Category: property rights

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free trade & free markets international affairs property rights

Idaho Foils Foul Harvest

China, organ harvesting, insurance

One can be for free trade yet still demand, while sticking to principle, certain restrictions on international trade.

The State of Idaho has demonstrated one sort of restriction compatible with a free society’s free-trade rules. “As of July 1, it will be illegal in Idaho for health insurers to cover an organ transplant or post-transplant care performed in China or any country known to have participated in forced organ harvesting,” explains Frank Fang in The Epoch Times (No. 508, A5). The legislation had been passed unanimously in both legislative houses earlier in the month and was signed by the governor on April 10.

Idaho wasn’t the first state to do this, following Texas last year and Utah this year, with its law going into effect on May 1.

The problem to be addressed? The suspiciously short waiting time for organ transplants in China, especially after the Chinese government cracked down on the Falun Gong decades ago. 

“In 2019, the independent China Tribunal in London concluded that the CCP had been forcibly harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience for years ‘on a substantial scale,’ with Falun Gong practitioners being the ‘principal source’ of human organs,” according to Mr. Fang.

This is not protectionism. And it really isn’t any unwarranted regulation on trade. For even in the freest of societies, with 100 percent free trade and freedom of contract, the sale and purchase of stolen goods is unlawful.

Rightly prohibited.

If anything has been taken away unjustly, it’s the internal organs of political prisoners by the Chinazis.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture judiciary property rights

Must Your Town Become San Francisco?

San Francisco, homelessness, homeless, consequences

I love San Francisco. Such a beautiful city, I thought on a recent visit. 

But then I turned the corner and discovered, once again, that all-important skill of rapidly averting one’s eyes. 

Where was an escape route?

The city by the bay, like other towns with mild weather, is always going to get more than its share of what we used to call hobos, or — more accurately — bums. Sleeping on the streets there must beat sleeping on Chicago streets in the winter.

Still, Frisco gives added benefits to those living on its streets. Indeed, vagrants can become less vagrant by setting up encampments in public, apparently wherever, toilet facilities optional. An impending Supreme Court ruling may push other cities in the same direction.

The case, Johnson v. City of Grants Pass, Oregon, has reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

Three vagrants challenged a Grants Pass ordinance prohibiting them “from using a blanket, pillow, or cardboard box for protection from the elements”; in other words, from setting up camp in the street.

In response, the Ninth Circuit blocked Grants Pass from enforcing the ordinance unless it provides shelter to those kicked off the street. Many towns cannot afford such expenditures, especially if the vagrant population is of any great size.

You get more of what you subsidize. If, obeying such rulings, towns do stretch budgets to prevent encampments, they thus encourage vagrants from nearby lands to move into town to get the taxpayer-funded accommodations.

The Ninth Circuit decision applies to nine states. Now the Supreme Court will either throw out the decision; revise it; or, upholding it, begin to consign all of us in all states to the fate of San Francisco.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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privacy property rights Update

Update: The “No Duh” Element in Private Property

Supreme Court, property rights, rent

In yesterday’s update, we directed your attention to a court decision that showed some progress in preventing the federal government from outright theft via the medieval civil asset forfeiture technique. The Epoch Times reported. But there was a passage we did not quote:

“Plaintiffs do have a significant privacy interest in their safe deposit boxes, given that their conduct indicates they intended their items to be ‘preserved . . . as private,’ and society generally views the privacy expectations of items in safe deposit boxes as reasonable,” Judge Smith wrote.

Yes, Judge Smith, we do have “privacy interests” in our . . . private property.

It is right there in the term, private property.

The conceptual fight to reclaim our rights can be a tough slog through the obvious.

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crime and punishment property rights

Stop Thieves!

thief, robbery, shoplifting, duty to retreat, self defense

In July, a King Soopers employee, Santino Burrola, was fired for filming shoplifters.

He even managed to get their license plate number; to do so, he had to peel off an aluminum-foil cover on the plate as the thieves began driving away.

Burrola helped police quickly capture one of the suspects. But Kroger, the parent company, fired him anyway. See, Burrola had violated the sacred kick-me-again Kroger policy that employees must never interfere with thefts in progress.

