WEBVTT NOTE 15. "Human Rights" as Property Rights 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 CHAPTER 15 HUMAN RIGHTS AS PROPERTY RIGHTS 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:17.000 Liberals generally wish to preserve the concept of rights for such human rights as freedom of speech, while denying the concept to private property. 3 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:27.000 A particularly stark and self-contradictory example is Professor Peter Singer, who explicitly calls for preserving the concept of rights for personal liberty, 4 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:34.480 Property, while shifting over to utilitarianism in economic affairs and in the realm of property. 5 00:00:34.480 --> 00:00:40.900 And yet, on the contrary, the concept of rights only makes sense as property rights. 6 00:00:40.900 --> 00:00:46.420 For not only are there no human rights which are not also property rights, but the former 7 00:00:46.420 --> 00:00:52.440 rights lose their absoluteness and clarity and become fuzzy and vulnerable when property 8 00:00:52.440 --> 00:00:56.100 rights are not used as the standard. 9 00:00:56.100 --> 00:01:00.620 In the first place, there are two senses in which property rights are identical with human 10 00:01:00.620 --> 00:01:01.620 rights. 11 00:01:01.620 --> 00:01:08.420 One, that property can only accrue to humans, so that their rights to property are rights 12 00:01:08.420 --> 00:01:11.380 that belong to human beings. 13 00:01:11.380 --> 00:01:17.340 And two, that the person's right to his own body, his personal liberty, is a property 14 00:01:17.340 --> 00:01:21.900 right in his own person, as well as a human right. 15 00:01:21.900 --> 00:01:27.580 But more importantly for our discussion, human rights, when not put in terms of property 16 00:01:27.580 --> 00:01:33.220 rights, turn out to be vague and contradictory, causing liberals to weaken those rights on 17 00:01:33.220 --> 00:01:38.020 behalf of public policy or the public good. 18 00:01:38.020 --> 00:01:44.380 As I wrote in another work, take for example the human right of free speech. 19 00:01:44.380 --> 00:01:49.660 Freedom of speech is supposed to mean the right of everyone to say whatever he likes. 20 00:01:49.660 --> 00:01:56.300 But the neglected question is, where? Where does a man have this right? He certainly does 21 00:01:56.300 --> 00:02:03.180 not have it on property on which he is trespassing. In short, he has this right only either on 22 00:02:03.180 --> 00:02:10.220 his own property or on the property of someone who has agreed, as a gift or in a rental contract, 23 00:02:10.220 --> 00:02:16.860 to allow him on the premises. In fact, then, there is no such thing as a separate right 24 00:02:16.860 --> 00:02:18.660 to Free Speech. 25 00:02:18.660 --> 00:02:24.740 There is only a man's property right, the right to do as he wills with his own, or to 26 00:02:24.740 --> 00:02:29.420 make voluntary agreements with other property owners. 27 00:02:29.420 --> 00:02:34.180 In short, a person does not have a right to freedom of speech. 28 00:02:34.180 --> 00:02:40.160 What he does have is the right to hire a hall and address the people who enter the premises. 29 00:02:40.160 --> 00:02:43.420 He does not have a right to freedom of the press. 30 00:02:43.420 --> 00:02:49.060 What he does have is the right to write or publish a pamphlet, and to sell that pamphlet 31 00:02:49.060 --> 00:02:53.900 to those who are willing to buy it, or to give it away to those who are willing to accept 32 00:02:53.900 --> 00:02:54.900 it. 33 00:02:54.900 --> 00:03:01.260 Thus, what he has in each of these cases is property rights, including the right of free 34 00:03:01.260 --> 00:03:07.060 contract and transfer which form a part of such rights of ownership. 