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Description
Perhaps the most intractable problem of political theory turns on setting the right interaction of market and political institutions. (1) Markets rest upon the twin institutions of private property and freedom of contract. The former allows all individuals the exclusive possession, use, and disposition of particular resources, such as land or chattels; the latter structures the transfer of human and tangible resources by hire, sale, lease, or partnership. Property rights both separate neighbors and allow individuals to plan over time. Contract permits them to coordinate their activities for mutual gain. It is this one-two punch that facilitates the economic growth that satisfies human wants.
If that were all there was to it, then political theory would be easy because government would be irrelevant. Market systems, however, do not rest on thin air. They depend critically upon the use of state monopoly power, first to protect the holders of property from depredations of strangers, and next to enforce the contracts that facilitate the transfer and recombination of human and physical assets. Try as one might, it is hard--make that impossible--to think of any just and reliable system for supplying that infrastructure that does not rely upon the sound operation of democratic politics, with its own distinctive deliberative and voting procedures.
And that is where the difficulties begin. The simmering tension between market and political institutions arises in a multitude of contexts. But it becomes perhaps most vivid in connection with the steamy local controversies over the mundane matters of the ownership and use of land: what should be done if some political majority votes to take the home or business of one person for some public use without paying any compensation for the privilege? (2)
It won't do to fight the hypothetical by saying that such untoward results never happen because they do: It is easy to recount numerous situations throughout the world where ethnic majorities use their political power to plunder their rivals. Nor do these issues play out only on the grand scale of outright confiscation. As will become painfully clear, a miniaturized version of this struggle, often with unspoken racial overtones, takes place daily in the ubiquitous planning commissions and zoning boards in the United States and everywhere else in the developed world.
The underlying structural weakness of majority rule, moreover, cannot be easily corrected by adopting a constitutional requirement for unanimous (or even just owner's) consent for any surrender or alteration of property rights. Now a new risk emerges, for that device leaves the state vulnerable to serious holdouts at the instance of a landowner whose property is vital to siting a military facility or completing a public highway.
Yet rescue is close at hand. The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution states: "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." Now that "just compensation" is substituted for "the consent of the owner," the state may take the private property of its citizens for public use, so long as it compensates them for the property so taken. This clever intermediate practice nicely cuts between the horns of a real dilemma. The power to take prevents any property owner from demanding a king's ransom before surrendering the property. But the need to pay just compensation prevents the majority from oppressing isolated individuals for its own political advantage. Rightly calculated, the just compensation requirement ensures that owners can be no worse off after the taking than they were before.
The basic protection offered to property rights does not undermine the ideals of deliberative democracy. Quite the opposite: strong property rights work well in tandem with that system of governance. Here's why. The pattern of deliberation within any collective body does not depend solely on its members' opinions and attitudes, which active interchange reveals and refines. Politics is not just about expression, sentiment, and education. It also depends on the practical problems that give rise to the need to deliberate in the first place. Let it be known that any individual is fair game for expropriation, and the grandest deliberative body in the world, when composed of self-interested individuals, may well solemnly conclude that the public welfare requires the confiscation of particular resources from politically vulnerable parties. The adroit deliberator can point out to members of the majority faction--without having to make peace with the rest--that the gains from confiscation will far exceed its costs to members of the winning coalition. Duly persuaded, the majority could vote to ratify the proposed confiscation and rest content that they have been generous toward friends. Or,... |
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