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Quotation of the Day…

… is from page 292 of Anthony de Jasay’s 1998 volume, The State (original emphasis):

Before the bureaucracy can rule, ownership must lose its significance.

One way to strip ownership of its significance is to perpetuate the fallacy that property and law are creations of the state, and that each of us holds our property only by the grace of the state – as if we merely lease it from our kindly and provisioning overlords, in exchange for our obedience and regular tax payments.  And to help ensure that we serfs do not start fancying that our property is really ours – fancying that we created it and, therefore, have original title to it – our overlords scold us regularly with a non sequitur, telling each of us, as individual owners of property, that “you didn’t build” individually and from scratch any of the social, legal, or physical institutions that make the creation and security of property possible.

In short, and from another work by Jasay, it’s as if your dog owns your house.

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