Property rights come from society, not God

Fanatic supporters of Oregon's Measure 37 like to say that "property rights come from God." That's crazy. Why would God create the earth and living beings then hand over control of land to particular people?

The air we breathe in order to live isn't owned by individuals. The water we drink in order to live isn't owned by individuals. (Oregon law says "all water from all sources of supply belongs to the public.")

So why should the ground that provides the food and other resources we need to live be controlled by individuals?

It shouldn't. Property is part of the commons that is essential for survival of our species. One aspect of the commons, says Peter Barnes, is that it's made up of stuff we inherit:

It is not made up of anything that you or I or some corporation makes. One can present a very good case that if you make or invent something, it should be your private property, at least for a while. This is an entirely appropriate way of rewarding people and businesses for value they create and risks they take. But air and water and ecosystems and DNA and language and legal as well as political institutions are not made by any individual or corporation. They are gifts we inherit, either from nature or from the collective efforts of millions of humans.

Gifts. Grace. God. Words pointing in the direction of two more "Gs": Gratitude and Graciousness. What doesn't come from us and isn't produced by us isn't ours to do with as we please. We should be grateful to be able to use it for however many years of life we've been given.

And gracious enough to pass it on to the next generation in as good or better a condition as we found it. Barnes says:

To bring our discussion back to the problems of impermanence and inequality: it seems to me that if anything is divine, it ought to be those things we inherit together and should pass on, undiminished and more or less equally, to future generations. Permanence should trump impermanence. Broad benefit should trump narrow benefit. The commons should trump capital.

Last night Laurel and I went to an Envision Oregon confab in Salem sponsored by 1000 Friends of Oregon and some other groups. A few Measure 37 supporters found their way into this gathering of mostly progressive land use planning-friendly types.

A few were at Laurel's table. She said they were impossible to reason with. Rigid, unwilling to seek any middle ground. Just like the Republican legislators who refused to vote for the much-needed Measure 37 fix (HB 3540-C) that's been referred for a November vote.

This is the problem with a "divine right" mentality. You start to think that if you own property, you're sitting on the right hand of God, entitled to do with your land whatever pops into your sanctimonious head.

Gravel pit! Landfill! Massive subdivision! If I'm thinking it, it must be good and holy!

Bullshit. This sort of delusional World Revolves Around Me ideation stops public discourse in its tracks.

Jefferson Smith of the Bus Project was the final Envision Oregon speaker. He was great. Witty and right on. Smith told a story about moderating a debate between Ross Day of Oregonians in Action and Bob Stacey of 1000 Friends. He asked them: "Can you imagine making any changes to land use laws that would please your opposition and you also could live with?"

Stacey had lots of ideas. Day, none. "To him," Smith said, "property rights come from God. They're inviolable." Well, he's wrong.

I seriously doubt whether the Ten Commandments came from God. But let's say they did. There's nothing in them about whether it's right or wrong to build a subdivision on prime farmland or in a groundwater limited area. That ethical decision has to come from society, not God.

What we need, said Smith, is to move beyond the politics of Me to the politics of We. The sum of self-interests does not equal the public interest. Amen to that.

He also urged advocates for wise land use planning and the approval of HB 3540-C to recognize the difference between using power and sharing power. "Imagine two sports teams with these different philosophies," he asked. "Which will win?"

I'm all for reaching out to those with differing views and trying to find middle ground. In short, I'm a bleeding heart progressive.

But this doesn't work when the other side is stuck in Divine Right concrete. Oregonians in Action and a good share of its followers will never budge an inch on what they conceive as God-given property rights.

So they need to be overpowered at the ballot box by what Smith called a Coalition of the Benevolently Irrational.

We're all the folks in Oregon who aren't out to make a buck by trashing our state's beautiful landscape. We're willing to give something up for the common good—money, time, whatever it takes to hand on the commons to the next generation.

That sounds pretty darn divine to me.

Comments

[Bpaul]

Right on. I'm rushed at the moment and haven't read the whole post word for word, but I see where you are heading and I agree wholeheartedly.

Bp

[Bpaul]

I WILL read the whole post in the not too distant future however, didn't say that.

:-)

Bp

[Richard]

Brian: good article.

I derive no satisfaction from calling people names. Throughout this debate, though, when facts overwhelm the opposition, the result in innuendo and ad hominems. We have endured being termed communist when we use the word community.

So, with little satisfaction, I use the term "extremist." These people are extremists. Measure 37 - It's Too Extreme. Oregon is not a place for extremism, unless it is the scope of our physical landscape.

When I think of extremists, I think back to Gerald L. K. Smith and his ilk; not the elderly gentelemen at your table. But they are extremists.