35 00:03:07.060 --> 00:03:12.960 There is no extra right of free speech or free press beyond the property rights that 36 00:03:12.960 --> 00:03:27.960 Furthermore, couching the analysis in terms of a right-to-free speech instead of property rights leads to confusion and the weakening of the very concept of rights. 37 00:03:27.960 --> 00:03:33.080 The most famous example is Justice Holmes' contention that no one has the right to shout 38 00:03:33.080 --> 00:03:39.520 fire falsely in a crowded theater, and therefore that the right to freedom of speech cannot 39 00:03:39.520 --> 00:03:46.440 be absolute, but must be weakened and tempered by considerations of public policy. 40 00:03:46.440 --> 00:03:52.360 And yet, if we analyze the problem in terms of property rights, we will see that no weakening 41 00:03:52.360 --> 00:03:55.720 of the absoluteness of rights is necessary. 42 00:03:55.720 --> 00:04:02.240 Furthermore, the view that the shout of fire causes a panic is deterministic and is another 43 00:04:02.240 --> 00:04:07.120 version of the incitement to riot fallacy discussed above. 44 00:04:07.120 --> 00:04:12.100 It is up to the people in the theatre to assess information coming to them. 45 00:04:12.100 --> 00:04:18.020 If this were not so, why wouldn't correctly warning people of an actual fire in a theatre 46 00:04:18.020 --> 00:04:22.820 be a crime, since it too might incite a panic? 47 00:04:22.820 --> 00:04:28.740 The disruption involved in falsely yelling fire is actionable only as a violation of 48 00:04:28.740 --> 00:04:32.900 property rights in the manner explained in the text below. 49 00:04:32.900 --> 00:04:37.580 I am indebted to Dr. David Gordon for this point. 50 00:04:37.580 --> 00:04:42.780 For logically, the shouter is either a patron or the theater owner. 51 00:04:42.780 --> 00:04:47.460 If he is the theater owner, he is violating the property rights of the patrons in quiet 52 00:04:47.460 --> 00:04:52.700 enjoyment of the performance for which he took their money in the first place. 53 00:04:52.700 --> 00:04:57.420 If he is another patron, then he is violating both the property right of the patrons to 54 00:04:57.420 --> 00:05:02.860 watching the performance and the property right of the owner, for he is violating the 55 00:05:02.860 --> 00:05:05.380 terms of his being there. 56 00:05:05.380 --> 00:05:11.540 For those terms surely include not violating the owner's property by disrupting the performance 57 00:05:11.540 --> 00:05:13.720 he is putting on. 58 00:05:13.720 --> 00:05:18.460 In either case, he may be prosecuted as a violator of property rights. 59 00:05:18.460 --> 00:05:29.460 Therefore, when we concentrate on the property rights involved, we see that the Holmes case implies no need for the law to weaken the absolute nature of rights. 60 00:05:29.460 --> 00:05:39.460 Indeed, Justice Hugo Black, a well-known absolutist on behalf of freedom of speech, made it clear in a trenchant critique of the Holmes' 61 00:05:39.460 --> 00:05:48.460 Shouting fire in a crowded theater argument that Black's advocacy of freedom of speech was grounded in the rights of private property. 62 00:05:48.460 --> 00:05:50.460 Thus Black stated, 63 00:05:50.460 --> 00:05:53.460 I went to a theater last night with you. 64 00:05:53.460 --> 00:06:01.460 I have an idea if you and I had gotten up and marched around that theater, whether we said anything or not, we would have been arrested. 65 00:06:01.460 --> 00:06:08.460 Nobody has ever said that the First Amendment gives people a right to go anywhere in the world they want to go 66 00:06:08.460 --> 00:06:12.700 So, or say anything in the world they want to say. 67 00:06:12.700 --> 00:06:17.920 Buying the theater tickets did not buy the opportunity to make a speech there. 68 00:06:17.920 --> 00:06:23.820 We have a system of property in this country which is also protected by the Constitution. 