Eco 110 the Principles of Economics

Megan Little

Essay One

ECO 110—The Principles of Economics

Dr. Alexander Salter.

The backbone of any prosperous nations’ strengthened economic system is the protection of an individuals’ private property rights.  Private property rights include the right to sell or exchange a property to another person, as well as legal protection against those seeking to use the property without specific permission from the owner.  These rights also encompass the right to exclusion of property: specifying who, and under what circumstances, another person can use the owner’s property.  By upholding these property rights, owners are incentivized to take care of their resource for a future buyer to maintain its current or its foreseeable value.  It’s important that although it’s beneficial for an owner to try and retain the resources value, they can do whatever they would like to do with it unless their actions infringe upon another’s private property rights. A good general view of the importance of private property rights is given by Gwartney (2015).  

Most land and urban housing in Sub-Saharan Africa are not registered under any specific name, nor is there any record of who, or under what conditions, people are allowed to use it. Due to this situation, much of the land in question is under common-property ownership (Gwartney 23).  Resources under common property occurs when multiple people claim ownership to a good a resource, but it doesn’t create any motive to take care or efficiently use the resource. In some countries, land can be individually owned, but it can take more than ten years to gain a formal title on the property due to the inefficiency and manipulation in the upper levels of government. Poor Africans cannot use their property that is “owned” as collateral in loan agreements, which means that they cannot afford either resources needed to maintain an individual’s farm or start up an entrepreneurial business (Guest 15).

Many would hold the opinion that citizens’ economic freedom is important to any profitable living standard.  This would mean that whatever property these people obtained, they would keep without the fear of seizure, or government abuse.  This is sadly not the case.  A miniscule amount of officials actually uphold the law, enforce contracts, or safeguard property rights. Although these nations are now popularly democratic, it is difficult to vote these officials out of their positions due to their deeply ingrained roots.  The seizure of private property, sends a warning to foreign and local people not to invest in Sub-Saharan Africa—impeding any monetary help that the countries could have received (Guest 12-13). This also destroys the tourist trade, although all of Sub-Saharan Africa’s rumored violence was not random but directed at opposing parties to the commonly political ideals. In essence these tourists are safe, but still frightened making economic gains from this potentially rich country impossible.