What Is And What Is Not “Property?”

     Time was, we thought we knew. Silly us!

     Property – that which is “proper” to an individual owner – is in a sense an undefined term. Ever since John Locke attempted to define what makes an item one’s property, semanticists and “experts” have nibbled at the edges. Even some decent people, who genuinely respect others’ property and their right to defend it against force and fraud, are vulnerable to “blurry lines” and “gray areas” arguments. But this is not the time for that abstract a discussion.

     Your sense for what is yours routinely encompasses things that the State claims power over – and not in the “night watchman” / guardian-of-justice sense. Probably the best example is real estate, referred to as “real property” in the law books. You have possession of a house and grounds; you have a title document; you have a survey; you certainly remember what you paid for it, and for how long. It’s yours, right?

     Only on conditions, Gentle Reader. Several governments have yelled “Dibs!!” over it, and claim the power to dispossess you should you fail to please them:

• Your town or village government claims the power to tax you for owning real property. It also enforces zoning ordinances to which your uses of your property must conform.
• Your state government and the federal government claim rights of access to your property in the enforcement of various laws, such as “environmental” statutes and regulations.
• Your state and the federal government also claim the power to seize your property under “eminent domain” provisions… and the applicable rationales are very broad.

     Displeasing any of those three governments could result in the loss of your real estate. You have a title document, but they have the courts, the marshals, and the guns. So what you regard as “yours” is so only at their sufferance.

     What about the other tangible things you routinely regard as yours? Your car, your clothes, your other “movable property?” This area is a mixed bag. Some states impose taxes on certain possessions. Virginia, for example, annually taxes its residents on the cars they own. Of course, most states and counties have sales taxes, such that purchasing an item comes with a cost beyond what the seller will get. But movable property tends to be more elusive than the tax hounds can deal with. (And believe me, Gentle Reader, that annoys them no end.)

     Now we come to property of the most nebulous character: “your money.” By that I mean whatever you “own” in dollars and cents, whether you reckon it as a bank balance or possess actual cash bills. Since March 5, 1933, “your money” has been exactly and only a matter of opinion.

     Don’t recognize the date? It was the day on which President Franklin D. Roosevelt decreed the federal seizure of private citizens’ gold coins. From that day until December 31, 1974, when President Gerald Ford rescinded Roosevelt’s decree, it was illegal for private citizens to possess gold in any form except wrought jewelry. Despite federal statutes that proclaimed a specie redemption standard – i.e., so many dollars and cents for an ounce of gold – no American was permitted to redeem “his money” in a tangible commodity.

     Despite Ford’s rescission of FDR’s decree, you still can’t redeem “your money” in gold or silver. You can buy those things at market prices – just now, gold is priced at about $2850 per Troy ounce, and silver at about $32 per Troy ounce – but you have no enforceable claim on the federal government.

     The federal government, however, says it can enforce a claim on you:

     The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) argued that confiscating $50,000 from a small business did not infringe the business’ right to private property because money is not property.
     “Money is not necessarily ‘property’ for constitutional purposes,” the government’s brief declared—putting the very idea of property in square quotes. Reading at my desk, I practically fell out of my chair.
     The DOJ gave three rationales for the argument, all packed into a doorstopper of a footnote: (1) the government creates money, so you can’t own it; (2) the government can tax your money, so you don’t own it; and (3) the Constitution allows the government to spend money for the “general welfare.”

     Once again, whatever powers of defense you may hold, the federal government has better. Moreover, it has imposed the Federal Reserve System upon every bank in America. That system enables it to seize any bank balance anywhere, with or without a reason, with a few keystrokes. You must sue the government to get “your money” back – and afterward, you might be sorry that you did.

     Over the years I’ve written a great deal about money and currency. I’m likely to return to the subject in the future. But I never expected the Department of Justice to assert that “money is not property.” Once that assertion is made, there remains no defensible distinction between a government and a criminal band: i.e., an organization that takes what it wants and need not justify itself, on the grounds of superior force. That all too clearly reveals the predatory nature of the State.

     Buy gold and silver while you can.