as “dogma.”
- 11.
Into the latter go both kinds of stolen property, individual, for example, stolen by a single robber, and communal, stolen by gangs, whether “private” or governmental.
- 12.
In this context Bethell could well have cited Nozick (1974), but did not.
- 13.
Bethell (132) further states: “Owen … proposed that the Harmonites should form themselves into a Community of Equality right away, with the property—his property! to be shared in common” (emphasis added).
- 14.
Bethell recognizes the evils of initiatory force in the context of foreign aid and planning, but not when it comes to voluntary communal property (192).
- 15.
Bethell (35) describes the economic system as the “Crown-devised policy of joint possession” (emphasis added).
- 16.
Inoffensive, that is, in what he did, not necessarily what he advocated.
- 17.
It is no exaggeration to say that complaints about free riders form the core of Bethell’s “defense” of private property rights. He mentions them often: (31–32, 42, 44, 46, 49, 51, 54, 137, 157, 167, 268, 323).
- 18.
Market failure doctrine leads a long and not very savory life in the history of economic thought. In addition to the three mentioned in the text other major accusations against the free market include monopoly, inequitable distribution of income, slow growth, and unequal information. For critiques of this doctrine see Hoppe (1993), Hummel (1990), and Rothbard (1962).
- 19.
The US government has some 800 military bases located in roughly 130 different countries, and is engaged in approximately a half dozen separate “hot” wars.
- 20.
See on this Rothbard (1962, pp. 883–890).
- 21.
And what other kind of taxation is there?
- 22.
As well as traitors.
- 23.
Soap, too, by the way.
- 24.
- 25.
Hopefully the context here, as well as in the case of “water socialism,” below, will make clear that we are referring to coercive, and not voluntary, socialism.
- 26.
Another self-contradiction. When it comes to Robert Owen, or “the tragedy of the commons,” or, for goodness sake, friends splitting restaurant checks, Bethell is adamantly in favor of “privatization.” Why not, then, real privatization in the case of streets and highways?
- 27.
Demsetz (1967) would likely claim that it was too expensive for the government to do so. This presumes that the state can discern just which enterprises it is appropriate to shield, and which not. But this is unconvincing. A police presence, in any case, was not required at every toll gate, any more than a cop is needed at each store. It would have sufficed had government merely threatened to punish toll booth violators, should they be apprehended, the same sort of offer presumably made to every other property owner.
- 28.
In like manner, we do not blame the bullet, but the gunman, for the murder. Similarly, the restaurant manager is the ultimate cause of business failure, not the proximate causes of poor service, bad food, dirty floors, and so on. It is the manager’s job to improve these conditions.
- 29.
Consider the strategy of the highway owner who wants to build between points A and B. All he need do is to buy option to purchase land along five or six alternative routes. Only when he has a complete set of options for any one of them—with no holdouts—does he exercise his option and actually purchase the land.
- 30.
According to Cheung (1983, p. 20) between 1966 and 1980 it had garnered some 700 citations; cited in Bethell (315).
- 31.
This is somewhat marred by Bethell’s own transgressions in this regard (320): “the level of inefficiency resulting from marginal impositions upon neighbors has never been established in practice. But it is surely low.” Low? How do we know this? How can we know this? Low, compared to what?
- 32.
- 33.
This line, I take it, was written before the advent of Monica-gate. Either that, or Bethell, was too much “above the fray” to take note of it. I am not.
- 34.
For the definitive rejection of Hayek, in favor of Mises, see Salerno (1992). More generally, for the de-homogenization literature on Hayek and Mises, pointing to the serious differences between them, and to the inferiority of the former vis-à-vis the latter, see Salerno (1990, 1995) and Block and Garschina (1995a).
- 35.
For a debate between Milton Friedman, David Friedman, Paul Heyne, who took, roughly, the Bethell position on land reform, vs. myself, see Block, Brennan, and Elzinga (1985, pp. 495–510).
- 36.
For a defense against the argument that an outright ban on pollution would mean the end of industry and thus civilization, see McGee and Block (1994) and Rothbard (1990).
- 37.
And while we’re at it, the Arctic and Antarctica also, to say nothing of the moon, Mars, Venus, and land on still other planets. Should socialism or capitalism be the order of the day regarding the frontiers of the earth and the heavenly bodies? Reading in between the lines of Bethell, the former is implied.
- 38.
Solomon (1999, pp. 43–47), for example, entitles his review “A Paean to Property.”
- 39.
For an attempt, see Block (1992).
- 40.
See Anderson and Leal (1991).
- 41.
For libertarian criticisms, see Rothbard (Logic of Action) and DiLorenzo and Block (forthcoming).
- 42.
To not even cite Rothbard once in his entire book is indeed a remarkable oversight. And this for two reasons: one public, the other private. The public reason is that Rothbard is the most eminent economist to have made private property rights the bedrock of his philosophy. Why Bethell should totally ignore him is a puzzle on this ground alone. Second, I have in my hand a letter to me dated August 30, 1991, where this author asks my opinion of writings of Rothbard (a two-page, single-spaced letter addressed to Bethell, dated June 14, 1991), David Friedman, and Paul Heyne, material from all three which would later be incorporated into his book. Bethell mentions the latter two, but not the former.
- 43.
Bethell (141) reports that something of this sort has occurred with “Mr. Friedman, the American expert,” whose imprimatur was used to support the accuracy of Soviet economic statistics in the 1930s.
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Block, W.E. (2019). Bethell on Property and Prosperity. In: Property Rights. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28353-7_7
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