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Tides Don’t Change Property Rights
Declaring access to beaches a “fundamental human right,” two legislators in Massachusetts have filed a bill that would change the boundary of private property along the ocean. The bill would mandate public access to any beach in Massachusetts from the high tide line to the water. Current law recognizes private property to the low tide…
Free Will and Property Rights are Inseparable
The title—“Government attacks free will when it assaults property rights”–of an opinion piece by Andrew P. Napolitano was intriguing. Unfortunately, while the former judge presented two false alternatives of dictatorship, he said virtually nothing about free will and its relationship to property rights. I will correct that oversight. The right to property means the freedom…
Free Market Solutions
This post is the second in a series. Before I could determine if Ayn Rand was correct in claiming that “without property rights, no other rights are possible,” I had to understand what property rights really means. Sure, I could recite the definition: “The right to property means the freedom to produce, use, and trade…
Experiments in Freedom
Virtually every proposal to address the housing crisis starts with the same flawed premise, namely, the solution must come from government. The city of Boise illustrates this flawed premise. The city is currently testing three different ideas to address the housing shortage: incentives and assistance for homeowners to build an accessory dwelling unit (ADU), allowing…
Texas Supreme Court Sanctions the Rule of Whim
Last year, I wrote about the case of Hinga Mbogo, a Dallas auto shop owner whose property was retroactively rezoned to make way for restaurants and other businesses more to the liking of the Dallas city council. In late August, the Texas Supreme Court refused to hear his case, thereby forcing Mbogo to abandon the…