Property Rights: The Discovery That Built the World

Property Rights: The Discovery That Built the World

A recently published book by Rowan Moore, Property: The Myth That Built the World, argues that, while private property might benefit individuals, it is ultimately harmful to society. The book’s description on Amazon states that the book “offers hope for how things could be better, with reform that might enable the social wealth of property to be returned to society.”Because I have not read the book and have no intention of doing so, I do not know what “evidence” Moore offers for his thesis. However, it is clear from the book’s description that the author’s concept of property is flawed.Property is created when the resources provided by nature are transformed into human values. While many people may be involved in that transformation, it is individuals—and specifically individual minds—that discover how to make that transformation possible. Through thought and physical effort, individuals, not society, create property.As Ayn Rand correctly noted,
We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.Like all collectivists, Moore regards society as some kind of super-organism that is superior to the individuals comprising society. According to collectivists, individuals do not exist for their own personal happiness but only to serve the group. According to this view, accomplishments—including the creation of human values—are not the result of individual thought and effort, but of the collective.In all of its variants, such as socialism, communism, and fascism, collectivism seeks the elimination of private property. It subordinates individuals and their achievements to the group.
If we reject collectivism, we see society as merely a number of individuals who live and trade together. We see individuals are independent beings with a moral right to pursue their own happiness. And we see property, not as something harmful to society, but essential to enabling individuals to live happy, flourishing lives. - Brian Phillips
Straight out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: Attacks on Business Atlas Elon Musk

Straight out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: Attacks on Business Atlas Elon Musk

From a list courtesy of End Wokeness, comments by Brownstone's Jeffrey Tucker writing on The Multifront Attack on Business Hero Elon Musk:
The SEC has sued Musk over the purchase of the platform. According to the New York Times, “his takeover has been the subject of several lawsuits and investigations by the federal authorities. The Federal Trade Commission has probed whether X had the resources to protect users’ privacy after he laid off much of its staff and several senior executives responsible for privacy and security resigned. The agency has also sought to depose Mr. Musk. Former Twitter shareholders have also sued Mr. Musk for fraud in a case related to his belated disclosure of his stake in the company.”The FTC has demanded internal X documents. Says The Hill: “the FTC has sent more than a dozen letters to Twitter since Musk completed his acquisition in October. It states that the agency has demanded Twitter provide internal communications “relating to Elon Musk” from any Twitter employee, information about the platform’s Twitter Blue verification subscription service and the names of journalists who were granted access to Twitter records.”The Biden Department of Justice has sued SpaceX…get this…for not hiring refugees for secret rocket technology. CNN says: “The suit claims that ‘from at least September 2018 to May 2022, SpaceX routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them, because of their citizenship status, in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA),’ according to an August 24 DOJ news release.”The Biden Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commision have sued Tesla over improper perks. Forbes says: “The widened investigation comes after federal prosecutors and the SEC began probing a secret Tesla project known as Project 42 that employees described as a glass house for Musk in the Austin, Texas, area near Tesla’s factory, the Journal reported in August.”The Biden Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation against Tesla over self-driving cars. Reuters reports: “The U.S. Department of Justice launched the previously undisclosed probe last year following more than a dozen crashes, some of them fatal, involving Tesla’s driver assistance system Autopilot, which was activated during the accidents, the people said.” The presumption here is preposterous: that Elon doesn’t care if his product is flawed and doesn’t desire improvement.There is a federal investigation of Neuralink. Reuters again: “Elon Musk’s Neuralink, a medical device company, is under federal investigation for potential animal-welfare violations amid internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and sources familiar with the investigation and company operations.”Then there is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation over harassment at Tesla. The EEOC says: “Since at least 2015 to the present, Black employees at Tesla’s Fremont, California manufacturing facilities have routinely endured racial abuse, pervasive stereotyping, and hostility as well as epithets… Slurs were used casually and openly in high-traffic areas and at worker hubs. Black employees regularly encountered graffiti, including variations of the N-word, swastikas, threats, and nooses, on desks and other equipment, in bathroom stalls, within elevators, and even on new vehicles rolling off the production line.”Finally, we have the aggressive advertising boycott on the part of major corporations, including Disney, CNBC, Comcast, Warner Bros, IBM, and the Financial Times, among many others. Musk has refused to be intimidated by these people. He has said that he refuses to be blackmailed by money and instead told the companies to “Go f*** yourself.” Which is rather remarkable and really does speak to a major problem in social media today, which is the extent to which so many platforms are willing to do the bidding of the corporatist system in order to serve the bottom line.
Read the rest.
Justin Amash on the Colorado Supreme Court Removing Trump Off the Voting Ballot

Justin Amash on the Colorado Supreme Court Removing Trump Off the Voting Ballot

Posts Amash on X:
The opinion of the Colorado Supreme Court is shameful and runs completely counter to our constitutional system. Donald Trump was not removed from office by Congress for engaging in insurrection. Donald Trump has not been criminally convicted in a court of law of engaging in insurrection. Whatever you believe about whether Donald Trump engaged in insurrection has no bearing on whether he’s eligible to run for president. No legislative, executive, or judicial body of a state should engage in extraconstitutional decision-making to disqualify a federal candidate from the ballot. This isn’t accountability; it’s an assault on due process of law. It undermines our electoral system and threatens every federal candidate for office.
In the name of freedom, we must outlaw freedom to stop Trump!
Understanding Marxism

Understanding Marxism

1.  “The enemy of being is having” (from The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844).2.  “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (from Critique of the Gotha Program, 1875).3.  “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” (from Theses on Feuerbach, 1845).https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep_APIU4yDo
Congratulations US Open Champion Novak Djokovic

Congratulations US Open Champion Novak Djokovic

Congratulations to Novak Djokovic - banned from entering the U.S. for the past 2 years by COVID-19 fascists - on winning a historic 24th grand slam title.In 2022, the Biden administration banned the best tennis player in the world, unvaccinated Novak Djokovic, from playing in the 2022 US Open, even though the CDC said he was safe. Politics, not science.Related:

Yaron Brook: In Defense of Capitalism

Progressives attack capitalism because it lets some become very rich while others stay poor. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez call such a system “immoral.” But Yaron Brook, chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute says the opposite is true. He points out that the poor were much poorer before capitalism: “We have basically made about $2 a day for 100,000 years. In other words ... we could eat what we farmed and that was it,” Brook tells me. “And then something amazing happened about 250 years ago.” Around that time, a few countries tried capitalism. For the first time, people were allowed to profit from private property. That changed everything. Brook explains:
“250 years ago we suddenly discovered the value of individual freedom. We suddenly discovered the value of leaving individuals free to think, to innovate, to produce without asking for permission, without getting the state to sign off on it and we call that the industrial revolution. We got much, much, much richer and it's hard to imagine how much richer we got ... electricity, running water, the things we all take for granted today, but we didn't have 150 years ago ... and yes, some people complain about inequality, but everybody got richer. Even the poor got richer.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58frp8Lb6Xc

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