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According to the Phnom Penh-based human rights group Licadho, at least a half million Cambodians have been evicted, or threatened with eviction, since 2000. Economic growth, led by the booming garment-export sector and resource-extraction industries, has driven up the value of land in this country of 15 million. Because property records were destroyed by the Communist Pol Pot regime, many families who have been living on their farms for generations still lack legal proof of ownership. "The Khmer Rouge destroyed all administrative documents: land titles; birth, marriage, and death certificates -- they destroyed all records of the past," says Licadho president Kek Chhiv Pung.
Now, again, what exactly is behind, say, a million dollar plot of land? It seems to me that anyone owning such a plot is more interested in the existing government regime than, say , a homeless person... wouldn't ya say?
I am all for a small, efficient government. I am all for good land distribution without all its value being drained by excessive taxation which is as bad a negative equity. However to maintain its value, da guberment is required. Da guberment is extremely valuable to land owners...wouldn't ya say? Because if you decide ya want to live tax free on your little plot, but are content to have taxes dumped on labor and capital, enough of them just might not want to bother. They can move. In fact , sometimes they do move. You and your land are not going anywhere.
So its not just how much , say, lander owners pay in taxes( which in many cases they do not pay nearly as much as they gain without any outlays in time or goods at all). Its also about the return of benefits which they clearly receive, as say, Khmer Rouge insurance.
I am glad to say, that according to John Locke's labor theory of ownership that helped inspire out founding, that we in the US ought not to have had that problem. Land in productive use is a traditional basis of whose land is whose.
de Soto is a very important economist; he frequently turns up in my readings.
We take things like property rights and titling for granted - the whole rule of law package de Soto cites - and these things are dreadfully deficient or lacking in so many countries and by so many people.
All property rights - as all rights - exist only by law.
Yes but generally there is a "natural law" that a surgeon's skill is his own or that a shoe maker tends to own his shoes. They have far less need of the state to protect their property and yet they are the one's who tend to pay a surplus in taxes over the benefit received.
There is no "natural law". A surgeon's right to practice his skill is licensed by the State; and a cobbler's business is not without license to earn a living. All rights are subject to law.
There is no "natural law". A surgeon's right to practice his skill is licensed by the State; and a cobbler's business is not without license to earn a living. All rights are subject to law.
Not according to this state.
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
A right to practice is not a skill and there is still a natural tendency among humans with no proscribed laws as can be observed. This is not to mention the statements made by many of the framers of our government, which so happens, did not include the likes of Bentham. . Even Hobbes considers self preservation more or less always justly prosecuted according to the state of nature.
The Declaration of Independence is not authority for anything. The notion that the Declaration of Independence is a "foundational" document is propaganda propagated by reactionary political factions, e.g., the Cato Institute, which has published such nonsense that . . . "the broad language of the Constitution is illuminated by the principles set forth in the Declaration. The Cato Institute, The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, Preface, p. 2 (2002). This is a common misconception that is not supported by the express language of the Constitution nor the historical record. The Declaration of Independence was not incorporated into the Constitution. To the contrary, the Constitution was a rejection of Jeffersonian democracy in favor of a constitutional republic, and a repudiation of Jefferson’s ideas about natural (viz. "unalienable") rights. In fact, Jefferson did not like the Constitution. Still, he has become the patron saint of most Americans who think that they have "God-given", "natural", "inherent" or "unalienable" rights, even though there is no provision for any such imprescriptible rights under the Constitution. In truth, that’s not the way things are ordered; but people nevertheless persist in believing the contrary is true - that they have extralegal rights - at least until their misguided notions run afoul of the law and they find themselves in court and in need of a lawyer. Then they complain their "Constitutional rights" are being infringed. Indeed, such persons are the first to complain that "there ought’a be a law!" Well, the truth is that there is.
There is a natural law and it's nature's law: that I will do what I can to ensure my own survival.
We eat what we kill as individuals and as a group. Other people or prides or packs who try to steal our food bring war on themselves. Prides, packs and societies are formed because it is advantageous to their members to surrender a portion or their natural right to the group or to the leader of the group, who assumes the executive authority. History is the story of how this executive authority is used, kept, and conferred.
From Hobbes to Locke to Wythe, this thought, the most radical of political philosophies, was our Founders' thought. It is what distinguishes modern regimes from the acien regime.
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