Old Letter and Old Buildings; W. Block

This episode highlights the tension between the public good and private interests. Society's"right to know" all about James Joyce is in conflictwith the privacy rights of his family. Strictly speaking, of course, there is no such thing as a generalized "right to know" that applies Dr. Block is a Senior Research Fellow at The Fraser Institute, Vancouver, British Columbia. . to members of the general public. If there were, you and I and everyone else would have a legal obligation to reply truthfully to the sometimes impertinent questions of journalists, detectives, and nosy bureaucrats about the most intimate aspects of our lives.Stephen Joyce could have been fined or jailed for destroying his own private prop erty,on the grounds that others, or "history," had a proprietary interest. Similar conflicts over property rights arise in other areas. For example, consider the case of historical landmarks. Although not a direct anal ogy-there is no issue of privacy involved whenever the owner of an historical edifice de cides to renovate or demolish it, he places his in terest against that of society at large. Old letters, and old buildings too, are replete with historical significance. If we can label some of the latter as landmarks, and refuse to allow the owner to destroy them, can we not decide that some indi viduals are of such historical importance that no one may destroy their papers and other artifacts?

If we did so, society in effect would be asserting that it, and not the famous person in question, is the rightful owner ofthe product of hislabors. Evident 1y' not many would hold that we have the right to interfere with people's property rights in their let ters. How is it then that we regularly interfere with their right to dispose of their own physical proper ty-so-called historical landmarks? Something to think about. D 97 Ecology, Socialism, and CapitalislD by Tibor R. Machan T he socialist-or, more generally, the col lectivist-economic system has fallen into disrepute. Theoretically there were hints of this as far back as the 4th century B.C. when Aristotle observed in his Politicsthat private own ership of property encourages responsible human behavior more readily than does collectivism (as spelled out in Plato's Republic). Aristotle said, "That all persons call the same thing mine in the sense in which each does so may be a fine thing, but it is impracticable; or if the words are taken in the other sense, such a unity in no way conduces to harmony. And there is another objection to the proposal. For that which is common to the great est number has the least care bestowed upon it.