I’m quite convinced in the homesteading principle as it applies to being against the ownership of arbitrary land without mixing labor with it, but I still have a few questions in the back of my mind, some regarding its ethicality and others regarding debates without other people.
One of the arguments against land ownership is that, one day, land may be occupied to the point when no other human beings will have any room to live. The reason behind this thinking is that land cannot be created (whereas if food were to run out there’s still the capability to produce new food). Therefore one day all people will be born into this ‘farm world’ in which they’ll have no free movement without infringing on other people’s property rights. Are there other ways of differentiating scarce land from other scarce resources aside from an inability to create new land?
Let’s say I own two homes. One is here in the United States and the other is in Switzerland. The house in the United States is in the southwest, so I enjoy living here for the most part. However, sometimes it gets too hot, so I enjoying living in my Switzerland house for 2 months out of the year. For the other 10 months (~83%) of the year, the Switzerland house is unoccupied. This kind of gets into the debate of “squatters’ rights” and everything, but what are your opinions on the legality/ethicality of random people sleeping in my Switzerland house during those 10 months if I don’t want them in it. Also, who is to differentiate between 10 months and 10 minutes? Should random people be allowed to enter my house in the United States while I drive down to the grocery store? In an anarcho-capitalistic society, how would I go about prohibiting people from entering the houses? Would I have to put a ‘no trespassing’ sign on the door, get a better security/lock system, etc.?
I can’t think of the other questions at the moment, but hopefully we can discuss these few I have. I’d also appreciate article recommendations on the subject. Thanks!
Who says you cannot create new areas to live in? There can always be expansion into the oceans (on the surface or underneath the water), and expansion into the air (floating cities, etc.).
There will always be the possibility of creating more living space, moving into unowned land, or natural limits on population size (if every square inch was taken up by humans standing, it would be impossible to even grow food).
It would also be highly unlikely that you would be denied access to every piece of land.
This is all dependant on the question of “What is abandonment?” Here is a Kinsella article I quickly found on the topic (I know he has written TONS on the subject):
Not only land, nothing can be created (speaking about physical matter), only rearranged so to speak. But yeah, it is possible to make more “living space” on oceans or cosmos.
One of the arguments against land ownership is that, one day, land may be occupied to the point when no other human beings will have any room to live. The reason behind this thinking is that land cannot be created (whereas if food were to run out there’s still the capability to produce new food). Therefore one day all people will be born into this ‘farm world’ in which they’ll have no free movement without infringing on other people’s property rights. Are there other ways of differentiating scarce land from other scarce resources aside from an inability to create new land?
An often quoted statistic is that the world population could live within the state of Texas each given a small home. Whether this is still the case or not is an irrelevant talking point. The real point is that we have only just begun to populate the 23% of land mass. And as another poster pointed out, there is no reason to believe that we can’t eventually build cities above water or colonize the moon or simply build upwards. The point may be that eventually we will run out of land, because land is finite. But many things are finite. The hydrogen of the sun is finite, but its supply is not worth worrying about.
Let’s say I own two homes. One is here in the United States and the other is in Switzerland. The house in the United States is in the southwest, so I enjoy living here for the most part. However, sometimes it gets too hot, so I enjoying living in my Switzerland house for 2 months out of the year. For the other 10 months (~83%) of the year, the Switzerland house is unoccupied. This kind of gets into the debate of “squatters’ rights” and everything, but what are your opinions on the legality/ethicality of random people sleeping in my Switzerland house during those 10 months if I don’t want them in it. Also, who is to differentiate between 10 months and 10 minutes? Should random people be allowed to enter my house in the United States while I drive down to the grocery store? In an anarcho-capitalistic society, how would I go about prohibiting people from entering the houses? Would I have to put a ‘no trespassing’ sign on the door, get a better security/lock system, etc.?
I understand how the argument for underutilization can be made for a vacation home, but the collectivists never consider the alternative of no utilization. If I must forfeit my vacation home 83% of the year to squatters, then I may simply not build a vacation home.