69 00:06:23.820 --> 00:06:28.980 We have a system of property which means that a man does not have a right to do anything 70 00:06:28.980 --> 00:06:32.400 he wants anywhere he wants to do it. 71 00:06:32.400 --> 00:06:37.340 For instance, I would feel a little badly if somebody were to try to come into my house 72 00:06:37.340 --> 00:06:41.980 and tell me that he had a constitutional right to come in there because he wanted to make 73 00:06:41.980 --> 00:06:44.820 a speech against the Supreme Court. 74 00:06:44.820 --> 00:06:49.660 I realize the freedom of people to make a speech against the Supreme Court, but I do 75 00:06:49.660 --> 00:06:53.420 not want him to make it in my house. 76 00:06:53.420 --> 00:06:58.700 That is a wonderful aphorism about shouting fire in a crowded theater, but you do not 77 00:06:58.700 --> 00:07:01.880 have to shout fire to get arrested. 78 00:07:01.880 --> 00:07:06.980 If a person creates a disorder in a theater, they would get him there not because of what 79 00:07:06.980 --> 00:07:32.500 Some years ago, the French political theorist Bertrand de Juvenel similarly called for the 80 00:07:32.500 --> 00:07:38.340 The weakening of free speech and assembly rights in what he called the Chairman's Problem, 81 00:07:38.340 --> 00:07:43.940 the problem of allocating time or space in an assembly hall or newspaper or in front 82 00:07:43.940 --> 00:07:49.600 of a microphone, where the writers or speakers believe that they have a right of free speech 83 00:07:49.600 --> 00:07:52.640 to the use of the resource. 84 00:07:52.640 --> 00:07:58.100 What de Juvenel overlooked was our solution to the Chairman's Problem, recasting the 85 00:07:58.100 --> 00:08:03.740 The concept of rights in terms of private property, rather than in terms of freedom of speech 86 00:08:03.740 --> 00:08:06.140 or assembly. 87 00:08:06.140 --> 00:08:11.320 In the first place, we may notice that in each of de Juvenel's examples, a man attending 88 00:08:11.320 --> 00:08:16.520 an assembly, a person writing to a Letters to the Editor column, and a man applying for 89 00:08:16.520 --> 00:08:23.380 discussion time on the radio, the scarce time or space being offered is free in the sense 90 00:08:23.380 --> 00:08:25.760 of costless. 91 00:08:25.760 --> 00:08:30.320 We are in the midst of what economics calls the rationing problem. 92 00:08:30.320 --> 00:08:36.640 A valuable, scarce resource has to be allocated, whether it be time at the podium, time in 93 00:08:36.640 --> 00:08:40.420 front of the microphone, or space in a newspaper. 94 00:08:40.420 --> 00:08:46.560 But since the use of the resource is free, costless, the demand for obtaining this time 95 00:08:46.560 --> 00:08:53.680 or space is bound greatly to exceed the supply, and hence a perceived shortage of the resource 96 00:08:53.680 --> 00:08:56.120 is bound to develop. 97 00:08:56.120 --> 00:09:02.480 As in all cases of shortages and of queuing up, caused by low or non-existent prices, 98 00:09:02.480 --> 00:09:07.640 the unsatisfied demanders are left with a feeling of frustration and resentment at not 99 00:09:07.640 --> 00:09:12.480 obtaining the use of the resource they believe they deserve. 100 00:09:12.480 --> 00:09:18.720 A scarce resource, if not allocated by prices, must be allocated in some other way by its 101 00:09:18.720 --> 00:09:20.100 owner. 102 00:09:20.100 --> 00:09:25.620 It should be noted that the dejuvenile cases could all be allocated by a price system, 103 00:09:25.620 --> 00:09:27.860 if the owner so desired. 104 00:09:27.860 --> 00:09:33.220 The chairman of an assembly could ask for price bids for scarce places at the podium, 105 00:09:33.220 --> 00:09:36.380 and then award the places to the highest bidders. 106 00:09:36.380 --> 00:09:41.060 The radio producer could do the same with discussants on his program. 107 00:09:41.060 --> 00:09:46.940 In effect, this is what producers do when they sell time to individual sponsors. 