I recently came back from a sublime vacation in Colombia. I did so much in 11 days. I tried scuba diving, mud-bathing, paragliding, and riding and ATV for the first time. I also went surfing, learned salsa dancing, went on two separate hikes, and so much more. One of the issues I ran into during my trip was during my stay in Bogotá. One of the first things I noticed as I took a taxi through Bogotá was the graffiti. I have traveled through other cities before, including Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Mexico City, Quito, Paris, and Stockholm. Yet never have I seen as much graffiti as I did in Bogotá.
It made me wonder why Bogotá was saturated with graffiti, whereas the other two cities I visited in Colombia (Cartagena and Cali) did not have that level of graffiti. In 2011, a 16-year old Bogotano by the name of Diego Felipe Becerra was spray-painting a picture of Felix the Cat on the walls of an underpass. Police caught Becerra in the act and killed Becerra as he was fleeing the scene of the crime. When a police colonel manipulated the crime scene, the people were in an uproar. This political pressure created by the protesting resulted in the subsequent decriminalization of graffiti in Bogotá.
The fact that Bogotá has a ton of graffiti makes sense. When something is decriminalized or legalized, you tend to get more of it because the barrier of criminalization is out of the way. Yet I found the proliferation of graffiti in Bogotá to be more than aesthetically unappealing. It was unsettling, as if it were an external symbol of the tumultuous nature of Bogotá.
Before continuing, I need to make the distinction between graffiti and street art. For one, graffiti tends to be more word-based, whereas street-art is more commonly image-based. About 80 percent of graffiti comes in the form of tagging. There are also throw-ups, blockbusters, wildstyle, and other forms of graffiti, but tagging is by far the most common. Street artists use other materials, but graffiti is typically created with spray paint. Street art is also perceived to be more positive than graffiti. This could do with the fact that street artists almost always ask for permission first, whereas those spray-painting graffiti do it when no one else is around to make sure they do not get caught. This latter distinction is where I take issue with graffiti.
The pro-graffiti side argues that graffiti is a form of expression and is thus inherently democratic, especially for those who otherwise do not have a voice (e.g., Carroll, 2019). I indirectly addressed this topic the context of pro-Palestine protestors a few weeks ago. Not every form of expression constitutes as freedom of speech, including violence, actual threats, bona fide intimidation, incitement of violence, discriminatory harassment, or the heckler's veto. Graffiti falls under this list of exceptions. Why?
It does not matter if you view graffiti as art or not. In libertarian thought, the premise of the nonaggression axiom is that your rights stop where mine begin, much like with second-hand smoke. Those who are spraying graffiti on walls are almost never doing it on their own property. They are most likely doing it on someone else's property. Property rights are valued highly, not only in libertarian thought, but in any free society. When you are spraying graffiti on someone else's property without their permission, it is not freedom of speech. It is a form of vandalism that is often accompanied with trespassing.
Freedom typically does not come at a cost to someone else. I made this argument when I refuted the supposed "right to healthcare." In 2015, American paint manufacturer Valspar released a technical paper finding that graffiti removal cost $12 billion a year. In 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that it was as high as $15 to $18 billion. If you adjust those figures for inflation, the estimated cost of graffiti removal is higher. This does not even get into property devaluation. According to the National Association of Relators, graffiti can devalue a property by as much as 25 percent. If it were truly a matter of freedom of speech, it would not come with this sort of price tag.
I am not going to get into the theory of whether graffiti is a gateway crime or if it encourages more crime. What I will say is that violating property rights by spraying graffiti has no place in civil society. If you want to artistically express yourself on someone else's property, ask for permission first. That is what the vast majority of street artists do. Yet we know graffiti artists do no such thing.
Most libertarians believe in limited government. It is rarer for a libertarian to say when the government should actually be present. I find that graffiti is one of those times that the government should intervene. Graffiti is vandalism and visual pollution under the guise of free speech. It comes with the direct costs of removing the graffiti, as well as indirect costs of devaluing property. These negative externalities are violations of the nonaggression axiom, especially with regards to defacing private property. Aside from enforcement or improving programming alternatives so they do not feel inclined to spray graffiti, encouraging street art could be another step in dealing with the blight of graffiti. Whatever the solution might be, decriminalizing graffiti has no place in libertarian thought or civil society.
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