The policy is like waving a flashing neon red ROB US MORE sign and, unfortunately, is common.

Fortunately, though, it’s not a policy that Michael Sullivan, operations manager of Roger’s Gardens in Orange County, California, had to worry about as he tried to figure out how to stop a months-long series of thefts of expensive shrubbery and other items from the Gardens.

Security cameras weren’t helping. They recorded the thief but were unable to capture his license plate, which could be used to track him down. He kept coming back to steal more.

Finally, Sullivan hit on the idea of hiding AirTags on things that the thief might grab. The stratagem paid off. Sullivan discovered the location of the evildoer and relayed the info to police.

They found a yard clogged with $8,000 in goods stolen from Roger’s Gardens.

The stolen goods have been returned to the Gardens; the thief has been arrested.

Hard? No. Wrong? No. 

Thwarting thievery fends off barbarism. Doing it at low personal risk is good business.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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judiciary property rights

Greed & the Innocent Owners

civil asset forfeiture

“We know there are abuses of the forfeiture system,” Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor declares. “We know it because it’s been documented throughout the country repeatedly.”

Civil asset forfeiture is a crime — if a legal one. I’ve devoted numerous columns to it, here, these past few decades. Interestingly, there’s no overt political reason for it not to stop, for opposition to it comes from both left and right — and middle.

The problem, explains left-wing Justice Sotomayor, is that this legal practice of seizing property associated with crime does not have checks and balances in American law, since, until the 1970s, it had been used circumspectly, for the most part — against pirates and such. Since then, and in great part because of the War on Drugs, it has gotten out of hand: greedy functionaries in law enforcement have grabbed property and kept it, requiring even “innocent owners” — people not directly engaging in any crime — to go through absurdly difficult legal maneuvers, expending inordinate time and far too much money to get back what’s theirs.

It’s all very corrupt, as Justice Neil Gorsuch — no left-winger, he — observes. “Clearly, there are some jurisdictions that are using civil forfeiture as funding mechanisms,” he said.

All this I glean from a terrific article by Jacob Sullum in Reason. Like many of my past columns, Sullum identifies litigation by the heroic Institute for Justice.

What strikes me now, however, is how unresponsive our governments have been. We are still dealing with this horrific practice year after year despite near universal opposition to it by citizens. Politicians could have stopped it cold years ago. 

Justice delayed is justice denied.

Why pussyfoot around this? Because politicians are not serving us. They are greedy, too. For power. They’ll even use our property for their cause.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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The Tide of Theft

shoplift, theft, store, thief, thieves, robbery

There’s a black market for Tide laundry detergent. Who knew?

Giant Food, a Washington, D.C., area grocer, can’t seem to keep national brands such as Tide or Colgate or Advil on store shelves. Not because customers are buying these products, but because they’re stealing them.

Last week, we discussed the revelation by Dick’s Sporting Goods that thievery was a key cause of falling profits. The National Retail Federation believes that $95 billion is lost each year to public pilfering — something other retailers, including Target, Dollar Tree, and Ulta, are acknowledging is a very serious problem.

“Growing losses have spurred giants such as Walmart to shutter locations,” The Washington Post informs.

If we cannot police our own neighborhoods, and police can’t seem to do it, then we rely on . . . big corporations. With 165 supermarkets, Giant has yet to close any stores. Instead, the chain is “hiring more security guards, closing down secondary entrances, limiting the number of items permitted through self-checkout areas, removing high-theft items from shelves and locking up more products.” 

Most vulnerable is “the unprofitable store on Alabama Avenue SE — the only major grocer east of the Anacostia River in Ward 8,” a poor, largely black area of the city.

“We want to continue to be able to serve the community,” explains Giant’s president, “but we can’t do so at the level of significant loss or risk to our associates . . .

“During the first five months of this year,” Target’s chief executive recently leveled with investors, “our stores saw a 120 percent increase in theft incidents involving violence or threats of violence.”

Apparently, folks who pocket other people’s stuff are more likely to also be violent. 

Who saw that coming?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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