Not quite. Its an objective fact that Cola’s mom’s property must end somewhere. So we need a system to determine where.
That includes labor and counts as a use.
The first person there. Thats why its homesteading.
It always does. Today the state has the most guns, some day perhaps honest men will have the most. Then an honest system of ownership would be enforced.
Rothbard gives what I find to be an acceptable solution that prevents idle land, atleast in the case of vacant land.
One problem, however, that sometimes arises in the validity of land titles is the question of “adverse possession.” Let us suppose that a man, Green, comes upon a section of land not obviously owned by someone—there is no fence perhaps, and no one on the premises. Green assumes that the land is unowned; he proceeds to work the land, uses it for a length of time, and then the original owner of the land appears on the scene and orders Green’s eviction. Who is right? The common law of adverse possession arbitrarily sets a time span of twenty years, after which the intruder, despite his aggression against the property of another, retains absolute ownership of the land. But our libertarian theory holds that land needs only to be transformed once by man to pass into private ownership. Therefore, if Green comes upon land that in any way bears the mark of a former human use, it is his responsibility to assume that the land is owned by someone. Any intrusion upon his land, without further inquiry, must be done at the risk of the newcomer being an aggressor. It is of course possible that the previously owned land has been abandoned; but the newcomer must not assume blithely that land which has obviously been transformed by man is no longer owned by anyone. He must take steps to find out if his new title to the land is clear, as we have seen is in fact done in the title-search business.[4] On the other hand, if Green comes upon land that has obviously never been transformed by anyone, he can move onto it at once and with impunity, for in the libertarian society no one can have a valid title to land that has never been transformed.
So basically it appears we’re in agreement on the fundamentals but weren’t both talking about the same piece of land, namely ChaseCola’s mom’s property.
I thought you were defending the non-creator unable to claim ownership over the earth policy that JCFolsom likes to use to defend the idea that land is unownable.
I’m not entirely decided on the idea of abandonment. But since a homestead stems from the use of the nature, the durability of the homestead should be linked to the durability of that use.
If the improvements I have made to the land are destroyed by the passing of time I have lost my homestead, even if I never admit to having abandoned the land my actions have contradicted me. If I wish to keep others from the land I must rehomestead it.
That could mean anything from harvesting a bunch of trees and then letting them grow back to letting a fishery recover after some catastrophe to a flood washing away all your improvements.
You keep introducing arbitrary distinctions into the domain of absolute property rights.
How does one improve the ocean which Rothbard also claims is able to be homesteaded aside from his saying that aquaculture is held back and overfishing occurs because of its unowned ‘commons’ state?
I’d hardly call them arbitrary.
Again you are using an invalid argument, that fact that these particulars do not count as abandonment does not prove that abandonment can never happen.
I didnt claim you have to improve nature(I’m not Locke), I said you had to use it. I did use the radio spectrum example. My point was that homesteads that leave no lasting trace would be the least durable, while those that involved the most significant transformation would be the most durable.
Your “absolute property rights” runs the risk of turning into ownership by decree, where land is unhomesteadable without regard to its present state of homestead.
I think the market would prevent that from becoming much of a problem, but the legality of ownership should still be developed into a consistent theory.
OK, let’s put it this way. Let’s pretend you build a house for your future retirement, and register it with a title company or PDA or some such. However, this is a private entity; no one else is obligated to accept anything just because they have it written down. You leave no furniture, nor any sign it is inhabited. You come back once every six months to fix it up. One time, you return to find a family in the house you built. They waited for their title company’s 90-day period to make sure it was well and truly abandoned, then registered their new title. They even gave it a new paint job and some bamboo floors.
You come, showing them your title. They say it’s an expired title, they have their own title, and current possession, which, as they say, is nine tenths of the law. Your title company is unwilling to face off with theirs, and, again, they have possession. You demand arbitration. They refuse, because they have possession, and they don’t need to. Who wins?
Of course, who wins does not determine who’s right. However, I think that possession being nine tenths of the law is a good policy. The other tenth should only apply when it can be clearly shown when the original possessor was deprived of their possessions via clear force or fraud, which claiming apparently abandoned property should not be regarded as.
Indeed, I think that possession, though extended a bit beyond the simplistic, holding it at the time sense, is more sensible and philosophically justifiable than the homesteading/property idea.
How would people define use? I walk through the land, is that ‘use’ enough. When I walk through it I do not walk on each blade of grass, can the untouched blades of grass be homesteaded? What if I buy land from a ‘user’ and do not plan to build for a year, can someone else homestead it? It all seems very arbitrary.
You are talking two seperate issues.
This is an issue of homesteading. If you use a path no one can use this land in a way that hinders your ability to use that path.
This is an issue of abandonment. I don’t think that fits the criteria for abandonment that I previously gave.
So it’s safe to say we’re all in agreement on the problems of adding arbitrary requirements to absolute land ownership then?
With ‘apparently abandoned’ being a purely subjective view on the situation.
Except you can’t come up with an universally valid theory to support this as the above problem shows.
Just out of curiousity, I have a question, because this thread lacks for examples. Right now I own 2.5 acres with a house and a shop on probably a quarter of it. All 2.5 acres is mowed, but on the south side of the yard there is a strip of land probably 1.5 acres that is just sitting there. With the exception of mowing the lawn I never do anything to it. It’s plenty big enough to build a house (we are thinking about doing that for my wife’s parents as they are getting older) or several if you packed them close together.
