The mother of all rights; without secure property, the Islamic world can't escape tyranny and stagnation

Reason, April, 1994 by Tom Bethell

Nomadic herding is itself an indicator of tyranny and insecure property. It is an inefficient and arduous way of life and is likely to be replaced by farming when private property is secure. In The Arab World, William R. Polk writes that in the 19th century the Ottomans periodically induced tribesmen to settle: "Purchase of land was made extremely easy, bedouin and peasants were assisted with government loans." But then, with a "return to government exploitive practices," the peasants would again "abandon their newly acquired lands." Polk revealingly adds (but seems not to recognize the import of his comment): "It was only as the bedouin could be induced to settle and invest in immovable objects that they could be controlled." For "controlled," read "taxed," which is to say: expropriated.

Nomadic tribesmen are sometimes praised as "independent." As we might put it today, they preferred to evade their rulers by remaining in the "underground economy," i.e., the desert, where they were difficult to track down. There they would set up their own rules establishing who grazed where and when. With their animals, they would make their own contribution to the expansion of the desert, and then move on in timely fashion to other areas not yet reduced to dust.

C.S. Jarvis was not entirely wrong about the goat, as has been shown more recently in Israel. By 1967, less than 20 years after the founding of the state, the border dividing Israel and the West Bank was plainly visible from the air as a "green line," with farmland on one side and barren ground on the other. The West Bank border is still known in Israel as the Green Line. Daniel Doron, whose Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress is based in Jerusalem, says that in biblical times the hills of Judea and Samaria were terraced and cultivated. Heavy rains, when they came, didn't sluice away the top soil. But in the centuries following the expulsion of the Jews from Palestine, everything began to deteriorate. The goats of herdsmen would uproot young trees and vegetation, thereby inadvertently damming the terraced hills. Rainwater would build up and then burst through, washing away soil and stones and much patiently accumulated labor. Soon after the creation of Israel in 1948, the Jews started to restore the old terraces, and by the time of the 1967 war a Green Line was visible. (Although the government owns most of the land in Israel, Israelis have transferable leases that create de facto property rights.)

Goats have flourished in the Arab world precisely as a result of insecure property rights. The goat is a portable scavenger that can be sent out to forage on communal land, where it will find sustenance in the rockiest soil. Unlike a sheep, it will also return to its specific owner when called, and if necessary it can be kept indoors at night, where it will be safe from rival herdsmen and assorted enemies and thieves. The goat thereby enables its owner to "privatize" whatever meager resources may be available on the most inhospitable terrain. But it will also contribute to the destruction of that terrain. No one minds that, however, because no one owns the land anyway.