An Unexamined Oxymoron: Trust but Verify

Abstract

Early in my introductory economics classes, I go through the various roles of government in the economy. I start with “property rights” and present it as the least questioned government function, agreed to by liberals and conservatives alike. My purpose is in part strategic: a desire to counter the conventional view conveyed by the texts that government only comes into the economy after the establishment of robust markets and not before. Rhetorically, governments is described as “intervening” and “interfering” and is portrayed as a late arrival into the economy.¹ Missing from this version of history is consideration of the evidence that enforceable property rights must exist before it is even possible for markets to succeed. What belongs to one must be a matter of fact, not opinion, and accepted as legitimate by others. Perhaps theft should be relegated to the status of an oxymoron when property rights are absent.