On the day that representatives from Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems appear before a Congressional hearing for complying with the Chinese government’s rules in order to gain a foothold there, I read that Wal-Mart is being ordered by Massachusetts bureaucrats to sell a controversial abortifacient known as the “morning after” pill. In both cases, private property is fine as long as it is used in ways that are state-approved. The solution? Maybe firms should simply stop doing business in places like Massachusetts and China. Or maybe bureaucrats everywhere–including those in Boston, Washington, and Peking–should butt-out of private decisions about how property is utilized.
In the meantime, I will not hold my breath waiting for Congressional hearings on Wal-Mart and other firms’ right to sell what they want.
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There’s an issue here begging to be mentioned, which is the business of a pharmacy is a government regulated monopoly of sorts. This is especially true in small communities.
Not that this is an argument against Wal-Mart. Indeed, if Wal-Mart threatened (however unlikely) to stop their prescription business completely, it would have the opposite effect the politicians intended.
I think Congress, the Massachusetts government, and the Chinese government are all being perfectly consistent in their defense of property rights. The reality is that they can control how these firms control their property, by threatening them with unchecked physical force or myriad other penalties. The ability to control property is what defines ownership of that property, justly or unjustly. This means that the governments are the ultimate owners of both the firms and the property claimed by those firms. The governments are merely asserting their rights to control their own property. Any property rights left to their tenant firms are those the governments allow them to have.
I wish that you were wrong Tim but you are right on the money unfortunately for the US and also for the rest of humanity. Individuals have allowed government to gradually take away the rights of those same individuals to dispose of their own property. Those with the least rights have faired by far the worst.
You have also made a very good point, that the State of Mass. and the Communist Government of China are behaving the same. My addition to this is to say they are also morally equivalent.
I don’t think corporations and individuals should have identical rights. Corporations cannot be held responsible for their actions to the same degree as individuals as shareholder only stand to lose the funds they invest and no moral or legal responsibility for the actions of the corporation. I think that corporations should serve the public interest and should be dissolved if they are no longer doing this.
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