Is the state’s power of eminent domain necessary for a free-market society in which private property rights are respected?
Walter Block and Richard Epstein will go head to head on that issue in their first-ever live debate, on May 10, 2004 at 12:13 p.m. at the University of Chicago Law School.
Dr. Block, a professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans and Senior Fellow of the Mises Institute, is an outspoken critic of the Chicago School of economics, and has published widely in law reviews and economics journals on the feasibility of private production of roads and other so-called “public goods.”
Mr. Epstein, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, is one of the most distinguished classical liberal scholars in the world today, and is perhaps best known for his 1985 book, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain.
The debate is sponsored by the Mises Institute, and is free and open to the public. Attendees are advised to arrive early and be aware that the doors will be closed and no one will be admitted after the debate begins at 12:13 p.m. For further information, contact J. H. Huebert.
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And for one Austrian’s critique of Epstein’s ideas, you can also see the following item by David Gordon here.
I’ve never understood the reasoning behind the ‘public goods’ argument. It infers that there are some things that private people cannot own – and instead are collectively ‘owned’ by the public. Socialism shows us that there is no real ‘public’ good; it is owned by a body of people in State or local government.
What the argument seems to be about is based more on the idea that the State inherently owns some things or should – both of which I find proposterous.
Also, people who advocate public domain usually have no knowledge that everything that is done by the State has been done by the private market; either that, or they simply do not care.
The only real thing that I am tepid on is the production of law through the market. While a private law society could certainly exist, some serious questions concerning the morality and perverse nature of some acts commited by those in such a society come into question.
Take, for example, the idea of gay marriage. Some say that marriage is something that should be defined by two people – but this is incorrect. Others say that love is ‘all that marriage needs’, but this is incorrect too.
Using the type of thinking above, we have just legalized fathers marrying daughters, sisters marrying brothers, etc. This should strike most people as revolting.
Yet, without a strong culture of conservatism and Christian religion – backed by little or no State – I see such disgusting things going on as a matter of course. This is the only argument that I think has any merit against anarchism; certainly not something as silly as people paying to drive on roads (hint, they already do; it’s called taxation).
I suppose I should have put this comment in Walter Block’s article arguing for the State, but I suppose it has as much merit here as it does there – we are talking about the private provision of things that are currently ‘public’.
Any thoughts and ideas from fellow libertarians and anarchists?
12:13 pm? What gives?
“Is the state’s power of eminent domain necessary for a free-market society in which private property rights are respected?”
Who came up with this question? If property rights were respected, there could be no eminent domain. Eminent domain is by definition a violation of private property rights. So who would even ask the question as to its necessity?
The question itself makes no sense. It’s like asking whether the police power of asset forfeiture is necessary to defend our freedom in a society that respects property rights.
Am I at the right web site? I thought this was the Mises Institute, not the Cato Institute.
Any chance of this being recorded in real audio
or mp3 or such, for later listening on the net?
“Using the type of thinking above, we have just legalized fathers marrying daughters, sisters marrying brothers, etc. This should strike most people as revolting.”
Sure it’s revolting. But the question is whether you or I have the right to use force to prevent a man from marrying his daughter, or his mother, or his horse.
In a free society with real property rights, there would be no public property. So, wherever this pervert chose to live, he would be surrounded by other people’s private property. While I wouldn’t use force to prevent whatever it is he choses to do on his property, I would have every right to use force to prevent him from crossing my property to travel somewhere else, be it for a vacation, or simply running down to the grocery store. And I suspect that a lot of other property owners would have similar policies.
So this pervert could easily find himself locked into his little corner of the world, with no place to go, no way to trade with the outside world. With property rights come freedom of association rights. He and his wife/daughter might get pretty lonely.
I would hope that most people would still have a functioning sense of what is right, wrong, and disgusting.
I think a strong sense of community would be needed in order to address these issues; something that does not seem economically evident. This is the biggest quibble that many people have with anarchism; the case has been made for the PPD and private law; the real case is whether or not there is an economic or other incentive for people to act morally in ways which, while not harming someone else or someone’s property, is disgusting.
I’m not sure that such an incentive exists, and this is the only view I see that is not being answered effectively by ancaps. For the ‘private property’ shunning to work, we would have to assume that it was in people’s best interests to uphold morality and decent behaviour. But I’m not sure about this; there might be some incentives for people to act decent in an ancap society, but it doesn’t exactly follow from the same lines as other incentives (i.e., that most people don’t want to be robbed or murdered, which is the economic incentive for PPD).
Hmm…
It figures. This is the first time something like this has come to Chicago and I’ll just be returning from my trip to the Carribbean that afternoon. Just my luck.
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