 That's not right, man. That's how it works. That's not right. Perhaps you have seen this clip I'm playing for you now. This is Beto Martias. He is selling hot dogs on the University of California Berkeley campus, but he is selling without a permit, technically breaking the law. A police officer approaches his stand and asks for ID. As the vendor sifts through his wallet for an ID, the officer grabs the wallet out of his hands and pulls out all the money Martias has in his wallet. The officer then folds the money into his own pocket. It's less than a hundred dollars. Martias is shocked and doesn't know what to do. He is afraid he's about to get arrested. This is filmed by a bystander who exclaims, That's not right. You're going to keep his hard-earned money? The officer responds, This is law and order in action. We're keeping the money. First Amendment advocates defend our constitutional right to free speech. Second Amendment advocates assert our constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, we have equal protection and justice under law. But what about our right to property? This is The Pursuit, a podcast about government action and individual liberty. I'm test terrible. Private property brings us together. Private property keeps others out and allows us to associate with people who are like-minded. It allows us to learn things about each other. It allows us to express ourselves in the funding. Fathers knew that that was critical. This is Christina Sandofer. She is the Executive Vice President of the Goldwater Institute in Arizona. She spoke with me about property and property rights. Private property is mentioned in the Constitution over and over again, and that's why even when government is given very limited power to be able to take away property rights, that power was expressly designated as being very, very limited in the Constitution because our founding fathers knew that property rights were the foundation of all of their rights. And really, when you think about property rights, the core of property rights is self-ownership, right? I own myself. I own my body. And therefore, I own the fruits of my labor. Every right in the Constitution is really at its base of property right. I mean, again, even the right to freedom of speech and free expression, that again relies on a foundation of private property rights. And if you don't have the right to own a printing press to own a church, you are not able to express those rights, and government can take the foundation of those rights away. There is a long and complicated history of private property getting undermined by government action. This is Trevor Burris. He is a research fellow here at the Cato Institute's Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies. He is also co-host of Freethought's podcast. I asked Trevor to explain the relationship between private property and government. We started by talking about eminent domain. Eminent domain is a power of the government and it's a long-standing power going back to common law. And it's protected in the sense that it's allowed, but you have to pay compensation in the Fifth Amendment, which says that nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. This means traditionally speaking that the government can take, say, your house to build a road. And it has done this for a very long time. But if it does that, it has to pay you just compensation. But generally, that's eminent domain. In most cases, eminent domain is used to take physical property, like houses or other properties. And this property is used as a public good, something that directly benefits the public. In asset forfeiture, there are actually two types of asset forfeiture. One of them is criminal asset forfeiture. And the other one is civil asset forfeiture. Criminal asset forfeiture is when you lose the proceeds of a crime. And most people would generally endorse this if you robbed a bank and then you're convicted of robbing the bank and they take the $400,000 or whatever you took from the bank, you can't say, hey, you're taking my property. And that comes after a conviction of a crime. That's criminal asset forfeiture. Civil asset forfeiture is different entirely. That occurs when the government takes things based on the mere suspicion that it was involved in a crime without a conviction beforehand and possibly without a conviction ever. Civil asset forfeiture is the legal process of seizing personal property of a person suspected of a crime. It's important to distinguish eminent domain and asset forfeiture while understanding that they both share the same foundational action, government seizing private property. I would argue in the abstract, both eminent domain and asset forfeiture are fairly reasonable practices. Eminent domain emphasizes that property taken must benefit the public and that the government must pay just compensation. In theory, asset forfeiture's main objective is to dismantle crime. If used correctly, within limitation and carefully, these seem like effective, reasonable government tools. But are they? We ate, slept, and drank eminent domain for nearly 10 years, all of us. It was the first thing we thought about when we woke up and it was the last thing we thought about before we went to bed and that's all we did all day long. I want to know if my civil rights are still intact because I, like I said, when this all happened to me, I knew right away there was rights being violated. What I wish we could do is just send every government official in the United States to copy the Constitution and say, when you were elected or appointed to your office, you took an oath to uphold this document and so you need to do so. We have a lot to explore in the coming weeks. Stay tuned. The Pursuit is produced and hosted by me, Tess Terrible. It is a project of the Cato Institute and Libertarianism.org.