The labor theory of property operates in the moral realm, and the subjective theory of property operates in the empirical realm. To say that a person owns that with which he’s mixed his labor is to make a moral claim: namely, that he should be recognized as the owner of that property, whether in fact he is so recognized is another question. Whereas, to say that a person does own whatever property others around him recognize as being his property is simply to describe empirical reality - whether a person is the legitimate owner (per LTP) or not, he who is recognized as the owner is the effective owner.
The LTP informs the STP, in that it tells the members of society on what basis they should recognize someone as the owner of property.
My general views on law are expressed here.
The basic idea is that law emerges from trial-and-error, not through theorization. Hence, theoretical considerations are less important than what works. But deciding what works, too, is not a theoretical matter. It cannot be solved by armchair thinking. Not legislators, not judges, not law professors, not economists (not even Austrian ones), not religious leaders, no one can cogitate law.
The only way to figure out the what the law is for people to try different solutions to their disputes until they find the ones that tend to work (keep the peace). This is as true of property law as any other kind of law.
Clayton -
You do good to quote Stirner, but Human Action (the primitive force / atomic fact) is the consequence of such an ontology. As Mises points out, there is no “mystic comuinon” - all action / perspective is within the scope and invention of a creative-destructive unique entity.
Stirner gives birth to and anchors Weber, Menger, and Mises.
“All ownership derives from occupation and violence. When we consider the natural components of goods, apart from the labour components they contain, and when we follow the legal title back, we must necessarily arrive at a point where this title originated in the appropriation of goods accessible to all. Before that we may encounter a forcible expropriation from a predecessor whose ownership we can in its turn trace to earlier appropriation or robbery. That all rights derive from violence, all ownership from appropriation or robbery, we may freely admit to those who oppose ownership on considerations of natural law.”
~ Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis
“Private property is a human device. It is not sacred. It came into existence in early ages of history, when people with their own power and by their own authority appropriated to themselves what had previously not been anybody’s property. Again and again proprietors were robbed of their property by expropriation. The history of private property can be traced back to a point at which it originated out of acts which were certainly not legal. Virtually every owner is the direct or indirect legal successor of people who acquired ownership either by arbitrary appropriation of ownerless things or by violent spoilation of their predecessor.”
~ Ludwig von Mises, Human Action