George Rebane

“Saving Historic Homes – Grass Valley adds layer of protection to stave off the wrecking ball”  This feel-good frontpage article in The Union today reports the latest affront to property rights in the name of the collective.  What glides by without notice is that the “saving” is done for the sake of the collective – the people who don’t own the “historic home”.  The legal and putative owner of that property gets screwed.

Putative? When we think, we realize that you own something only to the extent that you can dispose of it as you will.  That is the operational definition of ownership, and the only one that really matters.  When government restricts your rights of ownership, bit by piece it takes away your ownership.  Of course, it doesn’t matter to you since that quaint looking house is not yours, and you kinda like the way it looks next to all the other such properties on the street.  Besides, what’s another few thousand dollars of fees and another hoop to jump through if you want to do something else with the property.  It’s for the common (collective) good, isn’t it?

Well if it is, then let’s have the collective buy it (without the market distorting restriction in place) with everyone’s tax dollars and do whatever they want with it.  The “historic house” will then belong to those who value it in its present condition.  Short of that, let the owner negotiate the price of a covenant put into the property’s CCRs that keeps it looking like that in perpetuity.

Instead of that, the nodding know-nothings encourage another step back from personal property ownership without a clue that this also erodes their personal security and social liberty.  The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment enshrined this principle and Frederic Bastiat (‘The Law’) explained it very clearly.  And no one will notice.