108 00:09:46.940 --> 00:09:53.100 There would then be no shortages and no feelings of resentment at a promise, equal access of 109 00:09:53.100 --> 00:09:58.140 the public to the column, podium or microphone, reneged. 110 00:09:58.140 --> 00:10:02.640 But beyond the question of prices, there is a deeper matter involved. 111 00:10:02.640 --> 00:10:10.020 For whether by prices or by some other criterion, the resource must, in all cases, be allocated 112 00:10:10.020 --> 00:10:12.260 by its owner. 113 00:10:12.260 --> 00:10:19.140 The owner of the radio station or the program or his agent rents or donates radio time in 114 00:10:19.140 --> 00:10:21.820 a way that he decides. 115 00:10:21.820 --> 00:10:27.720 The owner of the newspaper or his editor agent allocates space for letters in any way that 116 00:10:27.720 --> 00:10:29.580 he chooses. 117 00:10:29.580 --> 00:10:35.020 The owner of the assembly and his designated agent, the chairman, allocates the space at 118 00:10:35.020 --> 00:10:39.140 the podium in any way he decides. 119 00:10:39.140 --> 00:10:44.700 The fact that ownership is the ultimate allocator gives us the clue to the property solution 120 00:10:44.700 --> 00:10:48.040 of de Juvenel's Chairman's Problem. 121 00:10:48.040 --> 00:10:53.220 For the fellow who writes a letter to a newspaper is not the owner of the paper. 122 00:10:53.220 --> 00:11:01.460 He therefore has no right to but only a request for newspaper space, a request which it is 123 00:11:01.460 --> 00:11:06.500 the absolute right of the owner to grant or to deny. 124 00:11:06.500 --> 00:11:12.340 The man who asks to speak at an assembly has no right to speak, but only a request that 125 00:11:12.340 --> 00:11:17.540 the owner or his representative, the chairman, must decide upon. 126 00:11:17.540 --> 00:11:23.500 The solution is to recast the meaning of the right to freedom of speech or assembly, instead 127 00:11:23.500 --> 00:11:30.620 of using the vague and, as de Juvenel demonstrates, unworkable concept of some sort of equal right 128 00:11:30.620 --> 00:11:33.500 to, space or time. 129 00:11:33.500 --> 00:11:39.900 We should focus on the right of private property. Only when the right to free speech is treated 130 00:11:39.900 --> 00:11:47.300 simply as a subdivision of property right does it become valid, workable and absolute. 131 00:11:47.300 --> 00:11:53.580 This can be seen in De Juvenel's proposed right to buttonhole. De Juvenel says that there 132 00:11:53.580 --> 00:11:59.300 is a sense in which the right of speech can be exercised by each and every one. It is 133 00:11:59.300 --> 00:12:05.340 is the right to buttonhole, to talk and to try to convince the people one meets, and 134 00:12:05.340 --> 00:12:10.660 then to collect these people in a hall, and thus to constitute a congregation of one's 135 00:12:10.660 --> 00:12:12.740 own. 136 00:12:12.740 --> 00:12:18.540 Here de Juvenel approaches the proper solution without firmly attaining it, for what he is 137 00:12:18.540 --> 00:12:24.460 really saying is that the right to free speech is only valid and workable when used in the 138 00:12:24.460 --> 00:12:30.380 A sense of the right to talk to people, to try to convince them, to hire a hall to address 139 00:12:30.380 --> 00:12:33.980 people who wish to attend, etc. 140 00:12:33.980 --> 00:12:39.580 But this sense of the right to free speech is, in fact, part of a person's general right 141 00:12:39.580 --> 00:12:46.540 to his property, provided, of course, we remember the right of another person not to be button-holed 142 00:12:46.540 --> 00:12:52.180 if he doesn't want to, that is, his right not to listen. 143 00:12:52.180 --> 00:12:57.700 Your property right includes the right to one's property and to make mutually agreed-upon 144 00:12:57.700 --> 00:13:02.420 contracts and exchanges with the owners of other properties. 