By owning land as an induvidual do you truly possess everything about that land? If you do then consider the implications.
Lets say that some Turkish fellow someplace in present day Germany decides he would prefer to subject himsel to the Turkish state rather than the German state. So this fellow proclaims his house and backyard are hencforth subject to laws and authorities of Turkey. What possible objection can be put forward to his doing this? He bought this property fair and square after all.
Or lets say a whole street block inhabited by I don`t know lets say recent immigrants from Germany in Croatian litoral decide they will instead of being subject to Croatia form a mini-state of their own and proclaim their block an independent state? (Lets say they have never heard of Anarchism.) What objection can be raised to this? Even if they moved into Croatia and bought the property with the sole intention of proclaiming this mini-state. How can you object to this while recognising totality of induvidual ownership? Or maybe you have no desire to object to such scenario and would greet it as just another seccession in the right decentralising direction?
It would seem to me there are two paralel concepts of land owenrship alive among humans. The induvidual and even older non-induvidual ownership concept. We do speak of “Russian land”, “Chechen land”, “Scottish land” and so on. We do speak of a “land grab” when a nation-state annexes a certain are of another nation-state, without induvidual ownership of the land changing hands at all. It seems to me, there is a concept very much alive among men that lets say a German can buy a stretch of land in the middle of Russia from a Russian guy and this gives him all the rights to the land as an induvidual, but that there is a certain undersanding present that this land remains “Russian land” despite this and that therefore the German fellow does not neccesarily have all the rights (namely the right to induvidual self-determination that would enable him to seceede from Russia or even hook up his land with Germany proper) that he would rightfuly have if he lived on the ancestral land of his people (lets say in Alsace).
If you read National Self-Determination by Rothbard it would seem even he recognised something similar to this. Notice this passage of his:
But more troubling is, say, the current situation in Estonia and Latvia, where the Soviets deliberately tried to swamp and destroy native culture and ethnic nationalism by shipping in a large number of Russians after World War II to work in the factories. In Latvia, the Russian minority is only slightly under 50 percent. Here, I believe the recency of this migration and its political nature tip the scales in favor of maintaining native nationalism. In fact, libertarians believe that everyone has the natural right to self-ownership and ownership of property, but that there is no such thing as a natural “right” to vote. Here, it would make sense not to allow Russians to vote in Latvia and Estonia, to treat them as guests or immigrants of indefinite duration, but not with the voting privileges of citizenship.
While I do not agree with his condonance of this policy of Estonia and Latvia towards Russians, I find it telling he in effect did not oppose different political status implimented for Russians based on the fact they were immigrants and therefore living on Estonian and Latvian rather than on Russian land.
What do you think about this issue? It is hard to deny there exists a concept like this among humans. Perhaps less so in America since you are all immigrants there with a very feeble common identity?
(And please note saying there is no such thing as “national land” because there is no such thing as a “nation” is not much of an argument. Yes nation is ultimatley an “imagined” concept. In practice it exists only because people are convinced it exists and should exist, but the same is at the end of the day true of induvidual ownership of land itself. There is such ownership only because we are conviced there should be such ownership and that there rightfuly is such ownership.)