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"Life,
Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness"
versus
"Life,
Liberty [and] Property"
July
4, 2001.
The Declaration of Independence proclaimed "life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness" to be inalienable rights, but the Bill of Rights
changed the phrase to "life, liberty and property."
1 The intrinsic, emotional
desirability of the pursuit of happiness virtually
guaranteed its widespread acceptance as a goal of the revolution and
enhanced the slogan's motivational effect. In contrast, a common-sense
understanding of property as an essential element of
"liberty" required rational analysis making it unlikely for such
concept to gain widespread understanding. Including "pursuit of
happiness" in the revolutionary slogan was redundant but useful,
and omitting it from the Bill of Rights subtracted nothing from the
concept of "liberty." Inclusion of "property"
in the revolutionary slogan was not necessary, nor would it have inspired
revolutionary fervor, but the absence of a widespread common-sense
understanding of it as an essential component of "liberty" made
its inclusion in the Bill of Rights necessary. (.back
to top.)
Revolutionary
Slogan.
The purposes of the Declaration of Independence were to articulate moral
justifications for the revolution and inspire emotional support for it.
The goals of the Constitution were "to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of
Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." See footnote
2.
Securing
Liberty.
The Constitution's design of government accomplished all those goals except
that it failed to "secure ... Liberty"
3 until adoption of
the Bill of Rights as the first ten amendments, which secured the
"Liberty" by explicitly identifying individual rights not
to be infringed by government, explicitly including property
as a right not to be infringed absent "due process of law"
4 and not to be
"taken for public use without just compensation,"
5 and explicitly stating
that its "enumeration of certain rights shall not be construed to
deny or disparage others retained by the people."
6. (.back
to top.)
Property-Guarantee
Eclipses Happiness-Pursuit.
The pursuit-of-happiness phrase increased the revolutionary
slogan's motivational power because its emotional desirability made it
intrinsically acceptable without need for rational analysis or ideological
explanation. In contrast, property was a legal concept not
likely to have been understood to be an essential component of
"liberty" without rational analysis. Gaining
widespread acceptance of an idea is easy when it's an emotionally
desirable one but difficult when it's an intellectual concept requiring
rational analysis to be understood. This distinction illustrates a
truth about human nature, understanding of which is essential to devise
effective means to impart widespread understanding of private enterprise
as a human-rights concept rather than merely as an economic-efficiency
concept. (.back to top.)
Educational
Failures.
Ignorance about private enterprise is so widespread because we who do
understand it have failed to motivate those who don't to do the
common-sense thinking necessary to understand its nature as a human-rights
concept. Paradoxically, the same proliferation of means of
communication and entertainment which offers unprecedented opportunities
for us to disseminate such knowledge on a widespread basis also makes such
task more difficult because the pervasive availability of entertainment
diminishes people's willingness to forego leisure in favor of mental work.
(.back to top.)
Emotional
Incentives for Rational Analysis.
A desire for relief from emotional discomfort stimulates rational analysis
to discover and obtain relief. This process continues until the brain
obtains relief or concludes that none exists. When the brain passively
receives relief (such as an external stimulus or spontaneous ending of
discomfort) without having to perform any significant degree of rational
analysis, it merely associates memories of the sources of discomfort and
relief. When it actively procures relief (or concludes that
none exists) through rational analysis, it associates such rational
analysis and conclusion with its memory of the source of discomfort.
(.back to top.)
To
Paraphrase Professor Higgins:
It's Plain the Drain is Mostly in the Brain.
The brain simply doesn't bother to perform rational analysis absent an
emotional incentive to seek relief, comfort or pleasure. Although
few of us may have consciously drawn this common-sense conclusion, we
intuitively understand it from our everyday experiences. A fleeting,
mild pain in the arm usually doesn't stimulate rational analysis, but a
severe one will almost certainly start a rational-analysis search for
relief until the brain finds a remedy, concludes that none exists (or that
the problem is merely temporary), or passively receives relief.
Our learning that a stranger died in a traffic accident may cause
momentary discomfort but is not likely to stimulate rational analysis
absent additional information making it self-evident that circumstances
contributing to that accident pose a risk to us. Such perception of
personal risk gives us an emotional incentive for rational analysis
seeking ways to eliminate, avoid or reduce such risk. (.back
to top.)
What
Makes "Your" Problem "My" Problem?.
None of us is inclined to engage in an extensive rational-analysis search
for a solution to someone else's problem absent an emotional
incentive to do so. For example, the discomfort we experience when
we personally encounter an accident involving someone else stimulates our
rational-analysis search for ways to be helpful. The comfort we
derive from our pride in feeling helpful motivates us to do so. If
we were to devise a way to help a victim stay alive until the arrival of
medical assistance, we would thereby learn a solution we'd never forget.
