Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom

A Compact Statement of a Cost-based Theory of Rights and Freedom • 141
right to personal security and the right to own property. Producing and
providing both of those rights has clear resource costs. Furthermore,
there are both individual and community costs associated with producing
rights, with the relative burden varying with the sort of right considered.
Personal security
Every person wants the right to security of the person, that is, freedom
from violence rendered by someone else. While the preference for this
security is costless, the acquisition of the right is not. The right to security
as distinct from the preference for it requires the actual provision of security
and entails policing, a judiciary, and some method for incarcerating
or punishing those who violate the right.
While in principle all of these functions could be provided privately
subject to subscription, in practice they are almost exclusively provided
in a collective process involving control by elected officials. In any event,
it does not matter whether this right is effected by government or private
providers; it is going to be costly to realize the right to security. 4
Property rights
In 19 th century United States, farmers could, in principle, own very large
tracts of land in the mid-western and western states. However, when cattle
and other animals foraged for food, it reduced the land’s value to the extent
that it was only possible to use land that had on it a sufficient number of
4 The history of the provision of security is interesting when we propose to construct
an index comparing the rights to which citizens of different countries are
entitled. The most important element in providing security is to deter people
from engaging in violence. Historically, the way society did that was to maintain
and enforce penalties sufficiently onerous to overwhelm the cost/benefit calculus
of most would-be offenders. The more onerous the penalty compared to any
benefit associated with the crime, the lower the incidence of the crime. In Canada
during the 19 th century, there were 123 crimes for which death was the punishment.
They included theft, burglary, rape, homosexuality, bestiality, treason, and,
for members of the military, cowardice and desertion. Typically the executions
were by hanging and until after the 1870s the body was left hanging in a public
place—sometimes covered in tar to protect it from the weather!
When viewed from the perspective of a modern, advanced, Western democracy, the
penalties are horrific to contemplate, but they made the maintenance of security much
cheaper than it would otherwise have been. In the pursuit of swift and brutal justice,
the investigation and prosecution of the criminal often involved what would today be
regarded as a miscarriage of justice. The gradual improvement in the administration of
justice and the emergence of the notion of perpetrators’ rights and the graduation of
penalties to reflect the greater probability of apprehension had to await the availability of
resources to support such an elaboration of the security apparatus. In many parts of the
world today, neither the resources nor that elaboration have yet arrived.
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