145 00:13:02.420 --> 00:13:09.040 De Juvenel's button-holer, who hires a hall and addresses his congregation, is exercising 146 00:13:09.040 --> 00:13:15.540 not a vague right of free speech, but a part of his general right of property. 147 00:13:15.540 --> 00:13:21.500 De Juvenel almost recognizes this when he considers the case of two men, Primus and 148 00:13:21.500 --> 00:13:24.060 and Secundus. 149 00:13:24.060 --> 00:13:29.540 Primus has collected through toil and trouble a congregation of his own doing. 150 00:13:29.540 --> 00:13:35.140 An outsider, Secundus, comes in and claims the right to address this congregation on 151 00:13:35.140 --> 00:13:38.160 grounds of the right of free speech. 152 00:13:38.160 --> 00:13:40.700 Is Primus bound to give him the floor? 153 00:13:40.700 --> 00:13:42.140 I doubt it. 154 00:13:42.140 --> 00:13:46.340 He can reply to Secundus, I have made up this congregation. 155 00:13:46.340 --> 00:13:49.500 Go thou and do likewise. 156 00:13:49.500 --> 00:13:51.380 Precisely. 157 00:13:51.380 --> 00:13:57.900 In short, Primus owns the meeting. He has hired the hall, has called the meeting and 158 00:13:57.900 --> 00:14:02.940 has laid down its conditions, and those who don't like these conditions are free not to 159 00:14:02.940 --> 00:14:09.180 attend or to leave. Primus has a property right in the meeting that permits him to speak 160 00:14:09.180 --> 00:14:18.020 at will. Secundus has no property right whatever, and therefore no right to speak at the meeting. 161 00:14:18.020 --> 00:14:23.600 In general, those problems where rights seem to require weakening are ones where the locus 162 00:14:23.600 --> 00:14:31.060 of ownership is not precisely defined, in short, where property rights are muddled. 163 00:14:31.060 --> 00:14:36.680 Many problems of freedom of speech, for example, occur in the government-owned streets. 164 00:14:36.680 --> 00:14:41.980 For example, should a government permit a political meeting which it claims will disrupt 165 00:14:41.980 --> 00:14:48.060 Traffic or Litter Streets with Handbills. But all of such problems, which seemingly 166 00:14:48.060 --> 00:14:54.060 require freedom of speech to be less than absolute, are actually problems due to the 167 00:14:54.060 --> 00:15:00.980 failure to define property rights. For the streets are generally owned by government. 168 00:15:00.980 --> 00:15:07.220 The government in these cases is the chairman. And then government, like any other property 169 00:15:07.220 --> 00:15:14.220 The whole problem would not arise, it should be noted, if the streets were owned by private individuals and firms, as they all would be in a libertarian state. 170 00:15:37.220 --> 00:15:44.060 Society. For then, the streets, like all other private property, could be rented by or donated 171 00:15:44.060 --> 00:15:50.860 to other private individuals or groups for the purpose of assembly. One would, in a fully 172 00:15:50.860 --> 00:15:57.100 libertarian society, have no more right to use someone else's street than he would have 173 00:15:57.100 --> 00:16:03.980 the right to preempt someone else's assembly hall. In both cases, the only right would 174 00:16:03.980 --> 00:16:11.540 will be the property right to use one's money to rent the resource, if the landlord is willing. 175 00:16:11.540 --> 00:16:16.700 Of course, so long as the streets continue to be government owned, the problem and the 176 00:16:16.700 --> 00:16:19.500 conflict remain insoluble. 177 00:16:19.500 --> 00:16:25.220 For government ownership of the streets means that all of one's other property rights, including 178 00:16:25.220 --> 00:16:31.940 speech, assembly, distribution of leaflets, etc., will be hampered and restricted by the 179 00:16:31.940 --> 00:16:37.740 The ever-present necessity to traverse and use government-owned streets, which government 180 00:16:37.740 --> 00:16:41.980 may decide to block or restrict in any way. 181 00:16:41.980 --> 00:16:46.180 If the government allows the street meeting, it will restrict traffic. 