Most an-caps (in contrast to say, objectivists) support market competition between legal systems without favouring any legal system in particular. Why doesn’t this also hold true for property rights? Why is an exclusive right to homesteaded resources seen by many as freedom itself, rather than as one alternative that can coexist with others (mutualist occupancy, socialist possession) in a free market?
Remember that AnCap is pretty new. Many have yet to reason out the full implications of the theory.
As you hint at, the full implications of having no monopoly on force include that no person or group of people are able to force rules on everyone else in a given territory - whatever theorists may say about the justness or rightness of such rules. Once the State is gone, “the chips will fall where they may” and we can only speculate as to how it will turn out. Fortunately, we have many reasons to believe the resulting society will accord far more with libertarianism than what we have now (see my sig).
Property is the foundation of every socio/economic theory. Without property the theory is pointless. With regards to ancap the foundation stone is inalienable property rights. Take that away and you get some form of monopoly not an-cap.
Competing legal systems would be something more of panarchy, not an-cap. In an-cap the law is NAP. The competition would just be who makes the least mistakes in applying the principle.
What we have now are competing legal systems. We even have them within the U.S. i.e. Federal Courts, State Courts, Family Courts, Appellate Courts. These courts compete with each other all the time e.g. In the U.S. precedent has been set in Family Court that the U.S. constitution takes a back seat to the safety of “Women and Children” This isn’t anything new, the Constitution takes a backseat to any government action.
The theory of gravity without gravity would be pointless. We see stuff fall, we try to explain it. We see people take possession of things, we try and explain it. An-cap is one form of property theory.
Take away property from ancap, and the legal theories collapse without their foundation.
We can’t imagine gravity away. I suspect it is the same for private property.
I think we may be looking at this backwards. It isn’t that homesteading/property rights can’t coexist with these other systems, rather that these other systems can’t coexist with homesteading/property rights.
The Lockean system is competing with the statist one right now.
For my benefit, would you expand on that please?
Original appropriation (homesteading) is the only legal principle that can resolve conflicts between systems of property rights.