In debates with another extremists in the SJ, I was constantly confronted with his faux law schoolisms, which, to the credit of extremists, sometimes contains elements that are persuasive, until you stop and think.

The faux law schoolism he loved to use is the idea that property rights are a "bundle of sticks." Property rights advocates (more on this misnomer below) try to use the analogy to show how their rights are diminished by various evil forces taking them away stick by stick (taxes, regulation, in addition to the voluntary leasing that the analogy is intended to describe).

If you are going to use an analogy, be prepared for others to take it to its logical conclusion. Some of those sticks go beyond your property line and when you tug on that stick, you find your neighbor has the other end firmly in grasp. Some of these sticks are shared in common. Some even go beyond your neighbor's property and go all the way to Rome (Oregon AND Italy). Those sticks shared in common manifest themselves as zoning regulations and comprehensive plans, just to keep it local.

Property rights: I have no idea whatsoever what this term means. In one sense it is redundant to the core: I have photography rights, garden rights, scratching my backside rights. Extremists want to describe property rights as being the same as government seizure of land, the taking of land away from you. That is B.S., but these extremists won't say what they mean because, I think, they will rightfully be held of for the ridicule they so richly deserve.

As another extremist used to say, let's turn over the rock and see what lies underneath.

[Rain]

good article. Property rights come from the dollar and that is the god of this particular group who value nothing but it-- no matter what they say. To accept it makes sense is part of the dumbing down of America which we see all round us :(

[Robert Paul Howard]

Dear Brian,

It is apparent that your "god" (so to [mis]speak) differs from the "god" of your opponents. Not only do different "interpretations" lead to different conclusions, so likewise do different a prioris.

Robert Paul Howard

[Richard]

A prioris; what an appropriate segue. An a prioris statement is a judgment or principle whose validity is independent of all impressions of the senses. Whatever is a priori is unmixed with anything empirical.

I am not sure why some of those at your table were at Envision Oregon. Thomas Hobbes described their vision 300 years ago as one that was nasty, brutish, and short. Hobbes is not the vision we strive to.

Pick at the scab that covers any of their arguments and you will find an anti-government troll. They do not like government and they certainly do not like either taxes or regulation.

They see any regulation as a taking. They see regulations as like being a little pregnant - always out there is the monster of socialism waiting to be born.

These people will read into the Constitution concepts that are not there. They will read Court decisions - they will read conclusions that are not there or reject conclusions that are to their disliking.

What are they doing? They are using the frameworks of community and society to undo both. So when we deal with these people, expose the disease, not the symptom. Most infectious organisms die when exposed to the light.

If they are not anti-government, then their position reduces to selfishness - again, something a true Oregonian does not value highly - after all, as we were told, we are the "benevolent irrationals."

There is nothing a prioris about the land use policy, comprehensive plans, and zoning. These concepts are the long, hard, carefully thought out frameworks of what we want our state, State, and future to be.

And I am not sure I agree entirely with Jefferson Smith. I think if you look back at the title to your property, it will be described as part of an original land grant. That grant came from, not King George necessarily, but from the rabble that seized power from him, and who defined the terms under which property, once granted, could be taken back.

[Coyote]

I am actually pretty good friends with both Ross and Dave over at OIA and can honestly say I have never heard them say that property rights come from God.

I am not saying that they do or do not believe that... But that is not the point.

The point is that you linked to some Texas group that is making tha point and attributed THAT argument to the folks behind the property rights movement in Oregon.

Cute trick if you can get it to work. I wonder if that will be the catch phrase in what will be sure to be a deceptive (and probably ineffective) campaign to gut M37.

I sure hope so.

yip yip

[Brian]

Coyote, Jefferson Smith was at the meeting where Ross Day made the comment. I wrote down what Smith said at the Envision Oregon get-together.

I'm pretty sure I didn't misquote him. If I did, it wasn't by much. Why don't you ask Day if he's ever said that property rights come from God?

I can tell you that quite a few Measure 37 claimants believe this, having sat through several Land Use Fairness Committee hearings.

[Richard]

Brian, you did not misquote. If you look back at some of your previous blogs, you will find one person saying that land does come from a higher source. I believe it was Alex Davies who made that comment.

Where land comes from is the metaphysical basis for how you view what you can do with land. Its like reading your Locke or your Hobbes - theory as to how societies evolved and how social norms evolved.

That is all and good until you examine the title to your land and discover that you got your land as a result of a donation land claim. Where did that donation land claim come from: Congress, the government, the Feds.

That property came with strings attached including the powe to tax and to regulate. Whatever property rights types want, they keep coming up against that hard set of facts set out in the title to your property.

Metaphysics, political theory, and theology are great, but the bottom line is the title to your land, and the restrictions imposed upon it.