Robert Hale, Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State

What is the government doing when it " protects a property right"? Passively, it is abstaining from interference with the owner when he deals with the thing owned; actively, it is forcing the non-owner to. desist from handling it, unless the owner consents. Yet Mr. Carver would have it that the government is merely preventing the non-owner from using force against the owner (pp. 104-5 and 106). This explanation is obviously at variance with the facts—for the non-owner is forbidden to handle the owner’s property even where his handling of it involves no violence or force whatever. Any lawyer could have told him that the right of property is much more extensive than the mere …