> Are property rights freedom-preserving? You’ll find that historically speaking “freedom” and “property rights” are treated as synonymous for some political t

> Are property rights freedom-preserving? You’ll find that historically speaking “freedom” and “property rights” are treated as synonymous for some political theorists, including the ones that founded the United States. This is one of the foundational aspects[0] of liberalism that has come to rule the western world; the idea that property rights are sacred and must have an exceptionally high bar for the collective to intercede on. Whether or not that equivalence is true is a debatable matter. One of the unfortunate outcomes is the ability for the individual to withdraw their property from public use, often to the detriment of the whole (such as the beach example you provided). Also, the fact that the founding thinkers of liberalism and America itself tended to own slaves or trade in them doesn’t necessarily disprove the basic argument, but it’s a pretty strong counter point at least. 0 - There are of course other tenants to liberalism that I’ve not included here, due to their irrelevance for the subject at hand.