In contrast, when we encounter an accident with medical assistants already
at the scene, our belief in their expertise relieves our discomfort enough
to prevent us from feeling obligated to be helpful. (.back
to top.)
Short-Circuits.
The same phenomena govern our responses to our perceptions of social
problems. A description of an apparent social problem creates
emotional discomfort stimulating a desire for the comfort of feeling that
we're willing to try to be helpful. Such desire to be helpful
stimulates rational analysis to determine how to do so, but when a
solution proposed by someone we perceive as having expertise accompanies
or immediately follows the description of the problem, our belief that
someone else has determined a solution diminishes our discomfort enough to
terminate rational analysis (unless, of course, the proposed solution is
obviously illogical). This process short-circuits our evaluation of
the problem by substituting the comfort of believing someone else is
solving it for the discomfort from recognizing it. (.back
to top.)
"Life,
Liberty and _________"?
Acceptance of emotionally desirable goals occurs effortlessly but
comprehension of intellectual concepts requires mental work. If all
Americans were asked to complete the phrase, "America stands for
life, liberty and ___," the vast majority would say "pursuit of
happiness." Few would say "property," because few
understand property to be the Constitution's description of a human-rights
concept essential to liberty from oppressive government. (.back
to top.)
That
"Thing" Thing.
Almost everyone considers property to be a thing (such as a
physical object, money or stock) rather than the inherent, human-right
of control over one's own labor and its fruits. It's easy to
understand why this misconception is so widespread-- it's simply more
convenient to use the word describing the thing over which the law
of property gives us rights of control. For example, nearly everyone
thinks a tangible thing (such as a table, money or stock) is
property rather than understanding it to be an exchangeable
representation of property (i.e., of human labor). (.back
to top.)
To
"Be" or Not to "Be".
The vast majority of people would consider a tree on an undiscovered,
uninhabited island to be property (and most environmental activists
would consider it to be nature's property). They'd consider
an explorer's discovery of the tree to be a discovery of property
rather than understanding the act of discovery to be the creation
of property (i.e., rights created by the labor of discovery). They'd
consider cutting-down the tree to be a taking (or destruction) of nature's
property rather than understanding such act to be the creation of additional
property (i.e., creation of additional rights by additional labor).
Such prevailing view of property stands the concept on its head by viewing
natural resources as "property" having intrinsic
"rights" not to be "exploited" by human labor.
This neo-pantheistic philosophy views humans as servants or slaves of
nature rather than as beings with inalienable rights to create property by
human-labor alteration of nature. (.back to
top.)
Rise
& Fall of Common Sense.
Common sense suggests that the concept of property as an inherent,
individual right evolved in the human mind long before the
organization of human society. Surely a prehistoric man believed he
was entitled to control an uninhabited cave he found, an animal he killed
or captured, or anything he built or created. The Ten Commandments
recognized the pre-existing state of the concept of property by simply
stating "Thou shall not steal." In the evolution of human
society, the increasing concentration of governmental power enabled
governmental authorities to assert ownership of, or the "right"
to control, the fruits of their subjects' labors. Feudalism was but
one of many examples of governmental power being used to assert
governmental ownership of the fruits of labor by individuals subservient
to such power. Consequently, ordinary people gradually acquired the
erroneous belief that the government was entitled to the fruits of their
labor. (.back to top.)
Re-Evolution
of Intuitive Understandings.
One of the goals of the American Revolution's intellectual leaders was to reassert
individual rights intuitively understood at the dawn of human
civilization. One of the goals of the revolution's constitutional
finale was to formally articulate those rights and create
permanent, constitutional barriers against repetition of the historically
demonstrated, inherent, tendency of government to limit, usurp, or destroy
them. During the revolutionary stage, virtually all colonists had a
strong intuitive understanding of property because colonial society
still retained enough of a pioneer/explorer spirit to view their own
efforts, rather than government, as the source of their rights.
However, only the few who had studied philosophy had acquired an intellectual
understanding of property as a legally recognized, exchangeable
representation of the inherent human right to control the fruits of one's
own labor. (.back to top.)
Revolutionary
Re-Evolution.
Even though English common law was gradually extending legal
recognition to the dawn-of-civilization, intuitive concept of property as
an inherently individual right, most Englishmen (including the colonists)
still considered "property" as something apart from the
individual who created it -- i.e., they would have considered a table to be
"property" rather than intellectually understanding it to be a
legally- exchangeable representation of human labor. Despite
such progress under common law and the brilliance of Eighteenth Century
philosophers, the re-evolution of the pre-historic, intuitive
understanding of property as a human right would have progressed slowly
and episodically absent the American Revolution because it was the
American colonists' pioneer/explorer culture and English heritage that
gave them a unique combination of an intuitive understanding of the value
of freedom forged from the necessity of self-reliance and an allegiance to
the limited-government philosophy which had been steadily evolving in
English law since the Magna Carter. (.back
to top.)