182 00:16:46.180 --> 00:16:50.240 If it blocks the meeting in behalf of the flow of traffic, it will block the freedom 183 00:16:50.240 --> 00:16:53.220 of access to the government streets. 184 00:16:53.220 --> 00:16:59.100 In either case, and whichever way it chooses, the rights of some taxpayers will have to 185 00:16:59.100 --> 00:17:01.300 be curtailed. 186 00:17:01.300 --> 00:17:06.340 The other place where the rights and locus of ownership are ill-defined, and hence where 187 00:17:06.340 --> 00:17:12.900 conflicts are insoluble, is the case of government assemblies and their chairman. 188 00:17:12.900 --> 00:17:18.960 For as we have pointed out, where one man or group hires a hall and appoints a chairman, 189 00:17:18.960 --> 00:17:23.480 the locus of ownership is clear and primus has his way. 190 00:17:23.480 --> 00:17:25.540 But what of government assemblies? 191 00:17:25.540 --> 00:17:27.460 Who owns them? 192 00:17:27.460 --> 00:17:34.340 So one really knows, and therefore there is no satisfactory or non-arbitrary way to resolve 193 00:17:34.340 --> 00:17:39.980 who shall speak and who shall not, what shall be decided and what shall not. 194 00:17:39.980 --> 00:17:45.660 True, the government assembly forms itself under its own rules, but then what if these 195 00:17:45.660 --> 00:17:49.980 rules are not agreeable to a large body of the citizenry? 196 00:17:49.980 --> 00:17:55.900 There is no satisfactory way to resolve this question because there is no clear locus of 197 00:17:55.900 --> 00:17:58.500 of Property Right Involved. 198 00:17:58.500 --> 00:18:03.720 To put it another way, in the case of the newspaper or radio program, it is clear that 199 00:18:03.720 --> 00:18:09.660 the letter-writer or would-be-discussant is the petitioner, and the publisher or producer 200 00:18:09.660 --> 00:18:12.620 the owner who makes the decision. 201 00:18:12.620 --> 00:18:18.200 But in the case of the governmental assembly, we do not know who the owner may be. 202 00:18:18.200 --> 00:18:23.700 The man who demands to be heard at a town meeting claims to be a part owner, and yet 203 00:18:23.700 --> 00:18:29.660 He has not established any sort of property right through purchase, inheritance or discovery, 204 00:18:29.660 --> 00:18:33.740 as have property owners in all other areas. 205 00:18:33.740 --> 00:18:38.480 To return to the streets, there are other vexed problems which would be quickly cleared 206 00:18:38.480 --> 00:18:44.840 up in a libertarian society where all property is private and clearly owned. 207 00:18:44.840 --> 00:18:50.320 In the current society, for example, there is continuing conflict between the right of 208 00:18:50.320 --> 00:18:56.440 of Taxpayers to have access to government-owned streets, as against the desire of residents 209 00:18:56.440 --> 00:19:02.360 of a neighborhood to be free of people whom they consider undesirable gathering in the 210 00:19:02.360 --> 00:19:03.720 streets. 211 00:19:03.720 --> 00:19:08.540 In New York City, for example, there are now hysterical pressures by residents of various 212 00:19:08.540 --> 00:19:15.240 neighborhoods to prevent McDonald's food stores from opening in their area, and in many cases 213 00:19:15.240 --> 00:19:20.200 they have been able to use the power of local government to prevent the stores from moving 214 00:19:20.200 --> 00:19:26.180 These, of course, are clear violations of the right of McDonald's to the property which 215 00:19:26.180 --> 00:19:28.140 they have purchased. 216 00:19:28.140 --> 00:19:34.320 But the residents do have a point—the litter and the attraction of undesirable elements 217 00:19:34.320 --> 00:19:40.700 who would be attracted to McDonald's and gather in front of it—on the streets. 