Now lots of people baulk at a perceived notion that libertarianism is fixated on private property.  They feel that it is indicative of an incessant right wing-ish obsession with accumulation of wealth and devil take the hind-most (who will, obviously, they assume, have no such private property: wrongly of course - for we want everyone to be able to accumulate enough property to enable them to gain financial security and so on).

In fact of course the statement in the title, "property is freedom", comes from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, with whom most people associate a. anarchism (which many seem to think of as somehow not "right wing-ish" - if libertarianism is "right wing-ish" - which it is not but never mind; I don't want to get into a left-right debate here), and b. the more famous dictum that "property is theft".

And it struck me the other day, while listening again to Murray Rothbard's "For a New Liberty" (of which you can listen to an excellent free audiobook version in individual chapters at the Mises Institute), that actually the really important thing about property and why it occupies such an important place in libertarian is little to do with material wealth accumulation.

Actually it's two big reasons, the first of which I don't really want to get into here - that private property, as opposed to communal property in particular, creates the right sort of economic incentives for individuals to want to work to support themselves and keep their property in good order - if they get to keep the product of their efforts, the property which results, they are incentivised to do well. 

But it is the second big reason that I want to highlight now in the context of "property is freedom":  respect for private property rights and the voluntary contracts that give rise to them is key to eradicating the state's (often contradictory) interference through legislation.

Take, for example, the right to free speech.  A right in theory at least at the very root of liberalism - for if you cannot be free with your thoughts, and with expressing them in speech or publication, is not the state constraining your very being?  But we've all heard, and many accept, the idea that there must be some kind of "limit" on free speech, such as not being allowed to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre because of the harm that may cause to panicking patrons.  Well, libertarians do not need such a contradictory limitation; because of our respect for property and contract.

To yell "Fire!" in that crowded theatre is a breach of contract of the basis and conditions on which you and the other patrons are permitted in that theatre by the owner - to watch a performance.  Any harm caused by your actions will either be breaches of their contracts, or damage to their property, and properly actionable through private actions on their behalf.

By the way, you can hear more about the "Person who yells "Fire!" in a crowded theatre" from Walter Block's book, "Defending the Undefendable", also at the Mises Institute.

Many think that anarchy means a complete lack of order, or a lawless world in which the vulnerable for whatever reason will be preyed upon by all those vicious racists, homophobes or whomever that we have created many dubious restrictions on free speech to curtail.  But let's say I own a particular street, I charge my customers for using the street, and they, in turn expect me to provide a safe environment for them to traverse.  So I get to set the rules; the protection agency contracted by my insurance firm makes sure everyone feels safe, ,is not intimidated by racist thugs or whatever.  After all, I may be liable to my customers if they are hurt while in my care, on my property.

Proudhon called all these associations developing civil society "spontaneous order", driven not by what a few people who solicit your votes every so often want, but by you and everyone else going about the myriad of transactions of your every day lives.

Oh, and while I'm at it, I'd probably want to make sure my street was gritted and safe for my customers in the snow too, maybe even get a few more customers if other street owners didn't bother so much.  I can't say my local authority is a "customer focused street owner" at the moment, can you?  It is because of respect for property and contract that all this can happen and, just as important when compared with the state's way of doing things, that the money flows to the services that people actually need, because, well, they're paying for it and can demand what they've paid for.

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There's been a couple of blogs having a little spat about whether libertarians can ethically support having some kind of military in order to intervene in unfree countries in order to assist the oppressed people of those countries gain freedom. We can be all happy in our stateless country, no coercion, no taxes and so on. But we might think ourselves callous, careless, if we didn't worry about how so many other people on the planet are doing under their oppressive regimes.

For some this turns into a justification for a state in order to intervene abroad. It was, ultimately, Tony Blair's final plea to the people of Britain in his speech to the Labour Party Spring Conference as millions of us were marching against the Iraq war on the morning on Feb 15th 2003. So how could we help those oppressed peoples of the world in a stateless non-militarized society? Do we merely rely on our shining example of liberty making all dictators and tyrants quake and fall? It seems unlikely doesn't it?

