Determining Property Ownership in Land

When I first encountered libertarian ideas, I started to see that it became a lot easier to remove the fog from many disputes if you looked at the problem from the standpoint of property ownership. I remember clearly when I really started to understand that. It was a few years ago when a controversy came up about someone burning an American flag.

As I searched the internet for information to help me understand and debate the details, I found Murray Rothbard’s, “The Flag Flap.”   After I read that, I clearly remember thinking, wow, that was easy! It wasn’t important to dig into the Constitution and Bill of Rights, all you had to do was ask, well whose flag is it? If they own it then they can do with it what they want.

From then on, I thought clarifying issues was going to be so easy. And it was for awhile, as long as I stayed within the realm of, as George Carlin would say, “our stuff.” But eventually I had to think about property ownership in terms of land and that’s when it became more challenging. No one labors to create land, it’s just there. When I think about it, I always get confused and frustrated and then just quit for awhile. But then it comes back to haunt me.

It came back again after I wrote the column about property taxes being rent we pay to the government. That column led to more communication with Carl Watner, editor of The Voluntaryist, and I wanted to pass along one article from that publication that he shared with me that has to do with land.

 The article written by Carl is in Issue 56 and is titled, “Voluntaryism And Indians: Proprietary Justice and Aboriginal Land Rights.” This article, which focuses on land ownership as a result of European “discovery” of America, is chock-full of interesting information and ideas to think about in terms of land ownership.

This clash of understanding about property ownership is an excellent example to think through if you want to come to terms with property and land. First occupation and use plays a primary part but as Carl writes:

“The main question to settle is whether they (Indians) rightfully owned the land upon which they regularly or sporadically hunted.”

For more discussion on how this is considered from a voluntaryist perspective, I recommend reading the article for yourself.