218 00:19:40.700 --> 00:19:46.240 In short, what the residents are really complaining about is not so much the property right of 219 00:19:46.240 --> 00:19:52.080 of McDonald's as what they consider the bad use of the government streets. 220 00:19:52.080 --> 00:19:57.660 They are, in brief, complaining about the human right of certain people to walk at will 221 00:19:57.660 --> 00:20:00.340 on the government streets. 222 00:20:00.340 --> 00:20:07.040 But as taxpayers and citizens, these undesirables surely have the right to walk on the streets, 223 00:20:07.040 --> 00:20:12.020 and of course they could gather on the spot if they so desired without the attraction 224 00:20:12.020 --> 00:20:14.080 of McDonald's. 225 00:20:14.080 --> 00:20:19.360 In the libertarian society, however, where the streets would all be privately owned, 226 00:20:19.360 --> 00:20:24.960 the entire conflict could be resolved without violating anyone's property rights. 227 00:20:24.960 --> 00:20:30.480 For then, the owners of the streets would have the right to decide who shall have access 228 00:20:30.480 --> 00:20:37.220 to those streets, and they could then keep out undesirables if they so wished. 229 00:20:37.220 --> 00:20:42.200 Of course, those street owners who decided to keep out undesirables would have to pay 230 00:20:42.200 --> 00:20:43.600 the price. 231 00:20:43.600 --> 00:20:48.480 with the actual costs of policing as well as the loss of business to the merchants on 232 00:20:48.480 --> 00:20:53.380 their street and the diminished flow of visitors to their homes. 233 00:20:53.380 --> 00:20:58.800 Undoubtedly in the free society there would result a diverse pattern of access, with some 234 00:20:58.800 --> 00:21:04.780 streets and therefore neighborhoods open to all, and others with varying degrees of restricted 235 00:21:04.780 --> 00:21:06.280 access. 236 00:21:06.280 --> 00:21:12.220 Similarly, the private ownership of all streets would resolve the problem of the human right 237 00:21:12.220 --> 00:21:14.620 to Freedom of Immigration. 238 00:21:14.620 --> 00:21:19.900 There is no question about the fact that current immigration barriers restrict not so much 239 00:21:19.900 --> 00:21:25.660 a human right to immigrate, but the right of property owners to rent or sell property 240 00:21:25.660 --> 00:21:27.660 to immigrants. 241 00:21:27.660 --> 00:21:33.540 There can be no human right to immigrate, for on whose property does someone else have 242 00:21:33.540 --> 00:21:35.740 the right to trample? 243 00:21:35.740 --> 00:21:41.840 In short, if Primus wishes to migrate now from some other country to the United States, 244 00:21:41.840 --> 00:21:47.820 We cannot say that he has the absolute right to immigrate to this land area, for what of 245 00:21:47.820 --> 00:21:52.220 those property owners who don't want him on their property? 246 00:21:52.220 --> 00:21:57.680 On the other hand, there may be, and undoubtedly are, other property owners who would jump 247 00:21:57.680 --> 00:22:03.620 at the chance to rent or sell property to Primus, and the current laws now invade their 248 00:22:03.620 --> 00:22:08.100 property rights by preventing them from doing so. 249 00:22:08.100 --> 00:22:13.680 The libertarian society would resolve the entire immigration question within the matrix 250 00:22:13.680 --> 00:22:16.420 of absolute property rights. 251 00:22:16.420 --> 00:22:21.380 For people only have the right to move to those properties and lands where the owners 252 00:22:21.380 --> 00:22:24.720 desire to rent or sell to them. 253 00:22:24.720 --> 00:22:29.820 In the free society, they would, in first instance, have the right to travel only on 254 00:22:29.820 --> 00:22:35.920 those streets whose owners agree to have them there, and then to rent or buy housing from 255 00:22:35.920 --> 00:22:42.680 from Willing Owners. Again, just as in the case of daily movement on streets, a diverse 256 00:22:42.680 --> 00:22:47.680 and varying pattern of access of migration would undoubtedly arise.