"Liberty,
Fraternity, [Static] Equality".
The absence of such unique combination doomed the French Revolution to
failure because the slogan, "liberty, fraternity, equality"
failed to mature into an understanding of property as a human
right. Viewing property as static thing rather than
understanding it as an exchangeable, dynamic representation of human labor
led the French revolutionaries to view "equality" through the
lens of results rather than opportunity. Such static view of
property and the consequent result-oriented view of equality foreshadowed
collectivist philosophies that emerged in the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries such as socialism and communism. (.back
to top.)
Static
Distribution.
The static view of property widespread among people today makes them
susceptible to propagandistic, collectivists, class-warfare arguments that
the "distribution" of property is "unfair." The now
widespread use of statistical analyses to provide socio-political theories
with a scientific imprimatur has further obscured the meaning of property
as a result of casual, un-defined use of the statistical term
"distribution" to describe patterns of economic achievements.
This leads people unfamiliar with the statistical meaning of
"distribution" to wrongly believe that control of a large
percentage of total wealth by a small percentage of individuals is
evidence of some hidden, sinister mechanism to unfairly
"distribute" wealth to a few at the expense of the many.
In contrast, anyone understanding property to be a legally- recognized
exchangeable representation of human labor would know that such wide
disparities in wealth simply reflect wide disparities in human labor,
creativity and risk-taking. (.back to top.)
The
Status of Static Status.
It's difficult to identify a particular point in American history when the
static view of property gained widespread acceptance. At least
through the end of the American frontier, most individuals perceived
themselves as being in control of their own destinies and responsible for
their own fates, and such perceptions reinforced their intuitive,
common-sense understanding of property as a dynamic process. By the
end of the New Deal, a static view of property based on an expectation of
governmental responsibility for, and a belief its ability to provide for,
the material well-being of individuals had completely supplanted
the frontier-era belief in self-responsibility. Each incremental increase
in the government's role as provider necessarily reduced the need for
Americans to perceive themselves as being primarily responsible for their
own destinies. Now, as we begin the Twenty-First Century, the
political belief that part of government's responsibility is to
"distribute" property "fairly" has become widespread
while government leaders pay lip service to the principles of a
"market economy." (.back to top.)
"We"
versus "They" meets "Us" versus
"Them"
The current trend is discouraging, to say the least. If we who
understand private enterprise are to reverse this accelerating trend, we
must disseminate educational information in a form and manner creating an
emotional incentive for the consumer of the information to engage in
rational analysis of the information. It's been easy for those with
a collectivist, static-property mindset to gain widespread acceptance of
their philosophical viewpoint because such acceptance merely requires that
their ideas have emotional desirability. The challenge for those of
us who understand private enterprise as a human-rights concept is to
create effective emotional incentives for people to apply their
common-sense, rational-analysis capabilities in analyzing problems and
proposals for solutions. (.back to top.)
We who understand the human-rights nature of
private enterprise tend to believe that people ought to be
motivated to rationally analyze social problems and proposals for
solutions. From that premise, most of us are inclined to believe that we
are more "rational" and less "emotional" than those
who don't understand the principles that seem so clear to us. We
think "they" don't understand because they're just "too
lazy" to exert the mental effort to learn what we've learned. These
are incorrect views of ourselves as well as of them. (.back
to top.)
Why
are We "We" and They "They"?
What motivated us to learn the truths that we understand?
Emotions motivated us to do so-- e.g., the emotional satisfaction
of feeling that we're responsible citizens, the fun of mental combat with
opponents, the emotional satisfaction of problem-solving, pride in being
willing and able to analyze complex issues, pride in perceiving ourselves
as realists making decisions based on objective logic rather than
emotionalism. (.back to top.)
We've
Met Them, and Them Are Us.
What could motivate "them" to learn these truths?
Emotions, of course. If we're really able to be realists,
we must accept the fact that emotions motivated us to learn what we know
and that if we're really as smart as we think we are, we should be able to
determine how to furnish educational information to the pubic in ways that
provide emotional incentives for "them" to apply rational
analysis to the same issues. If we were to do that, their own common
sense would do the rest. (.back to top.)
1. Emphasis added (back
to text)
2.. Preamble to the Constitution. Emphasis added. (back
to text)
3. Although it imposed limitations on taxation and
prohibited laws "impairing the Obligation of Contracts" [Article
I, Sections 9 and 10], those provisions only impliedly recognized
private property.. (back to text)
4. Fifth Amendment (back to text)
5. Id. (back to text)
6. Ninth Amendment (back to text) |
