For social democrats, the state is to the community what the landlord is to the apartment complex or the owner is to his hotel. The notion that all social affairs within the polity are enveloped within a contract with the state, which owns some kind of encompassing substructure upon which all else within the polity depends, is the unspoken premise of social democracy and progressivism.
Daniel B. Klein is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Professor of Economics at George Mason University.
Bureaucracy and GovernmentEconomyGovernment and PoliticsLand UseLaw and LibertyProperty Rights, Land Use, and ZoningRegulation
Other Independent Review articles by Daniel B. Klein
Summer 2023 The Tao Exposes Slavers to Contempt
Spring 2023 Instilling Duties above Instilling Rights: Two Features of Adam Smith’s Talk of Justice and Liberty
Summer 2020 Adam Smith’s Rebuke of the Slave Trade, 1759
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