Mark Mitchell has written a brief and interesting book arguing that the widespread ownership of productive property—what economists would call “capital goods”—is an essential support for political liberty. As he puts it: “The thesis of this book is simple: democracy without private property is fundamentally unstable and will not survive.” (I wish he had addressed Plato’s case that democracy, even with private property, is fundamentally unstable.)
In the introduction, Mitchell, citing a poll, makes a distinction as to whether people believe the most common future form of government will be “democratic” or “socialist.” Yet there is almost certainly a great overlap between the two beliefs. Perhaps Mitchell holds with Friedrich Hayek that in the long run democratic socialism is unstable and will cease to be either democratic or socialist, and perhaps that view is correct. But this is an opinion poll, and if people think future governments will be both democratic and socialist, well, that is what they think.
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