Prof. Anthony Gill in an interview by Econlib's EconTalk about property rights and what is acceptable and who says it is.
(Interviewer) The question is: Who or what enforces property rights--in America, say? And, what's the simple answer?
(Prof. Gill) Well, the answer is obvious: It's the government, because the government writes these rules; these rules are put into books. The books are put into the deep recesses of libraries, and everybody can go see the rules of these property rights. That's obvious. When I ask that of my students, they automatically turn to the answer: The government defines property rights.
And, in a huge portion of circumstances--and we talk about this a lot on this program--there are what we might call unwritten rules, norms, and other things that determine who can do what with what. And somehow, that brings us to shampoo. Which, by the way, I also used today. And, my children mock me: I shampoo twice. So I do rinse and repeat. They think I'm a victim of the shampoo industry, but I like the way it feels after two shampoos. So, what does this have to do with shampoo?
So, well, this is a little puzzle that has flummoxed me for a long time, and we can maybe talk a little bit later about why this puzzle started to eat at me and why it became an issue. But, I know many people go to hotels all around the world, and if you've been traveling for several decades, you'll know that a lot of hotels provide you with these small, personal-use shampoo bottles. Conditioners; sometimes in the fancy restaurants, they have mouthwash. I love those things. I absolutely love them. I love them so much that I actually have a whole bin--and this is just one bin--of these little shampoo bottles.
And it started--I had this kind of question here.
...And so, I'm sitting there in the hotel room thinking about this, and I said, 'Well, wait a minute. If I'm allowed to take these little shampoo bottles home,'--and, everybody knows that. I ask people, 'Can I take these little shampoo bottles home?' They go, 'Of course you can.' Everybody knows you can...
...I probed people more on this. Because, it started to get a conversation going. This was an early morning breakfast; people were still a little bit sleepy, and I started perking up people. When I asked, 'Can I take the 12-ounce dispenser bottle?' there was a rather esteemed political economist there who said, 'No, you can't. It's illegal.' And, I said, 'Well, show me the law.'...Show me the law that says, 'Thou shalt not take the 12-ounce bottle of shampoo.' And again, it's interesting to note that, because the fact that this person said it's against the law immediately told me, 'Ah. This person defaults to the government setting property rights...'
...And I entirely acknowledge: yes, stealing is wrong. In fact, you go to the Ten Commandments, 'Thou shalt not steal.' Okay, now there's codes in our government rule books that said this is a robbery, this is a burglary, this is a felony offense, this is a misdemeanor, etc., etc. But, I don't think there's one specifically related to 16-ounce bottles of shampoo.
And again, what's the difference between three ounces and 16 ounces? Where does that line draw? If it was a five-ounce bottle, is it okay? If it's 10 ounces? Where does this line get drawn? And, I think that was really kind of the interesting question that got a lot of people to start thinking about: Yeah, how do we define what's stealing, and therefore, how do we define what's property rights? Is it really the government that does that?
For full engaging conversation, please link here.