Chapter 1: Why “Property” - Foreign Military Studies Office - U.S. Army

or search for quite the right knowledge. Elections are a useful tool inthe service of liberty, but their implementation is chimera when done inthe absence of a formal property regime. America is not just aboutelections. It is about property -- that is, the systemic creation ofirrefutable evidence regarding who has what rights, the enforcement oflogical conclusions drawn from that evidence, and liberalinterpretations regarding who can own what. The ability of the UScitizen to go to the polls and vote his or her individual conscious is agood thing. The ability to go to the county seat and pull out a plat mapshowing the exact boundaries of his or her rights in land is, too. Theformer is publicly extravagant and contested. The latter is taken forgranted, but it is just as much an indispensable ingredient of a peacefuland prosperous social order.The United States will be more successful in whateverexpeditions it takes to guide the prospects other lands if it focuses alittle less on the election of leaders and a lot more on the creation ofpeaceful property systems.Quality of the evidence“When we say that a man owns a thing, we affirm directlythat he has the benefit of the consequences attached to acertain group of facts, and, by implication, that the facts aretrue of him.” 13Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.Rights and duties written downThe first stream of inquiry into the quality of a property regimeregards the quality of evidence. When we in the West examine the13 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. “A Legal Right is Nothing But…” in Edward AllenKent, editor. Law and Philosophy: Readings in Legal Philosophy, (New York,Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970), p. 125.15