Property Rights / Human Rights Are Sacred.

Rights, that is rights formalized by law, describe what ‘belongs’ to a human being. Considering that God created human beings ‘in His Image’ the rights belonging to him and her are sacred. Since these are natural it should be evident exactly what it is that laws protect. In accordance with the ethics of social cooperation and the exalted station bestowed on humans by God, liberty is a principal right. Humans love freedom. Property rights are human rights and once these are granted the economy has the foundation it needs to perpetuate social cooperation. “Social cooperation, however, can be based only on the foundation of private ownership of the means of production.” [29]

It is law that protects property rights that are so essential to freedom. “All production, all civilization, rests on recognition of and respect for property rights. A free enterprise system is impossible without security of property as well as security of life. Free enterprise is possible only within a framework of law and order and morality. This means that free enterprise presupposes morality; but, as we shall later see, it also helps to preserve and promote it.” [30] Freedom from the State is what made the political anarchy of Western civilization, which operated according to the principles of classical liberalism, so prosperous relatively speaking. “If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.” [31]

Liberty & Justice of Economic Equilibrium, pp. 15-16.

[29] Ludwig von Mises, Epistemological Problems of Economics, Third edition, (Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2003), p. 40.

[30] Henry Hazlitt, The Foundations of Morality, (The Foundation For Economic Education, Inc., 1998), p. 303.

[31] Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War, (Liberty Fund, and Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010), p. 58.

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