"From plantation rebellion and Indigenous land theft to prison labour's super-exploitation, Walcott examines the relationship between policing and property. That a man can lose his life for passing a fake $20 bill, when we know that our economies are flush with fake money, says something damning about the ways in which we've organized society. At the nexus of the current discourse on policing and violence is the unavoidable fact that criminal codes value property more than human life, and thus substantive change isn't possible until we rethink the very idea of private property itself."--

In The Noblest Triumph, Tom Bethell looks at the history of property rights and shows that the key role played by the institution of private property has been misunderstood by Western elites for over a century. Beginning with the ancient Greeks and arriving at the present day, Bethell looks at basic ideas about property found in Plato, Adam Smith, Blackstone, Bentham, Marx, Mill and others. He shows that the institution of property is inextricably tied to traditional conceptions of justice and liberty, and he argues that prosperity and civilization can only arise where private property is securely held by the people.