 For this speech I have set myself three goals. First, I want to clarify the nature and the function of private goods and private property. Second, I want to clarify the meaning of public goods and of public property and explain the flaws that are inherent in the institution of public goods and public property. Third, I want to explain the need and the principles of privatization. Let me begin with some abstract but rather fundamental theoretical considerations concerning the purpose of social norms and the sources of conflict. If there were no interpersonal conflict there would be no need for social norms. It is the purpose of norms to help avoid otherwise unavoidable conflicts. A norm that generates conflict rather than help avoid it is contrary to the very purpose of a norm. It is a dysfunctional norm perversion and I want to show in a way that public goods are perversion. It is often thought that conflicts result from the mere fact of different people having different ideas or different interests. But this is false or at least very incomplete. From the diversity of individual interests and ideas alone it does not follow that conflicts must arise. I want it to rain and my neighbor wants the sun to shine. Our interests are contrary, however because these are I nor my neighbor can control the sun or the clouds our conflicting interests have no practical consequences. There is nothing that we can do about the weather. Likewise I may believe that A causes B and you believe that B is caused by C or I believe and pray to God and you don't. But if this is all the difference there is between us nothing of any practical consequence follows. Different interests and beliefs can lead to conflict only when they are put into action. When our interests and ideas are attached to or implemented in physically controlled objects. That is when they concern what we call economic goods or means of action. Yet even if our interests and ideas are attached to and implemented in economic goods no conflict results as long as our interests and ideas are concerned exclusively with different physically different physically separate goods. Conflict only results if our different interests and beliefs are attached to and invested in one and the same good. In the Schlaraffenland or in the Garden of Eden with a super abundance of goods no conflict can arise except for conflicts regarding the use of our own physical bodies that embodies these interests or ideas that we have. In the Schlaraffenland there is enough around of everything to satisfy everyone's desire to the fullest. In order for different interests and ideas to result in conflict goods must be scarce. Only scarcity makes it possible that different ideas and interests can be attached to and invested in one and the same stock of goods. Conflicts then are physical clashes regarding the control of one and the same given stock of goods. People clash because they want to use the same good in different and incompatible ways. Now even under conditions of scarcity that is when conflicts are possible it is however not necessary and unavoidable that conflicts arise. All conflicts regarding the use of any good can be avoided if only every good is privately owned or is exclusively controlled by some specified individual and it is always clear which thing is owned and by whom and which is not. The interests and ideas of different people may then be as different as can be and yet no conflict arises insofar as their interests and ideas are concerned always and exclusively with their own separate property. Now what is needed to avoid all conflicts then is only a norm regarding the privatization of goods who are more specifically in order to avoid all conflicts from the very beginning of mankind on. The needed norm must concern the original appropriation or original privatization of goods that is the first transformation of nature given things into economic goods and private property. Furthermore the original privatization of goods cannot occur by verbal declaration that is by the utterance of mere words. This would only work and not lead to permanent and irresolvable conflict if contrary to our initial assumption of different interests and different ideas if there existed a pre-stabilized harmony of all interests and ideas of all people. But in that case of course we would not need any norms to begin with. Rather to avoid all otherwise unavoidable conflict the original appropriation or privatization of goods must occur through actions namely through acts of original appropriation of what were previously just physical things out there. Only through actions taking place in time and in space can objective this intersubjectively perceivable connections be established or links be established between a particular individual and a particular good. And only if the first appropriator of a previously unappropriated thing can acquire his property without conflict. Because by definition as a very first appropriator he cannot have run into any conflicts with anyone else in appropriating the good in question because everyone else appeared on the scene only later. All property then goes back directly or indirectly through a chain of mutually beneficial and hence also conflict free property title transfers to original appropriators and acts of original appropriation. So in conclusion then you can say that even under conditions of all around scarcity it is possible that people with divergent interests and ideas can peacefully that is without conflict coexist provided only that they recognize the institution of private that is exclusive property and its ultimate foundation in and through acts of original appropriation. This is enough about abstract theory and now I want to come to some more concrete applications. Let us assume a small village with privately owned houses, gardens and fields. In principle all conflicts regarding the use of these houses, garden and fields can be avoided because it is clear who owns and has exclusive control of what and who doesn't. But then assume there runs a so called public street in front of the private houses and the public path leads to the woods at the edge of the village to some lake. What is the status of this public street or paths? They are obviously not private property or at least not yet private property. Indeed we assume that no one claims that he is the street's private owner. Rather they are part of the natural environment in which everyone has to act. Everyone uses the street but no one owns it and exercises exclusive control regarding its utilization. Now it is conceivable that this state of affairs with ownerless public streets can go on forever without leading to any conflict. It is just not very realistic that this will be the case because this requires that