From a conversation on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/o6ky5/how_a_libertarian_capitalist_became_a_libertarian/
The post in question is:
"…this process of disowning is arbitrarily determined. How property is “disowned” is exactly the point of contention between “anarcho-capitalists” and other anarchists.
What if I needed to sign a statement every time I took a crap in order to allow it to return to nature? Seems silly doesn’t it? This is why the process is implicit and subject to socially determined “rules” that are based on “use”.
If I am no longer “using” my property, it returns to a state of nature. Exactly when my “usage” ends is subject to differences of opinion. Differences that lead to conflicts that are best solved without violence."
My reply was:
"You have no say in what happens on either unowned land, or owned land (unless it is yours). Your turd can only land on one of these two places.
Since you have no right to unowned land, and no right to someone else’s land, it would seem to me that voluntarily sending your property to either of these is a non-arbitrary way to determine if you abandoned it. If you knowingly send it to a place that you have no rights to, then you are giving up the rights to it in itself."
Rothbard goes into this a bit in The Ethics of Liberty, but he doesn’t say anything about how the abandonment of property is determined. Does anyone have any ideas on this?