Anyway, my question is do you think people should be able to come and build on that land or is mowing the lawn enough “use of the land” to keep others from it?
You need to be very careful when you make claims like this:
That is untrue. You’re conflating “applicable under any circumstances” with absolute. Something may be absolute, but not applicable under all circumstances (moral agency is absolute for all things that are in fact moral agents, but not for rocks, to give an example; the action axiom is absolute for sentient beings, not for anything that is not capable of purposeful action.) The circumscription of a concept’s applicability does not necessarily entail that it is not absolute. Moreover, the Rothbardian system is not a NR one, not without a proper foundation. The self-ownership approach is very deontic/Kantian in its nature, when taken apart from natural law. Rothbard even alludes to sources of justification for his approach in TEOL, even if he advances a seemingly complete system. NR may exist, for instance, for the specific end of resolving conflict, but to show why conflict should be avoided to begin with, one will need a deeper ethical foundation, and this might imply they are not applicable in every situation.
Moreover, for any who do so, it is problematic to base ownership on usage, or improvements and so on. All the transformation is for is to incorporate a given resource in an agent’s pursuit of their ends, i.e. create an objective link between themselves and the resource. What this will require in particular may differ according to community standards (e.g. Rothbard’s suggestion of the RTU.)
-Jon
Well, mowing the lawn is a clear evidence of present use, alteration, and occupancy. You maintain a lawn. So, it’s yours, in my conception. Now, if there was a track of land within your official property which was overgrown and unused, that would be a different story.
Your demand for absolutes is silly. Sure, there will be gray situations, but most of the time a group of reasonable people can come to a consensus as to whether it was reasonable to consider a property abandoned. For some people here, it appears that, if my ancestor from 10 generations ago bought land, then abandoned it, but retained the title, that I, ten generations later, ought to be able to come back, as the sole heir, and evict the family which had lived there for 5 generations believing in good faith the land was unowned. Or, if you don’t like that, a house I abandoned 50 years ago a family has been living in it for 30. It’s absolute, and absolutely ridiculous, and a cruel, miserly conception of the world.
I say, use it or lose it. Possession is 9/10 of the law.
Whoever has the most guns. This happy anarchist scenario is actually the reality in much of the Third World, which is why they have capital flight and subsistence living standards.
Perhaps, but even in such a brutal scenario, a person who is fortified in a position has a vast advantage over an invader.
Of course, the third world doesn’t actually have anarchy, just no overarching state. It has warlords. Frankly, I’m an anarchist because I cannot justify the power of one man over another, not because I know how, or even if, anarchy would work.
What, like a 90 day grace period as in your previous example?
This is why there would be an extensive title search made before someone just assumed the land was abandoned because the lawn hasn’t been mowed in a while and nobody answered the door when they knocked. I’m sure that the market would settle on a standardized title registration method to cut costs and help to keep situations like this from happening for both customer satisfaction and to prevent having to pay out on the title insurance.
Rothbard himself claimed that title searches in the theoretical libertarian society would be a lot more extensive than what is done today where you just have to make a reasonable effort and after seven years you get title anyway under common law squatters rights.
What you also ignore is that the evicted family received five generations of utility out of the house free and clear, they wouldn’t be liable for any back rents as they acted in good faith in believing that the house was abandoned or that if it were truly abandoned they would get all the benefits of the capital improvements made previous to their occupation at no cost.
You theory could also equally apply to someone who bought in good faith a Picasso that was stolen and years later it is discovered by the true owner but the current possessor claims title over it since they have been ‘using’ it for the last thirty years and it had been passed down from their great-grandfather so is therefore a family heirloom. Let’s not forget it has significantly increased in value over these years as the appraisal that was the cause of the true owner being able to find it shows.
Who would be right in this case?
9/10 of what law?
That must be one of the clauses in the social contract I suppose.
Onerous and ridiculous. You can’t force me to do that. You can’t really force anyone to do anything. You can’t force people to respect your ancient and unused title. Who do you think the neighbors will support, when that family has been living beside them, swapping cookies and the like, and you come along waving some piece of paper that says you own it. Who gives a damn?
Yep. Sounds fair. They’ve at least maintained it since anyway. The previous owner clearly wasn’t using it, someone whose property you claim by accident of your descent.
If the original owner was alive, and it was well-established that it was knowingly stolen by the person who sold it, then I guess I’d lean for the original owner. If the original owner is dead, that is, if only heirs exist, the current possessors.
Don’t compare 3rld world countries with primitive tribes. In most of those countries, government presence in people’s lives is much greater than what you have in developed countries. A rule of thumb to have an idea of how dirt poor a country is is to look at the number of Marxist symbols in their flag. In Brazil (to remind you guys, this discussion is about land speculation in Brazil), government taxes more than it’s grandad Portugal and has been very much involved in running people’s lives, at least since fascism, and is very much responsible for that light-and-dark contrast in wealth.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with it. I dont see why you would even need to mow it in order to own it, as it is a small plot that you live on.
People attempting to include more land than they are actually using in their homestead is a very minor problem compared to people attempting to control property that they have no direct contact with.
A main purpose of having a yard is to keep your neighbors at a comfortable distance, that is use in itself.