10/21/2011

Property rights

Socialism totally neglects property rights and thus change people's insentives.
The goal of this note is to remind us that incentive works. Merely pursuing altruism is bad for the economic growth. In economics, a lot of fallacies are actually an outcome of emotion and myopia.
What's interesting in this note is that the author lists three objections against property rights, which are (1) private properties are immoral because it relies on selfishness (2)private properties causes a misallocation of resources (3)private property means that men are not really free
These fallacies are actually based on the opinion that capitalism is zero-sum and pursuing self-interest and getting profit can squeeze other's interest.
But a fact is that in Soviet Union, people had to share a certain shop and they are forced to do what government offered, which at last forced the people to sell goods outside the shop.

My question is: In the note, the author says that people will build houses in more risky areas because the government offers flood insurance. But isn't it another fallacy that destruction is good?

The forth objection is confusing, what's the theory base of Locke to say that human have an inherited right to use natural resources?

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