One of the most interesting disagreements among advocates of maximum liberty and individual sovereignty is the disagreement over whether property can be sold with restrictions on it, or whether a possession, can only change ownership with all rights attached. One liberty advocate says, “I bought this house and land. They are mine, and I can do what I please with them.” Another, equally earnest and philosophical liberty advocate says, “You bought your house and land from a developer who knew that people would pay more to buy into a neighborhood where all the homeowners would have to obey certain rules, so the developer encumbered the title to your home with restrictions, that spell out rules you have to follow. You DO NOT own all rights to your home. I and all the rest of your neighbors own in interest in your home too. I am fully respecting your property rights when I prevent you from burning leaves or placing signs in your yard, because you agreed to these very restrictions by buying a house and land with this set of restrictions attached to them. And, there is a process you can go through to get the rules changed if enough of your neighbors agree or you buy enough of the properties in the development.”
A lot of people, including at least one of your editors, came to advocate for maximum personal freedom and to study rights, as a result of longing for the freedom of calling all the shots regarding all aspects of control of one’s home. But doesn’t that vision, that insists that any property be under total control of the owner, interfere with the freedom of existing property owners to choose to sell only certain rights to property they are selling, and either retain certain other rights or give those rights to others, as is the case with deed restricted land, subdivided into neighborhoods. Wouldn’t it be anti-freedom to say that a land owner cannot sell a plot of land for all other uses, but retain the mineral rights, so that if fossil fuel or valuable minerals are found, or if it becomes economical to pump water running under the land, that owner can retain rights to those specific goods found in the ground, while transferring true ownership (not just leasing) the land to purchaser?
Your editors think that acknowledging and defending the right to encumber property is the position supported by natural law, so we advocate for the right for buyers and sellers to make deals for selling only certain rights to control property, whether real property or personal property. Property arises from the nature of property as scarce and from the nature of humans as needing to plan for the future. There is nothing in breaking apart decisions that may be made about an exchanged a scarce thing, that degrades decisions humans make in planning for their futures. On the contrary, it provides opportunities to plan effectively that might not exist if all own-able things had to pass from one owner to another with all prerogatives intact.
There is a difference between, on the one hand, dividing a piece of land into rights to build and maintain approved styles of houses, and rights to have a neighborhood free of yard signs and apartments, and selling each right to different buyers, and on the other hand, dividing a piece of land into 2 lots and selling each with unrestricted rights, to 2 different buyers, but the difference does not logically disqualify one while permitting the other.
The propensity of our minds to imagine a physical object or demarcated piece of land as the fundamental unit, that is logically more than the sum of its parts, may say more about our biases, experiences, expectations, and contemporary culture, than it does about any deep nature of those things or our nature as human beings. And, by the way, it helps a lot if the description of the separated rights is unambiguous in the sales agreements.