How about "mercenaries of liberty"? Or even "charity mercenaries"? We have, I am sure, many fine men and women in our current military who joined up thinking they were going to help people around the world. Especially today when so much is spoken of our military's role in peace-keeping and policing in areas of conflict. I'm sure the likes of Col Tim Collins (he of the "We come to liberate not to conquer" speech to his troops before going into Iraq) could be cast in such a mould.

How about armed and militarily trained squads going in, funded by private charity say, alongside the Oxfam delivery in Darfur? Perhaps even developing international "protection agencies" who might advertise their services in Saddam's Iraq offering to protect your Marsh Arab village against Saddam's security forces? Always of course working on the same basis as protection agencies in our stateless private law society - spreading out private law society into another society. No initiation of aggression, but just protection. That protection could even help break down the forces of the oppressor. How much of Saddam's military, who after all largely fled when confronted with well trained troops, acted all their military careers out of fear of the consequences of not obeying orders from a tyrannical bastard?

Perhaps in defending the Marsh Arabs, with as little aggression as possible, some of Saddam's forces might come to understand that if they came under your protection too they would be able to escape from Saddam's predations until the latter is actually left weak enough for people to act against on their own to grab their own liberty. I suppose ironically this is not dissimilar to how the neo-cons at the Project for the New American Century were suggesting getting rid of Saddam without actually going to war with him - by offering protection to the people in the south and the Kurdish north until they had the confidence to act on their own.

Would it work? Is it ethical for a libertarian? How would one ensure that such an armed protection agency capable and willing to take on others' statist oppressors did not become the "might is right" monopolistic wielder of force when back at home? I suppose the market-anarchist line would be that they can only build up those businesses in the public glare if they do as their customers pay them to - if they were charitably funded by people here wanting to help Iraqis, say, that would mean only being able to build up the weaponry to take that role on, and being answerable to arbiters if they breached their contracts of non-aggression here or even in theatre. That they would be inefficient if they spent time and money developing anything more than the best defensive power, skills and weaponry.

With the recent wintry weather, the stories have come thick and fast again about how you could be sued if you try and clear a pavement outside your property and someone slips. In Oxfordshire we had the bizarre case of a farmer who, needing to clear the snow to let milk tankers in and so on decided to go the "extra half mile" and snow plough the roads in his local village that were completely neglected by the county forced to focus on "big routes" who was then castigated for not being "qualified" to clear snow.

And yet, we also know that in many other countries it is seen as a civic duty, even on occasions a legal duty, to do what you can to clear snow from the public area around your private property. Between the Health and Safety nazis and insurance companies here we are destroying community self-sufficiency and good neighbourliness in fear of legal repercussions.

And a friend pointed out that in the US (not sure which state or whether it is a federal thing) they have a law they call the "Good Samaritan Law" which effectively pre-emptively removes liability from those who "do the right thing" and help out where they can. In fact it's the same sort of law that makes it a crime in France not to stop and give first aid to someone in need and so on - something else here that is now so circumscribed by health and safety and liability issues that you wouldn't dare touch someone dying in the street without professional indemnity insurance in case you did something wrong an insurance company could get you for.

These Good Samaritan Laws don't excuse people from stupidity - I think if you used hot water to clear snow from the pavement outside your house and it froze into black ice, your stupidity could still be rewarded with liability - but it would remove this paralyzing fear of not helping out "just in case".

Perhaps someone could answer this point of law though - assuming you weren't actually clearing the snow when someone slipped and damaged themselves, presumably their insurance company could not actually definitively say that it was you who cleared the snow. Their first target would presumably be the owner - ie the local authority. It would then be up to the local authority to petition to add you as a co-defendant or similar, no? Does anyone imagine that a council who tried to pass the blame for their own failure to do what they were supposed to be obliged to do - clear their own pavements - would survive terribly long passing that buck to genuine people doing their bit in their neighbourhood?