I was wondering how records would be kept in anarcho-capitalism on who owns what piece of land and what the limits of that land are? Seems like there could be plenty of confusion and claims on other people’s land.
If you have a protection contract for a property, that is equivalent to a title to that property.
What prevents you from buying protection for land that you don’t own and claiming it as your own?
Obviously it is not in the interest of the protection agency to protect false claims.
Why not? How do they judge a claim to be false?
That’s their business. The point is that protecting a swindler increases their risk.
Yes, but how do they know this person to be a swindler, if there is no record for who owns the land?
You’re asking for too much. I don’t know how insurers know if someone is a good risk or not. They just know.
That is not my intention. I am merely trying to understand how ownership is proved. For example, if you don’t have some centralized system of records of land ownership, how do you prevent fraud and mistakes, like two lots of land overlapping?
The ironi with your question, Libertas est veritas, is that capitalism as a system that is supposed to protect ownership is the only reason to why we have the technology to centralize in the first place, and yet you find it hard to imagine that the very same people who invent computers, printingpresses, filecabinets, banks, insurances would be unable to organize for them self?
I thought there would be agencies devoted to handling claims to land. At least I remember passing reference to these in The Market for Liberty, but it’s been a while since I’ve read it. I believe private firms already handle this role. At any rate, it’s more efficient for a firm to insure it’s not mistaken in protecting a claim to land than finding out later it’s protecting a client who acted inappropriately, and it thereby incurring high costs and a bad reputation.
-Jon
You don’t need video recrords and DNA to prove someone guilty in court. All you need are witnesses.
No. I am trying to understand the mechanism. How do you verify that someone owns a certain piece of land?
I’m not sure I understand. Land ownership is usually very precise. So if there is no central archive of who owns what, how do you determine one claim to be valid and one to be invalid? Especially in situations where the precise limits of the owned land are concerned?
If we could answer this question, central planning would also be possible. Neither can be done because no single mind possesses the genius and entreprenuerial skill that the market brings to bear upon the problem. All that can be said with certainty at this point is that the final scheme of things will be determined by the desires of consumers as best served by the most efficient competitors.
It don’t see how an analogy to central planning applies here. Beyond Jon mentioning private firms that deal with land management, I haven’t seen even hypothetical models for how it would be handled. If we can’t even conceptualize how it might work, then I would say it is a problem.
I can fathom it being a court issue (you register land purchases/ownership), but I have very limited knowledge of how anarcho-capitalism is supposed to work, so I don’t know what role courts play. The main problem that I see, be it competing courts or competing firms, is that how will overlapping claims be prevented or resolved?
How exactly does an overlapping claim arise?
Mistake, fraud, etc. I don’t think the why is essential, but let’s say I want to buy land. How do I make sure that the person selling me the land actually owns it?
Well I imagine land certification would happen the same way any other private certification agencies works on the market. Lets say in order to lower it’s cost and to prevent needless fights a protection agency will keep records on file but to cover its bases it also asks for an independent agency to certify the land ownership, an agency that has a vested interest in it’s reputation since it wants the courts to trust it (because the courts want to be taken as legitimate too). Right now the state takes care of the land registration but it could potentially be taken up by private firms paid in fees on the market by the protection agencies. This is how most consumer protection agencies operate and the more successfull ones get more business by firms because they are viewed as reliable (and capable of being sued) by the consumer. This helps firms sell their products since they bring it before a third party and lower their liability, and it helps consumers by raising the standard of their purchase and protecting themselves from harm. The land certification agency will make more money by being trust worthy and less apt to be sued by being honest about their work.
Call up your insurance and ask them if they’ll cover you.