The Forgotten Right of Privacy

The story of private property and the economists is a peculiar one, and as far as I know it has never been told. The truth is that economics as we understand it today really cannot “work” unless it is based on the solid rock of private property. To understand why, try to imagine playing a game of poker with Monopoly money. You are dealt a good hand and you raise the stakes. You are dealt a poor hand and . . . what incentive do you have not to raise the stakes? It’s not your money because it isn’t even money. Therefore, you don’t mind losing it. And so, to a real poker player, the game does not work.

A very similar problem exists in socialist economies—from which private property has been banished by definition. The bureaucrats and planners who supposedly organize such economies are working at all times with “play” money because it is not theirs to lose. In the allocation of resources, they are subjected to politically generated pressure (the military must get first crack at whatever is produced; the price of bread for the proles cannot be raised), and such pressure will always take precedence over economic considerations: a socialist system is designed with just that end in mind.

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Tom Bethell

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The story of private property and the economists is a peculiar one, and as far as I know it has never been told. The truth is that economics as we understand it today really cannot “work” unless it is based on the solid rock of private property. To understand why, try to imagine playing a game of poker with Monopoly money. You are dealt a good hand and you raise the stakes. You are dealt a poor hand and . . . what incentive do you have not to raise the stakes? It’s not your money because it isn’t even money. Therefore, you don’t mind losing it. And so, to a real poker player, the game does not work.

A very similar problem exists in socialist economies—from which private property has been banished by definition. The bureaucrats and planners who supposedly organize such economies are working at all times with “play” money because it is not theirs to lose. In the allocation of resources, they are subjected to politically generated pressure (the military must get first crack at whatever is produced; the price of bread for the proles cannot be raised), and such pressure will always take precedence over economic considerations: a socialist system is designed with just that end in mind.