… is from page 234 of Gordon Wood’s great 1991 book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution:
Men were equal in that no one of them should be dependent on the will of another, and property make this independence possible.
DBx. Indeed so.
Each owner of private property – including, of course, property in his or her own person – has the legal right to say “no” or “yes” to others who offer something for that property. The poorest person in the world can say “no” to Jeff Bezos’s offer of retailing services, thus inciting Jeff Bezos to improve his offer so that this poorest person might say “yes.” Private property rights – their possession, security, and ability to be exchanged – prompt each of us to serve each other in mutually advantageous ways.
Sophisticates will snicker as they reel off any number of ways – some only theoretical – in which markets ‘fail’ to work perfectly, or even as well as is humanly possible. But the relevant standard isn’t godlike perfection or the ideal that someone can conjure in his or her mind. The relevant standard, instead, is an alternative reality in which private property rights are less secure and markets are less free.
