Just wanted to expand upon my previous post about homesteading:
Again, the problem with the idea that homesteading is the best conflict avoidance and resolution mechanism, from a consequentialist point of view, is that this is false. It is the best for probably most cases of original property acquisition, but it is not the best mechanism for all cases. To go with the previous example, if you are to homesteading land, what counts as “first use”?
Must you lay out the foundation for your house before you start building walls? Do you need to fence the land in before you build a foundation? If you want a big yard, do you need to fence in the area that you want to claim? What if you don’t want a fenced in yard?
And of course, what happens if you are laying out the foundation to your house, and you’ve finished laying out the north, south, and east sides, but as you work your way towards the west side of your house, someone else comes along and uses the land by doing whatever? He can fence in some of it, plant a seed, maybe put down a sign. I don’t care. The point is, what if someone else beats you to the punch as you are laying down the very foundation to your new house?
Are you allowed to say, “Excuse me, sir, but I was just about to use that for the west side of my house. That is my property.” If you do this, then you are not going by a strict first use rule, but in fact you are also including in “calling it” as a legitimate claim.
Now, if you just believe that first use is the rule, and that’s that, well there isn’t really much to say. You believe first use is the only moral method of acquiring property. Period. End of story. But if you happen to support first use because of consequentialism, then a strict first use rule is not always the best solution.
So either first use is not as logically rigorous as it first appears, or it leads to some absurd scenarios, but you are okay with it because you just subscribe to first use as the only moral method of property acquisition.
Again, about the ethic of reciprocity, not all property ethics are compatible with the ethic of reciprocity. The EoR does lead to more than one conflict avoidance and resolution mechanism, but there is nothing wrong with this. But it does lead to first use as a norm. As I said earlier in the thread:
A careful reading of this quote will show that I used the article “a” and not “the”. The reason it will be a norm in a EoR is very simple. People are not omnipresent. In other words, people are not everywhere at all times. If you claim some area of land as yours for a house, there might not be someone present for when you claim it. If there is ever a dispute over whose land it is, do not forget the matter of needing proof as to who claimed it first. Demonstrating that you used it is far easier to prove than demonstrating that you merely called it, especially if no one else was around when you first claimed it.
Maybe the person who called it did in fact claim it first, but without a means of proving it, no one else can know this. Even if someone else were present, heresay is not nearly as strong of proof as hard, physical evidence. By the time a society has the concept of notarizing documents, the standard of first use will have long been established as the dominant norm. So if people want to be able to demonstrate to others that they were in fact the ones to first claim something, they would prefer first use as a standard as it can be falsified.
Mechanisms such as “calling it” and “rocks, paper, scissors” will never be completely eradicated in a EoR society, but there is no necessary reason why they ought to be. They have their place as conflict avoidance and resolution mechanisms, but they are not nearly as strong as “first use”. First use would be far more widespread as it can meet a standard of proof that people can rely on in general.