The Cato Institute released its assessment of freedom in each of the fifty states last week, and it generally does a good job of distinguishing between states that heavily restrict people’s lives and ones that allow more freedom. But the Antiplanner has been concerned that the many different indices of freedom published by various groups don’t seriously consider property rights, which most libertarians believe are the fundamental basis of freedom.
This year’s report attributes about 11 percent of the score for each state to property rights. Most of that 11 percent comes from two factors: rent control (5.3 percent) and zoning (4.8 percent). Rent control is easy to identify but it is not a very good indicator of freedom because most states don’t allow it or allow it only under special circumstances. Only four states allow it outright, and not surprisingly given the weighting these make up four of the five lowest-scoring states on property rights.
Zoning is much more difficult. The fifty-states report relies on the Wharton Business School’s index of zoning, but that is more than a decade old and fails to accurately assess just how flexible zoning is in some states and inflexible in others. Even more than Wharton’s index, the report relies on an index of court decisions on land-use issues, which seems more reliable as a guide to how litigious people are than to how restrictive their land-use rules are. Continue reading