a stationary economy is in place. If however we assume that there is some sort of economic growth and change and in particular if we assume that there is a growing population then conflicts concerning the use of the public street are bound to increase. While initially street conflicts so to speak might have been so infrequent and so easy to avoid as not to worry anyone now they become ubiquitous. The street is constantly congested and in permanent disrepair and a solution is needed. The street must be taken out of the realm of the environment of external things and brought into the realm of economic goods. This is by the way the entire way of civilization and progress that external things become something that is somehow owned and controlled. Now two solutions to the problem of managing such increasingly intolerable conflicts have been suggested and tried. The first and correct solution is to privatize the street and the second proposed solution is to turn streets into what is nowadays called public property but which is something very different from the former unowned public goods. Now the dysfunctionality of the public property option can be best grasped in contrast to the distinctly different privatization option. How then is it possible that formerly unowned public streets can be privatized without thereby generating conflict with others? The brief answer is this can be done provided only that the appropriation of the street does not infringe on the previously established rights or the easements of private property owners to use the streets for free. Everyone must remain free to walk the street from house to house through the woods and onto the lake just as before. Everyone retains the right of way and hence no one can claim to be made worse off by the privatization of the street and positively in order to objectify and to validate his claim that the formerly public unowned street is now a private one and that he and no one else is its owner, the appropriator, whoever that may be, must perform some visible maintenance and repair work on and along the street. Then, as its owner, he and no one else can further develop and improve the streets as he sees fit. He sets the rules and regulations concerning the use of his street so as to avoid all street conflicts. He can build a hot dog stand or a blackboard stand on his road, for instance, and exclude others from doing the same. And vis-à-vis foreigners or strangers, the street owner can determine the rules of entry. And last but not least, as its private owner, he can also sell the street to someone else who has all previously established rights of way remaining intact. Now, in all of this, it is more important that a privatization takes place than what the specific form of the privatization is. On the one end of the spectrum of possible privatizations, we can imagine a single owner of the street. A wealthy villager, for instance, takes it upon himself to maintain and repair the street and thus becomes its owner. On the other hand, end of the spectrum, we can imagine that the initial maintenance or repair of the street is a result of a genuine community effort. In that case, there is not just one owner of the street, but every community member is, at least initially, its equal co-owner. Now, in the absence of a pre-stabilized harmony of all interests and ideas, such co-ownership requires a decision-making mechanism regarding the further development of the streets. Now, let us assume that, as in a joint stock company, it is the majority of the street owners that determines from now on what to do and what not to do with the street. That is, we have a situation of majority rule and this smacks like conflict, but it isn't in this case because every owner who is dissatisfied with the decisions made by the majority of owners who believe that the burdens imposed on him by the majority are greater than the benefits that he can derive from his partial street ownership can always and at all times drop out or exit. He can sell his ownership share to someone else, thus opening the possibility for the concentration of ownership titles conceivably in a single hand, also while always retaining his original right of way. Now, in contrast, a very different sort of street property is created if the exit option does not exist. That is, if a person is not permitted to sell its share of street property or it is stripped of its formal right of passage. Precisely this, however, is what defines and characterizes the second public property option. The public street in the modern sense, in this modern sense of the word public, is not unowned as it once was. There is a street owner, whether it is a particular individual, the king of the road or a democratically elected street government who has an exclusive say in setting the traffic rules and determining the future development of the street. But the street government does not permit its electors, that is, the people who supposedly are the street's equal co-owners to sell their ownership share and it renders these other people, so to speak compulsory owners of something of which they might rather want to divest themselves. And neither government nor king allow the village residents unrestricted access and passage on the formerly free streets but make its further use conditional on the payment of some user fee or contribution, thus again rendering the village residents compulsory street owners if they want to continue using the street. Now, the result of this arrangement are predictable. By denying the exit option, the owner of the public street has gained a stranglehold on the village population. Accordingly, the fees and other conditions imposed on the village residents for the continued use of the formerly free streets will intend burdensome. Conflicts will not be avoided but quite to the contrary, conflicts become institutionalized. Because the exit option is closed, that is, because the public street users must now pay for what they formerly had for free and no resident can sell and divest itself to the transit street ownership but remains continuously bound by the decisions made by the street government or street king, not only are conflicts regarding the further use, maintenance and development of the street itself rendered permanent and ubiquitous. More importantly, with public streets conflict is now also introduced and there does not exist. For if the private owners of the houses, gardens and fields along the street must pay contributions to the street owners in order to continue doing what they had done before, that is, if they must now pay taxes to the street owner, then by the same token, the street owner has thereby gained control over their private properties as well. The private owners' control concerning the use