What Is Property ? Ii

[Euphorion]

I view some of the anti-BTL anti free-market posters on here with horror. I wouldn't say BTL people are my favourite people (they are dull, don't speak Latin, Ancient Greek, Aramaic or Coptic). But they are just the same as people who buy bananas or boats or buckets or Big Ben. So they deserve to be treated with the same amount of respect as any merchant (who provides the taxes which finance the public sector which vilifies the merchant). Merchants are moral in spite of themselves, whether they like it or not. They can't help being good guys.

Most people cannot get their head round the concept of the merchant who in reality is morally superior to socialist planners. They just hate the concept. The idea that a merchant in pursuit of personal profit should spin off benefits (albeit unintentionally) to the public far greater than the resentful public sector worker is ever going to do from his or her position of feudal abuse over the poor, is simply a cross to a vampire to civil servants.

Adam Smith gives an excellent desciption of human nature in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759):

We may believe of many men, that their talents are superior to thoser of Caesar and Alexander; and that in the same situations they would perform still greater actions.In the meantime, however, we do not behold them with that astonishment and admiration with which those two heroes have been regarded in all ages and nations. The calm judgments of the mind may approve of them more, but they want the splendour of great actions to dazzle and transport it. The superiority of virtues over talents has not, even upon those who acknowledge that superiority, the same effect with the superiority ogf achievements." Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 116.

Now what is interesting about this is how property seems to have an effect on us like dictators whereas other investments bore us silly. Go into any pub and tell someone you have ten houses and they will sleep with you because property has the property to dazzle , daze, transfix and strike us dumb. Tell them you have 2 million pounds of shares and they will walk away disbelieving you. What does that tell us about property ? That our attachment to it is completely irrational ?

All investors knows there is a ton of money to be made in irrational markets. The million or rather multi-million dollar question is where is the turning-point of irrationality v reason ?

Edited March 24, 2006 by Euphorion