Actually, it seems silly to try to reduce the concept of abandonment to only the intention of the current owner, which effectively sides with whover currently has the title by defacto. If the qualitative state of the property has degenerated to the point where there is no substantive relation to whoever currently has a title, intent simply has nothing to with abandonment. Abandonment can occur over time regardless of the valuation of an owner.
How are substantive relations determined?
@ Brainpolice
In that case, lets go to the attics and basements and retrieve all those ‘abandoned’ items!
Just because that lady is not a good entrepreneur doesnt mean that we can just take away her property
It is no longer her property if it can be taken away, it is her error.
Once again, for the most part, we are naturally social beings who benefit most by co-operating. A society that best fosters an entrepreneurial spirit will be the one that prospers and benefits the most (at least in a liberal sense). And once again, our reach exceeds our grasp when we wish to come up with universalist claims to ownership/abandonment in legal theory. There is good reason to be for decentralization, it is because we can’t establish universalist principles, we simply can not speak or calculate for things of this nature. It is part of what makes life diverse, and why it would be odd for a libertarian to be anti-state but yet somehow pro-uniform law.
Hopefully, these things become “self evident” if it can become recognized and become good habits within socities.
All humans are imperfect, this doesn’t mean that her error results in loss of property… she is the clear owner of it
It’s quite possible that some form of state intervention/regulation is functioning to dissuade the owner from using it in some way.
But in any case, I really don’t think six months is an unreasonably long time to leave a second home unoccupied. The property market in most of the world is pretty depressed at the moment. The issue of whether it was decaying is being used as an ex post facto justification for home invasion that was never addressed before her home was unlawfully taken away. We don’t know what the bylaws are regarding neglect in that area, nor whether they’re just.
Sure, it would be nice if she could come to rent agreement with this guy, but it’s not like you’re compelled to rent your property if you don’t want to. Maybe she’s had bad experiences with tenants. Maybe the unjust state laws regarding rent in England and Wales make it unattractive. Maybe he’s not willing to pay a fair price.
From a Lockean or occupancy and use perspective, it seems to me that it was abandoned thus it’s fair game for homesteading.
I haven’t read anything showing where the woman stopped paying residential taxes. Given that, saying she abandoned the property would be absurd.
An interesting case. I think there’s no question about Block’s, let’s call it, intentional abandonment, that is announced and everything. But the real question to me is - can there be ‘unintentional’ abandonment, when the owner simply doesn’t exercise or confirm his property rights in any way? So if a family is completely absent from their property (that would include anyone hired by them, etc.) for a century, is it still in any meaningful way their property, or can it be considered abandoned? What if the owner dies and does not have any known heirs; or the heirs do not own up to the property?
The example with the sweater in the closet which is ‘put on the side’ may not be the best here - the sweater is still in its owner’s closet, after all. What if the owner ‘puts on the side’ the sweater, the closet and the house with it, never looking back? After what time can it be considered abandoned? That seems to me like a question of law or custom, but it also seems like a valid abandonment scenario. Then we could judge this specific case much more easily.
I think whether or not the property could still be considered owned by her is definitely an issue of customary law (or would be, in an anarchic society). I don’t know how they handle this in Englard currently, but the fact that she still pays taxes on it is a good indicator that she should continue being the owner. There’s not much good in speculating on whether or not this particular case would fall within the bounds of a hypothetical customary law, but we can definitely say that neither the current owner’s nor the squater’s particular valuation of the property is a viable method for determining abandonment or ownership.
If she is paying taxes and wants the guy gone it leads me to believe she hasn’t abandoned it. I find it hard to believe any libertarian leaning person could argue she had.