of its own house is then no longer an exclusive one. Rather, the owner of the adjacent street can interfere with a house owner's decision regarding his own house. He can tell the house owner what to do or not to do with his house if he wants to leave or enter it as he before could do without any problem. That is, the public street owner is in a position where he can limit and ultimately even eliminate that is expropriate all private property and property rights and thus render conflict unavoidable and all around. Now it should be clear by now why the institution of public property is dysfunctional. Institutions and the norms underlying them are supposed to help avoid conflict. But the institution of public property of public streets, as I described them, creates and increases conflict. For the purpose of conflict avoidance of peaceful human cooperation, public property then must go. All public property must become private property. But how do we privatize in the real world which has developed far beyond the simple village model that I have so far considered? Now in this real world, we have not just public streets but also public parks, land, rivers, lakes, coastlines, housing, schools, universities, hospitals, barracks, airports, harbors, libraries, museums, monuments and on and on. And further on top of local governments, we have a hierarchy of superior provincial and ultimately supreme national or central governments that are the owner of these public goods. Predictably moreover, parallel to the territorial expansion and extension of the domain of public goods in which private property owners have become implicated somehow without any way out for them, the range of choices left to people regarding their private property has been increasingly limited and narrowed. Only a small and increasingly smaller realm is left where in private property owners can still make free decisions that is free from possible intrusion or interference by some public authority. Not even within the four walls of one's own house is one left free and can one exercise still exclusive control over one's own property. Today in the name and as the owner of all public goods governments can invade your house confiscate any and all of your belongings and even kidnap your children. Now obviously then in the real world the question of how to privatize is far more difficult than in the simple village model that I have considered first. But the village model and the elementary social theory that I presented also can help us recognize at least the principles if not all complicating details that are involved and that are to be applied in this task. The privatization of public goods must occur in such a way that it does not infringe on the pre-established rights of private property owners. In the same way as the first appropriator of a formerly unknown public street did not infringe on any residents' rights if and in so far as he recognized everyone's unrestricted right of way. In fact because public streets were the springboard from which all other public goods sprang. The privatization should begin with streets. The expansion was turning formally public streets into public streets in the modern sense. The expansion of the domain of public goods and the powers of government started and here one should also begin with a solution. I only want to talk about privatizing streets because that is in a way the most complicated issue with privatizing other things is relatively easy. The privatization of public streets must have a two fold result. On the one hand no resident is henceforth forced to pay any tax for the upkeep or development of any local provincial or federal street. The future funding of all streets is solely the responsibility of their new private owners whoever they may be. On the other hand in so far as a resident's right of way are concerned the privatization must leave no one worse off than he was before but it also cannot make anyone better off. Originally every village resident could travel freely on the local street along his property and he could proceed equally freely from there as long as things around him were unowned. However if in his travels he came across something that was visibly owned by someone else whether a house, a field or a street his entrance was conditional on the owner's permission. Likewise if a non resident stranger came across a local street entrance to the street was subject to its domestic owner's permission. That is to say people could move around but no one had an unrestricted right of passage everywhere. No one was free to move just anywhere without requiring anyone's permission. The privatization of streets cannot change this fact and remove such natural and pre-established restrictions on the freedom of movement. Applied to the world of local provincial and federal streets this means that as a result of the privatization of streets every resident must be permitted to travel freely on every local provincial and federal street or highway as before. Entrance onto the streets of different provinces and especially of different localities however is not equally free but conditional on the permission of the owners of such streets. Local streets always preceded by any other trans-local streets and hence entry into different localities was never free but conditional on local permission. Yet who are the owners of the street? Who can claim and validate his claim that he owns the local provincial and federal streets? These streets are not the result of some sort of community effort nor are they the result of the work of some clearly identifiable person or group of persons. They are the result of tax payments by various taxpayers. Accordingly streets should be regarded as these taxpayers' property. The former taxpayers in accordance with their amount of local state and federal taxes paid should be awarded tradeable property titles in local, state and federal streets. They can then either keep these titles as an investment or they can divest themselves of their street property and sell it all the while again retaining an unrestricted right of way with the exception that I noted. Of course you do not have the right to freely enter other local streets which temporarily came into existence before all trans-local streets. I think if this would be done the power of the government would be almost extremely diminished and at the same time we would have solved the burning problem of immigration that we have by recognizing the right of every local street owner so to speak to a respect access by foreigners, strangers into the community as they see fit. They might not respect it but they might well do respect it and not let everyone in for free into their own community. I think that is all I want to say. Thank you very much.