Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 17 of my emeritus Nobel-laureate colleague Vernon Smith‘s important 2008 book, Rationality in Economics:

Political activists sometimes juxtapose property rights and “human rights” as mutually exclusive phenomena. But “property” is that over which an individual human, or association of humans, exercises some specified priority of action with respect to other humans. Only humans (and perhaps a few other animal species, notably chimps), but not property, can be recognized as allowed to act without reprisal from others. The emotional appeal of the slogan, “human rights, not property rights,” appears to stem predominantly from an egalitarian ethic that seeks to dispossess those who are “propertied.” Yet the essence of property rights is the right to the product of one’s own labor and to the further productive yield generated by the savings from that product.

DBx: Yes.

Please join me in wishing Vernon a very happy 99th birthday today. May he have many more, not only for his, his dear wife Candace’s, and their family’s sake, but for all of us. Wisdom, learning, and kindness such as Vernon possesses and continues to share are too rare.