by Matthew Bransgrove | Jul 13, 2015 | Property
The courts The protection of property rights requires: a system of contract law and tort law that upholds real, personal and intellectual property rights; a rigorously enforced criminal code that outlaws theft, fraud, trespass, vandalism, and other deliberate...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Jul 13, 2015 | Property
Intellectual property is as much property in the eyes of the natural law as tangible property. Consider this passage from a BBC report: Thailand’s health ministry says it has approved the production of cheaper versions of patented anti-AIDS and heart disease drugs....
by Matthew Bransgrove | Jul 13, 2015 | Property
The problem which ultimately tore apart the Roman Republic was the accumulation of the lands of Italy in the hands of a few aristocrats. This proved politically destabilizing and led to tyranny, because land was needed, just as air is needed, to survive and prosper....
by Matthew Bransgrove | Jul 13, 2015 | Property
Rent control, quite apart from its disastrous practical effects, is primarily objectionable for the moral reason that it infringes property rights. If a landlord is denied the right to contract on any terms he sees fit, he does not really own the property—it has been...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Jul 13, 2015 | Property
The natural law recognizes that parents have a duty to support their children until they are old enough to fend for themselves, and it recognizes that spouses cannot leave one another destitute. However, to the extent that laws otherwise interfere with testamentary...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Jul 13, 2015 | Property
Freedom is … a liberty to dispose, and order, as he likes, his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property. —John Locke. Two Treatises of Government, 1689. When the government prohibits the demolition of a building on the grounds that it is ‘heritage listed’...
