The "Right to Travel" Does Not Exist: A Deconstruction of Free Movement Advocates

Apr 5

The “right to travel” is a common appeal to authority used in debates among libertarians and non-libertarians alike. I think this stems from a lack of information regarding the subject or the “sovereign citizen” types in the larger libertarian community who have been known to invoke this in discussions about licensing. It has, in essence, become a functional misnomer, even to the extent these same people are saying that violating this supposed “natural right” is a violation of the Non-aggression Principle. Which is an interesting perspective considering that the Non-aggression Principle is downstream from property rights.

Let’s break down the phrase “right to travel” by looking directly at the terms.

First, let’s look at what rights are. Essentially, rights are nothing more than ethical principles, which are entitlements to be left alone, that we derive from property rights or to be more accurate, from our very existence. (more on this in a future article) For instance, we have a right to not be enslaved, we have a right to not be stolen from, and we have a right to life. However, we do not have a right to other people’s property or labor. This is the difference between a state-granted privilege and a contracted or “natural right.” A state-granted privilege or a contracted right can only come from the state or another person through force or a contract respectively. For instance, a “right” to a cheeseburger can only ever exist under a contract, or by the state forcibly taking that cheeseburger from the producer and giving it to you.

Next, we should define travel. Travel is merely the journey from your current location to another over private, unowned, or state-controlled property. I think most if not everyone can agree with that definition. Now allow me to break off into a tangent on this by saying in a completely private society, there would be no state property. All property would be privately controlled or unowned. With the population as it currently sits the non-existence of unowned property, at least on this planet and especially within the united states, is a foregone conclusion in a practical sense. Meaning unowned land simply does not exist today, it either comes under the purview of the state or is controlled by private interests.

Some will object here and say: “the state doesn’t own that land!”, to which my reply is “how so?” There never seems to be a well-thought-out answer because these individuals don’t understand what ownership is.

Mises defined ownership as the full control of the services that can be derived from a good. Ownership is simply the exclusive control of a scarce resource, while a property right is a valid claim to the exclusive control of a scarce resource. These distinctions are important and are very rarely properly understood. So yes, the state does in fact own that land. It just has no valid property right claim to it.

“None of the various forms of social theory deny property rights; each version will specify an owner for every scarce resource.5 If the state nationalizes an industry, it is asserting ownership of these means of production. If the state taxes you, it is implicitly asserting ownership of the funds taken. If my land is transferred to a private developer by eminent domain statutes, the developer is now the owner. If the law allows a recipient of racial discrimination to sue his employer for a sum of money, he is the owner of the money.”

- Hans-Hermann Hoppe

So, the phrase “right to travel” implies we have a right (legal or ethical principle to be left alone) to travel across (state or privately owned) property. So, do we have a right to do that? I don’t think we do. Let’s break this down to the three areas of property we can traverse, as mentioned above.

I do not think it is ethical to say you have an exclusive right to travel across state-owned property, because that property was appropriated with money that was taken from people unjustly. So, therefore, that right to travel across that state-controlled property would not exist if not for the state, because in a free society that property would be privately owned. Therefore, the “right to travel” across state-controlled property cannot be a natural right, because it can only exist as a privilege from the state.

Do you have a right to go on public transport? Do you have a right to use public healthcare? Do you have a right to welfare? If the answer to these is no, and one is consistent, it is clear that a person would also not have a right to travel on state property.

Similarly, to state-controlled property, I do not believe it would be ethical to claim an exclusive right to travel across someone else’s private property as this would violate basic property rights which are derived from self-ownership and are directly related to the Non-aggression Principle. That is unless you have a contract and since this “right to travel” across private property is a contracted right, it, therefore, cannot be a natural right, and thus refutes the idea that the “right to travel” is a natural right in the context of private property.

Furthermore, the existence of state property naturally and continually interferes with private property. As the right to private property would naturally include the existence of privacy, discrimination, and exclusivity. However, under a state, this does not exist because state-controlled property such as roads, sidewalks, “public” thoroughfares, public transit, common space, laws against discrimination, and more infringe upon that. Forcing, by monopoly, the travel of others along a road, sidewalk, bus, etc.; through, over, or adjacent to private property that is state-controlled is a violation of property rights. This simply would not happen or exist in a society in which property rights were enforced.

Lastly, we come to “unowned property”, which as described above does not currently exist on Earth. This, in contrast with the other two, I do believe to be ethical to traverse across without a contract. This unowned property constitutes an unowned resource and can be used by anyone crossing it for whatever means they feel are justifiable, as long as they are not harming anyone else in the process. So, we can deduce that the only true and natural “right to travel” is across unowned property. Thus, it becomes obvious that the “right to travel” can only ever exist in the context of unowned property. And the implication or enforcement of a “right to travel” across private or state-controlled property, and not its inverse, is a violation of property rights.

So, the next time a “libertarian,” or anyone for that matter, says they or others have a “right to travel” ask them what kind of property they are traveling across. Since we know, for now, the answer is either going to state-controlled property or private property, their argument that a natural “right to travel” exists, is now easily proven false.