Serious reflection on property rights

A specter is haunting Maine: creeping socialism. Property rights advocates in northern Maine warn us that public purchase of land for scenic and recreational uses is tantamount to confiscation. It is a step on the road to the Gulag.

I find it hard to see Angus King as a socialist, but beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. The federal government owns the land upon which our naval, air force, army, and coast guard facilities reside. It sponsors research and disseminates its findings on communicable diseases. No one dares call these activities socialism. The benefits of these services accrue to all of us, whether or not we pay for them. These goods cannot be packaged and marketed. Unless and until one were to put a dome around Acadia or Baxter State Park, every citizen can benefit from these amenities without ever setting foot in the park or being charged for entering. There is thus a strong case for public provision of such social goods, broad taxation to pay for them, and public ownership of the land and capital needed to provide them. Adam Smith, certainly no socialist, recognized this case for a healthy public sector in The Wealth of Nations.

As long ago as the early 1900s a Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, recognized the value of both unspoiled wilderness and of sustainable yield forestry. An unregulated market economy will always underproduce scenic vistas, access to seas and rivers, and sustainable species diversity.

Such public assets are part of the quality of life that will increasingly drive the location decisions of modern businesses. For many years, rural Maine residents have enjoyed de facto access to corporate forests for hunting, fishing, and other recreational activities. Nonetheless, this access is hardly secure. Residents who see these activities as crucial to their quality of life properly seek to secure them through public purchase of strategic parcels or conservation easements.

It is a strange kind of socialism that purchases land or easements from private land holders. Classical socialism regards all land and capital assets as belonging by right to the state. It would simply confiscate, something not even remotely contemplated here. Property rights advocates know this, but they claim such sales have been forced by draconian regulatory regimes that drive down the value of private property.

Here once again these advocates work from a flawed understanding of property. Surely property holders have the right to insist that boundaries be respected. The government may not search private property without a warrant, and our homes and productive facilities cannot be legally removed or destroyed. But does all regulation of our productive technologies constitute a taking, as is currently suggested by fundamentalist property advocates?

The theory of absolute dominion over one’s property is as indefensible as is the patriarchal notion of marriage as absolute control over one’s wife. Advocates of absolute property rights argue that such regulations as wetlands protection and herbicide restrictions take value. Their implicit assumption is that the individual property owner can exploit his wetlands to the maximum while his neighbors do not. In such a scenario absolute freedom is profitable — but only for the unregulated individual. In a world where all property owners use dangerous pesticides, deplete wetlands, and clear cut the forests, tragic results ensue. Erosion, toxic water supplies, and the loss of even commercially valuable species decrease the value of everyone’s property.

In an ecologically and technologically interdependent world, property is a complex bundle of rights and obligations. As society and technology change, these rights and obligations must be continually readjusted through politics. In northern Maine, one set of corporate rights is in effect destroying the underpinnings of regional prosperity. The forest products industry, both because of technologically inspired downsizing and the export of jobs to cheap labor and lax environmental havens, is dealing a far more serious blow to the local economy than any environmentalist could ever do.

Northern Maine’s economy would be better served by trade treaties that impose the same workplace and environmental requirements on all nations. Unfortunately, many mainstream environmental organizations neglect these trade issues and are too little concerned with establishing appropriate economic alternatives for rural Maine. Property rights advocate respond in kind by demanding curtailment of all domestic environmental regulation. Such destructive politics will erode the value of all property, not only here but worldwide.

Many property rights advocates remind me of the old style Communists they so despise. The Soviet Union placed industrial and military growth ahead of all values. It silenced the critics of nuclear facilities, chemical plants, and heavy manufacturing enterprises. The damage to its people and to the long term sustainability of its society is palpable. We need to protected from such zealots, whether in a communist or “free market” guise. Otherwise, everyone’s property will become worthless, and our quality of life will decline.

John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor. Readers wishing to contact him may e-mail comments to jbuell@acadia.net.