The Liberty Option by Tibor R. Machan

Author:Tibor R. Machan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: freedom, free society, moral, morality, practical, rule of law, property rights, individual sovereignty, legal authority, statism, justice, virtue, citizenry, citizen, politics, community, taxation, property rights, philosophy, politics
ISBN: 9781845403621
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2012
Published: 2012-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

Well, as already suggested, the right to private property secures for one a sphere of sovereignty. If we are individuals, required, morally, to lead our lives by our judgements, it is crucial that we control the elements with which our lives are lived. Indeed, it becomes the most crucial thing.

The question, ‘How ought I to live?’ becomes the foremost question to which you then seek an answer. While most of us aren’t moral theoreticians or ethical philosophers, that question still is always near the forefront of our minds. No matter what you do, even reading these lines, the question will arise: ‘Should I sleep or should I pay attention? Should I consider this point or should I just glide over it?’

All of those are questions having to do with your ethical agency, with one’s governance of one’s life, with one’s sovereignty. One’s feeling that one is doing the right thing becomes crucial if one is indeed the master of one’s existence.

Now, without the right to private property, without having some props, some elements of reality that are under our jurisdiction, our ethical decisions cannot be effectual. Consider, for example, if it turns out to be true that a good human being ought to be generous. Well, if we do not have the right to private property how are we going to be generous? Are we going to be like politicians and bureaucrats and expropriate what belongs to others and give this to the poor and needy? That’s not generosity. That’s theft.

In short, then, in order to have a effective life of moral virtue, for example the virtue of generosity, we must have the right to property, to hold and then to be free to part with valuables, on your own terms.

Moral Individualism

Although collectivism has some currency, especially among intellectuals and social theorists, so does a particular version of individualism. I have in mind the sort that pertains to moral responsibility.

Few people ever quite let go of the idea that some things they and others do are good and some things bad and that those doing them are responsible. When others judge our lives, or when we reflect upon ours, we say, ‘I did or did not do the right thing.’ Moreover, we can go on to consider what we did with what belongs to us – to use it well or badly.

Without our sphere of sovereignty, that is manifest in the actual world where we live our lives, we would not be able to act on most moral principles, especially those that involve allocating resources. Are we stingy? But one has to be stingy with something. If one is a neat person, one has to be neat within some sphere that one keeps orderly. If a slob, one will need something that belongs to one that one isn’t taking good care of. If those items don’t belong to you, if you always have to ask permission of society or the clan or the tribe of the nation as to what to do with these things, the you are not the effective agents in the disposition of them.

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