Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1577

Carbon of a letter to Percy L. Greaves, Christian Freedom Foundation, 26 West 58th Street, New York 19, New York

December 19, 1956

Dear Dr. Greaves:

     Here is the little booklet on the organization of real estate that I referred to when we were talking about public services being performed by proprietary organization. You can see from this that my idea of proprietary administration has to do with independent business organizations, formed without any let or license by the war-making institution and having no authority or control over any property but their own, either by way of condemnation or otherwise.

     This of course does not include any persons or corporations given a specific monopoly power by the political authority, and, moreover, a monopoly power completely under regulation by the authority that creates it, and subject even to the death penalty when the legis­lative or executive, or the judicial power acting as such, so prescribes.

     A corporation so authorized to serve water or power, for instance, is no more a private corporation than is a sheriff who is similarly authorized to serve writs or seize property under direction of the power which appoints and establishes him. The only difference is one of detail, in that the so-called public-service corporation, “affected with a public interest”, usually supplies a lot more capital for the enterprise than the sheriff does (other than his old gray mare or “Model T”). A further differ­ence is in the mode of compensation. To the corporation is assigned a limited portion of the taxing power, where­as the sheriff must worry along on a stipendiary basis in the main.

     When, under some “democratic” ideology, the corpora­tion is thrown out, with or without some compensation, and a salaried body of bureaucrats put in its place, this arrangement is called “public ownership.” It is, of course, not any less private or any more public than it was in the first place.

     We had a nice talk together at luncheon. I hope to see you again before too long. I have had a pleasant telephone visit with Murray Rothbard, and expect to see him in person, along with you, at the von Mises session tomorrow night.

Merry Christmas,

 

 

SH/m

Enc:  “Society & Its Services”

“Notes on the Organization of Real Estate”