TUNNELS, BUNKERS, AND ESCAPE HATCHES: DEFENDING ECONOMIC RIGHTS UNDER FIRE.

• Author: Carlson, Jill

Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.

--John Locke

In his Second Treatise of Government ([1689] 1980), Locke viewed life, health, liberty, and possessions as the natural, inalienable lights of mankind. He posited that government exists to serve the best interest of its people, protecting those natural rights. The legitimacy of government rests in the consent of the governed.

Possessions, or property, have been reiterated as a human right over the course of the centuries since Locke first wrote--enshrined in everything from the U.S. Declaration of Independence to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights (1948: 217, A III).

Nevertheless, executives, judiciaries, legislative bodies, and central banks around the world have continually broken their social contract on this front: not only failing to defend the natural rights of possessions and property, but often actively harming individuals' ability to hold value and to freely transfer and exchange assets. Access to a free, open, and functional financial system is a fundamental human right. One that is continuously violated by states and policymakers globally.

The threats posed to this right by governments are many, varied, and often interconnected. In this article, I will not address either taxation or social and welfare policies, which are arguably accepted by Locke's framing of government (1980: XI: 140-42). One need not go that far in order to demonstrate government violation of rights around property and possessions. Inflation, confiscation, capital controls, price controls, rationing, bank withdrawal limits, cash shortages, and all manner of similarly restrictive policies fell clearly in this category. These are often implemented in response to crises: ballooning government deficits, rampant conniption, liquidity and banking crises, sanctions, shortages, and sovereign defaults. Sometimes these issues are of governments' own making. In other scenarios, they are exogenous shocks. Either way, policy responses that restrict the rights of citizens and corporations have become all too common.

While these responses can act as short-tenn bandages to slow the bleed, they are rarely effective over the long term. As Locke himself may have predicted, individuals and entities tend to take it into their own hands to defend their rights when they are under attack. They find ways to slip the binds of the restrictions, they get their savings out of their failing currencies, and in some cases, they physically flee the jurisdiction. In other words, in order to evade problematic economic policies or the damage of monetary mismanagement, people and organizations build tunnels to get their assets out, find bunkers to protect the value of their property, or exit altogether.

These phenomena can be found to varying degrees in nearly every country in the world, playing out either subtly in purportedly freedom-loving democratic societies, or much more obviously in authoritarian regimes. Perhaps nowhere, however, have all of these phenomena manifested so clearly as they have over the last decade in Venezuela. Rampant government spending due to socialist policies has led to an economic dependency on oil. The oil price rout of the last half-decade, combined with electoral controversy, rampant corruption, and prolonged geopolitical tensions with would-be trading partners, has resulted in economic trauma and isolation. The government's responses to these situations have led to hyperinflation of the local currency, capital controls, confiscation of assets, price controls, rationing, and debt default. Just about every possible breach of economic and monetary freedom that could happen has occurred in the last decade in Venezuela.

Venezuela is also illustrative of the creativity that people and organizations employ in response to these contraventions of their rights. Entrepreneurial individuals operate underground marketplaces. Engineering students mine bitcoin as an inflation-proof source of income. Mothers and fathers who went abroad in search of better prospects leverage hawala networks to send money back. Those living close enough to the borders smuggle goods and monies in from neighboring countries. The solutions that Venezuelan people have crafted in the face of extreme economic strife are a testament to their resilience and also to the depth of the human need for a sound monetary' system, for protected property rights, and for freedom to transact and trade.

It is unrealistic and unreasonable to expect that Venezuela, or any other state actor, will ever relinquish its hold over economic policymaking or its monopoly on money. As long as governments and central banks are around to do so, economic and monetary policies will be mismanaged at the expense of the lights and best interests of the people. As demonstrated by the extreme example of Venezuela, it is therefore up to the private sector as well as individuals to craft and make accessible the avenues to achieve economic and monetary freedom.

In the remainder of this article, I discuss three ways individuals and organizations go about defending their economic rights from government...