What Ever Happened to Property Rights?

What Ever Happened to Property Rights?

by Mark Luedtke

It's hard to catch a prospective customer's eye and differentiate a product from its competitors in a 12 word ad, but the Connor Group did a pretty good job when it advertised an apartment in Dayton as "a great bachelor pad for any single man looking to hook up." The ad is descriptive and refreshingly politically incorrect. It probably caught the eye of many young men and helped lease the apartment quickly - which is the goal of advertising, right?

Wrong, at least for the Miami Valley Fair Housing Center (MVFHC). According to these people who don't own the apartment, ads are supposed to target everybody to make them feel good, not rent apartments as quickly as possible. In a law suit, they asked the government to use violence to steal $25,000 plus attorneys fees from the Connor Group to punish them for writing an ad to suit their business instead of the MVFHC.

This lawsuit stinks of a shakedown for money, political correctness run amok, and shows the MVFHC officers were educated in government schools and therefore don't know how to parse a sentence.

There's no discrimination here. The ad does not go on to say, "Others need not apply." Anybody with a decent sixth grade education can tell that this ad doesn't exclude anybody. It's descriptive, not exclusionary. During a preliminary investigation, the Connor Group confirmed it would happily lease the apartment to a woman. Of course it would. The Connor Group wants to make money, and excluding women is counterproductive to that goal. It's unclear whether Ohio law allowed the apartment in question to be rented to a family since Ohio law forbids a family from renting a one bedroom apartment. If the MVFHC really cared about discrimination, it would fight that law, not the Conner ad.

If anybody got their feelings hurt over the ad, that's a personal problem.  That doesn't make the ad discriminatory. If the MVFHC really wanted to help people like that, they should offer counseling to grow thicker skin.

The Connor Group is a major real estate player with over $1 billion in assets, so this lawsuit carries an element of a shakedown. In order to justify its existence, the MVFHC has to damage real estate businesses, and the Connor Group is a convenient target with deep pockets. Smart money says the MVFHC expects a settlement, and Connor may decide it's cheaper to settle than try the case. Litigation costs make it easy for parasites like the MVFHC to damage businesses in the name of political correctness.

But the potential cost to Connor is far greater than $25,000 plus attorneys fees. It could lose the freedom to advertise its apartments in an effective manner. If Connor was forced to use less provacative ads, fewer people would compete for its apartments and it would have to lower prices. It's unlikely the Connor Group will accept that.

But suppose the Connor Group only wanted to rent to bachelors. As a property owner, that's its natural right. Freedom of association and property rights are as fundamental as freedom of speech and the right to keep and bear arms. Any business owner has a natural right to do business or not do business with anybody he or she chooses for any reason. The government has no legitimate power to interfere with that right.

The most insidious aspect of this lawsuit is that it attempts to further undermine property rights and freedom of association. If a court decides that a business owner has no right to advertise his product as he sees fit, every American will have lost more freedom, and we'll all be poorer as a result. The government already takes our property from us by force in the form of taxes, prohibits smoking, prohibits employers and potential employees from voluntarily agreeing on a wage lower than the minimum wage, prohibits business owners from firing workers at their convenience, forces business owners to hire employees against their will and forces business owners to do business with individuals they don't want to do business with. All this drives up the cost of business, costs jobs, makes us all poorer, divides the people and the poor and minorities suffer most. This lawsuit is another attack on our rapidly diminishing property rights which are impoverishing America.

All this is done in the name of protecting minorities, but it has the opposite effect. Institutionalized political correctness institutionalizes discrimination. A system of voluntary exchange would punish discrimination naturally. Anybody who failed to hire minorities or women would suffer because fewer people would be competing for jobs so he would have to pay a higher wage. Anybody who failed to do business with minorities or women would suffer lower demand for his products or services and therefore would have to sell them at a lower price. Free market forces would naturally overcome discrimination and empower minority individuals to climb the economic ladder, but that's not allowed. Instead, liberals use the violence of government to attack business owners and force children into government schools, institutionalizing discrimination and trapping many minority individuals into a permanent lower class generation after generation.

Political correctness enforced at the point of the government's gun has transformed America into a class based society, damaged business owners, reduced the standard of living of workers, trapped minorities in poverty, and is destroying the middle class on our march to socialism. Let's hope the Connor Group resists allowing the whole country to be dragged another step down the Road to Serfdom. If the MVFHC was really concerned about fair housing, it could compete in the real estate market instead of calling on the violence of government to damage Connor.

Unfortunately, even if Connor wins, the MVFHC can file suit every time a business writes a similar ad. Eventually MVFHC or some other parasite will get the right judge in the right political environment and win. Then we all lose.