Policy 6


Oppose regulations that require a minority to pay for benefits enjoyed by all.

Monarchies and dictatorships are efficient systems for transferring property from the majority of citizens to the ruling minority. Democracies work the other way around. They efficiently transfer property from the minorities to the ruling majority. Socialism and Communism have a history of simply reducing everyone’s property. Our American system of representative government coupled with a Constitution was designed to give the majority the power while retaining minority rights via a strong Constitution.

In our panic to save the environment, we seem to have thrown out the requirement to protect the property rights of a minority of our landowners. Any landowner who has been a better steward of his property than the typical landowner has been, finds his uses of his property severely restricted. Rural landowners are told they must overcompensate for the sins of their urban brothers and sisters. The majority, using their hired legions of bureaucrats, simply steal the property rights of the minority landowners.

Since no economic value is placed on the minorities’ loss of use of their property, no one ever has to decide if the restrictions have any value. The regulators are given free rein to implement any fantasy they can dream up. As long as they don’t reduce the landowner’s value to zero they can work their will with impunity.

Citizens’ Alliance for Property Rights will oppose any laws and regulations that reduce the value of minority property owners in order to provide a benefit for all of the population. By forcing the population at large to pay the fair value of the loss to property owners, we will return to our constitutional government as well as force the discussion of the true value of the laws and regulations we live by.

The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower productivity into an area of higher productivity and yield. Government does the opposite. —Jean-Baptiste Say