Can the discoverers of a giant piece of land lay claim to all of it?
For example, if Native Americans didn’t originally inhabit North America and the continent was discovered by Europeans in a private expedition, could those people lay claim to the entire continent?
Or another example, if a multi-billionaire launched an expedition to another planet, landed on the planet, and defended it with missiles and other weaponry, would his claim of ownership over the entire planet be valid even if he was only using about 1% of the total land?
No, no and no, if we are talking about the validity of the claims. This is called the Columbus fallacy. The discoverer of the land has to use it before others in order for it to be his property. For the third scenario, the billionare would be commiting an act of agression if he tried to prevent other people from landing on the planet (unless they are trying to trespass onto his 1%). Rothbard goes into this scenario in the Ethics of Liberty.
Even after he was cunning enough to spread his agents all over the planet to place one rock on top of another every, say, square mile? Or would he need two stacked rocks marking every acre, or every square yard?
There is no standard. We can make educated guesses as to what people will decide in a free market for such standards (free market in law), but of course we cannot know.
These are great questions. In my view, if a free market for defense was allowed, then ownership would be determined based on the willingness of someone to defend something or the willingness of someone to pay for defense of something, or etc.. In both examples, in a true free market, whoever was willing to defend the property more would be the owners. One only would become an owner of something by competitive means.
My intuition is that over time stability would occur as multiple defense agencies would cooperate and coercion would diminish. Nobody ever said that the free market will always be fair, but one thing we know in the Austrian School is that if you allow markets to be free, then you will have more fairness and stability in the long run than otherwise. Coercion will always be the foundation and standard of a system of homesteading and property rights as it is currently conceived. In a true free market, no one is entitled to anything based on any established rule, everything involving ownership is vulnerable and a complex system will be demanded by individuals to manage such vulnerabilities. Whether or not we employ competition or we employ coercion to solve these problems and vulnerabilities is an important question.
that article doesn’t make sense. the person got there in the first place by walking to the location. that path/road into the location is of the first use/original appropiation. And before any whacky theories like earth surrounded by alien homesteading come up, i assume earthlings already have been in space to a certain distance and with some satellites (Voyegeur) out of the solar system have already made in-roads. so it’s safe for now
“Both in formulating and in applying them we should nevertheless be aware that in the rough-and-tumble of life the voice of reason has many competitors — and that some people know how to take advantage of that fact for the purpose of manipulating and provoking others to fire the first shot. In other words, we should not adopt the stance of other-worldly, sanctimonious saints ignoring the pervasive causal, physical, and psychological aspects of the human condition.”
Amen to recognizing only a part of the problem. Not so much for the hole-ridden “solution” (“quasi-ownership”?). And this is even before coming back (from Quasi-Earth) to real Earth where property rights (homesteading, etc.) are far from universally agreed upon, much less “proven”.