On Richard Pipes

Professor Richard Pipes' huzzahs for private property can hardly be disputed, when presented in the abstract as he does. But in the cauldron of local government land-use planning, such theory is next to useless.

Pipes sidesteps the vast forum in which private property is most obviously managed by the public: local and state zoning. It's all very well to acknowledge the importance of private property in the evolution and maintenance of a civil society; I certainly join with him in that.

But, for just the simplest example, how do we protect _my_ private property when he proposes something obnoxious on _his_ private property? The entire 'property rights' movements has retreated to theory and entirely ignores the practical problems of building cities in which we care to live. To speak of private agreements and covenants and so forth, for example, is to ignore the vast transaction costs involved which effectively preclude such bargaining.

Like it or not, private property enthusiasts must come to grips with the majoritarian consensus that substantial public interference with private property rights is the only way in which to maintain and enhance environmental quality, especially in increasingly-dense metropolitan areas. The intellectual right rails against "the imbalance which has developed since the New Deal." But it never even tries to formulate an alternative approach in the land-use arena. It must, and sympathetically, either develop alternative mechanisms to help deal with the externalities of development or expect to see the bundle-of-rights shrivel into dust. Anything less is happy-talk trying to sing back an encroaching sea.

David Sucher 6/9/1999