Analysis of Kelo vs. New London The unpopular Supreme Court decision of Kelo vs. New London has broken many citizens trust in having secured property rights. In Kelo vs. New London, the City of New London was condemning the property of several homeowners, in order to sell the land to private developers that would use the land to make a retail condo development. The local government approved the new development in order to gain higher tax revenue and to bring more jobs to the area. Homeowners who believed that their waterfront residence was being unfairly taken contested the City’s actions in court.
In the article The Cost of Paying Attention, the author, Matthew B. Crawford shares his revelation that individuals are constantly surrounded by advertisements. He starts by sharing an instance where he saw advertisements as he was checking out at a grocery store and then claims that they constantly steal consumers limited attention there by taking away our ability to dwell in silence or without the advertisements. He questions what would happen if individuals valued attention as much as they valued air and water. He recalls the advertisements he has seen in airports that could have caused him to forget something valuable because he was more focused on the advertisement for even a moment. He addresses the cluelessness of consumers as they are,
Any right thinking father earnestly desires and strives to leave his son both an untarnished name and a reasonable equipment for the struggle of life. So this Nation as a whole should earnestly desire and strive to leave to the next generation the national honor unstained and the national resources unexhausted. Such a policy will preserve soil, forests, water power as a heritage for the children and the children’s children of the men and women of this generation. The opinion of the Maine Supreme Bench sets forth unequivocally the principle that the property rights of the individual are subordinate to the rights of the community, and especially that the waste of wild timber land derived originally from the State. The Court says that there are two reasons why the right of the public to control and limit the use of private property is peculiarly applicable to property in land: First, such property is not the result of productive labor.
In a segment of, Of the State of Nature in Document A, John Locke writes, “We must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions...within the bounds of nature.” In, Of the Dissolution of Government, one part of the segment is, “The people are at liberty to provide for themselves.” All of the evidence is from John Locke himself. He wrote both of the books, Of the State of Nature and Of the Dissolution of Government. Both segments of the document include people having the choice to their own
The theory of allowing resource to be the commons can be considered a tragedy and will ultimately not end well in the long run. Particularly when we consider land this becomes true. Locke explains that by working on the land sufficiently that land is considered yours. His ideals coincide with the U.S Homestead Act of 1868 which granted land to anyone who lived on it for five years, built a structure and survived. Carolyn Finney from University of Kentucky explains that because of this act the relationship we have with land forever changed.
New England was fed up with the Church of England and the Puritans wanted to recreate their own religion which they thought was more what God had believed was the intended belief. They both decided that neither of them like the way England was set up and said that England was no good for their beliefs. They planned to leave England and go to the new world to set up a life where their children had the chance to be raised in a perfect society with no corruption. Concentrated on town life and industries, they made a living off of fishing, whaling and shipbuilding. Whale oil was key because it made their lamps.
Coming of Independence was seen by 1775, when the talk of liberty had pervaded the colonies. As the crisis intensified, the Americans increased their base not only on the historical rights of the English people but more on the topic or abstract language of natural rights and universal freedom. The thoughts of these rights and freedom emerged from two important people that both sparked the need for a revolution and for new change; they were John Locke and Thomas Jefferson. John Locke expressed the fundamental view that the government is there to serve people. Locke wrote that all individuals are equal, that they are born with certain inalienable natural rights; that rights are God-given and can never be taken or even given away.
In his Second Treatise of Government, Locke revealed his interests in new science, developing theories of education and knowledge (SMW, 34). One of the main points in his Treatise is that of the law of nature, where all men are in natural state of perfect freedom (SMW, 34). Locke argues, “Men being…by nature all free, equal, and independent,
The average man, though he longs for freedom, feels the need to be safe. People naturally wish to have the freedom to act on things, believe in things or say things, but, they want themselves and their families to be safe while doing so. Alongside the need for safety, man has a need for privacy. People tend to react negatively to others digging into their personal lives, creating a want for their own privacy in life. This subconscious need for safety and privacy has always trumped man’s desire for absolute freedom.
In the Second Treatise of Government, John Locke introduces many innovative ideas, such as the government’s role in protecting its citizens’ natural rights, consent of the governed, and the right of the people to overthrow a government that did not properly protect their rights, all of which played an important role in the development of the French and American Revolutions. In the Second Treatise, one of the main ideas articulated by Locke is that a government is formed in order to protect the people’s natural rights, or as Locke states , “for the mutual preservation” of the people’s “lives, liberties, and estates, which [Locke] call[s] by the general name ‘property’ ” (Locke, p. 37). Locke considers these three rights to be the most valuable
Human rights are like armor: they protect you; they are like rules because they tell you how you can behave, and they are like judges because you can appeal to them. It should also be noted that Locke’s interpretation of freedom and liberty are directly associated with equality. Our understanding is a direct result of our personal experiences, and according to Locke, we should all have the freedom of our minds. Some of the apologists for slavery claimed that blacks were beasts, subhuman, or at least a degenerated form of the human species.
“Unless private property is entirely done away with, there can be no fair distribution of goods, nor can the world be happily governed” states Thomas More in his essay, Utopia (1516). By all means, abolishing private ownership will provide happiness and government functionality. To certify, More presents various drawbacks of private property ownership. With this in mind, both modern examples and More’s observations validate the benefits of communal property ownership, as well as the flaws of private ownership. More validates how ownership of private property contains drawbacks.
Throughout history man has expressed criticisms, cautions, and concerns about the accumulations of private property and its implications. The right to private property is one of the most topics that can be looked as either good or bad. Private property is referred as “a kind of system that allocates particular objects like pieces of land to particular individuals to use and manage as they please, to the exclusion of others (even others who have a greater need for the resources) and to the exclusion also of any detailed control by society.” Waldron, Jeremy. Throughout history there has been arguments about private property among philosophers.
Nozick ignores the commitment people may have to living in a particular society of and the power of the illustration of Wilt depends on that. ‘Nozick assumes that people willing to pay twenty-five cents to see him play would be willing to directly pay Wilt Chamberlain himself twenty-five cents to see him play’ (Cohen, 19: 25). One person might welcome a society of paying twenty five cents to see him play, but another might disfavour this fact if they knew they would be contributing to the $250000 Wilt will receive. ‘If people’s reasons for transferring goods to others are irrational or arbitrary it would be disturbing (Nozick: 159). If a citizen might join without thinking of the power it could give Wilt it is ‘disturbing’.
Moreover, as much as the acquisition of wealth for its own right is in opposition to what constitutes virtue in the Aristotelian society (Politics), this capitalist ideal is found present in the definition of the Lockean good life. Due to the fact that citizenship is the duty to be watchful of the government, and freedom is one of non-interference in the pursuit of a private life, the good life then is adherence to these ideals. Freedom and thus human flourishing, then, are obtained when the individual adheres to the nature of law in regards to being mindful of consumption, whilst securing their own property through the combination of their labor with the land. Under the common wealth they have agreed to, property will be secure. The individual is free to flourish and secure property.
