Now you and I are looking at a cat and the man.
I say - The cat is black.
You answer - Yes, I see that too.
The man says - I own the cat.
Me to the man - Yes!
You to me - How do you see that?
After reading your question a word popped up in my mind. Superfluous. You could rephrase your question by asking, “What is ownership?”, which has been explained numerous times on this forum most likely. Epistemology is the study of knowledge, defining things is already part of epistemology, because how can you define something without first knowing what it is?
What is ownership, then?
Seiously, what is the difference between the cat is black and the cat is mine?
‘The cat is black’ is a description of the cat.
‘The cat is mine’ is a characterization of your relationship to the cat, that of ownership.
Saying “this is mine” is shorthand for “I have the right to use this”. There’s no empirical observation there.
The term “ownership” refers to a special relationship between an individual and a rivalrous object: namely, that the individual (the “owner”), and not his rivals, has ultimate decision-making jurisdiction (or “rights”) over the object (the “property”).
All political philosophies advocate some set of rules for determining what constitutes legitimate ownership, i.e. who has legitimate ultimate decision-making jurisidiction over what, or simply: who owns what.
Libertarians uniquely insist upon ownership being legitimate only when there exists an objective intersubjectively-ascertainable link between the individual and the object. This link can be established by homesteading previously unowned objects, it can be transferred between individuals through voluntary exchange, and it can be severed through abandonment.
I love your videos!
Graham: how do we define abandoment? Is it some reasonable yet arbitrary amount of time decided on a per-society basis? Like say, a year of inactivity or w/e?
Gonna throw out a bombshell here.
Property is a social construct, and its definition is ultimately arbitrary.
I think a specific definition of legitimate ownership can be called a social construct. Ownership itself is physically verifiable (though not necessarily absolute), and refers to control. It seems that the two meanings are usually conflated, since - as George Costanza would say - “we’re living in a society”.
EDIT: 1000th post.
Ownership, according to the Oxford Dictionary Online, is “the act, state, or right of possessing something.” According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, etymologically, the verb “'own’ evolved in early Middle English from O.E. geagnian, from root agan ‘to have, to own’ (see own), and in part from the adjective own (q.v.). It became obsolete after c.1300, but was revived early 17c., in part as a back-formation of owner (mid-14c.), which continued. Related: Owned; owning. To own up “make full confession” is from 1853.” As an adjective, it originally meant “‘one’s own,’” lit. ‘possessed by,’ from P.Gmc. *aigana- ‘possessed, owned’ (cf. O.S. egan, O.Fris. egin, O.N. eiginn, Du. eigen, Ger. eigen ‘own’), from pp. of PIE *aik- ‘to be master of, possess,’ source of O.E. agan ‘to have’ (see owe)."
Thus, I believe that ownership is probably better defined as “rightful possession.”
Don’t forget the distinction between descriptions and prescriptions about rights. The law might say that it is illegal to possess marijuana. If the police don’t arrest people for possessing marijuana, then there is a de facto right to possess marijuana, regardless of the law. That is the description. The prescriptions are what I call just rights, which are people’s opinions as to what the law ought to be (or what ought to be practiced).
Also, don’t forget that possession is not necessary to ownership. If you lend a friend a book, it’s still your book even if it isn’t in your possession. Graham’s above definition of ownership is spot on. I only disagree with him as to the importance of homesteading and objective links.
Aristippus,
It does appear that the actual dictionary definition of “ownership” is rather synonymous with the word “property”. Still, the dichotomy which you are making is an important one. Control does not mean that your control would be upheld within a court of law, nor that those around you support your ability to control something, where as property generally does, with the former emphasized over the latter, and as Gotlucky pointed out property need not necessarily imply control. I could currently own mars, but this would be objectively meaningless for my influence over the planet.
Darn tootin! I got this place homesteaded! At least my ranch is!
@ Luminar: Thanks!
What specific actions constitute abandonment is for the courts to work out, which means it will end up reflecting what people perceive as reasonable. It will depend on the property in question and the local social customs. So whatever amount of time you think is reasonable is probably close to the mark.
So, I think then that the question of whether someone has successfully homesteaded a territory and whether someone has abandoned it is ultimately one that courts should decide.
The issue would be raised as to whether someone’s been attempting in good faith to homestead a particular claim within a reasonable amount of time by someone else who comes along and desires that same property.
And the question of whether previously homesteaded territory has been abandoned… that’s a stickier issue I think. People may allow a plot of land to lay fallow for a period–that would still be in his interest as a producer. And a mine does not try to mine all of the copper out of it immediately–that would be foolish and kill the price of copper, etc. Yet, that copper just waiting to be mined has not been abandoned, despite no immediate plans to mine it. A copper mine may last hundreds of years even.
I still have one concern with homseteading: how do we allow the homesteading of a tract of land that the owner primarily wants to keep in its natural state?
If we take the labor theory of homesteading, that taking something out of a state of nature turns it into property, it should be obvious then that it would be impossible to own somethat that we primarily value in its natural state!
This is a problem I’ve been thinking about for some time. The owner of a plot can certainly keep it in its natural state, but that’s for owned land, and is possible primarily because governments took control of entire territories and then parceled them out from there. So there was no need to homestead in that way.
But, in a free society, how could we handle this?
I think, as a start on the answer, that a free society would connect land ownership and title service. The title company might have rules about how something becomes homesteaded, subject to court review, etc.
Among these, people would be allowed to claim a plot of any size reasonable for their declared purpose in homesteading it. So, beyond merely the homestead, there could arise something like the business-stead, and the farm-stead 
Whatever purpose you desire in terms of purpose of ownership. You then could have a beauty-stead as well, allowing large plots to be owned but kept in its natural state. And the requirement to homestead these things and what’s considered reasonable amounts of territory would change depending on purpose.
A business-stead would allow for much larger plots than a homestead as reasonable. You wanna put in a thousand acre solar farm, that’s fine. And that claim would allow a longer length of time to complete the improvements before it’s considered partially or wholly abandoned and reopened for a new owner-claimant.
No one needs a thousand acres to simply build a house, certainly, would not be reasonable. A homestead might be an acre or so. And you could apply for a beauty-stead surrounding the area should you so desire, whose requirements would only be active management.
So, by this concept and extensions thereof, we can create a rational homesteading theory, expended from what people usually think of when they think of homesteading generally.
These rules would be applied and created in ad-hoc fashion by title companies and enforced by free-market courts in any disputes that arise therein.
If you separate control from ownership, one result is economic fascism, where control ends up partially or completely invested in the central political party without ostensible loss of “ownership.”
But ownership is a farce if divorced from control. To the extent you and you alone control a thing, you are its owner.
When the government steps in to regulate anything, they by that diminish your control over that thing and therefore abrogate your ownership by that same degree.
“But ownership is a farce if divorced from control. To the extent you and you alone control a thing, you are its owner.”
If you go by this definition then you necessarily arrive at the anarcho-syndicalist definition of property rights. The workers control the property, they’re the one’s who use it, not the capitalist.
Only if you used that idea in isolation as a theory of how property comes to be property. In the case of a capitalist, he gains title by either taking property out of nature or by voluntary trade.
Now that he has that title, it cannot be taken away just by lending it to another in the scope of a business transaction.