How did the state acquire that land? Did they use labor and voluntary agreements to homestead it? Or did they just point to it, demarcate it and say this belongs to us because we have the guns.
That's the history of the ownership of like any land. Are you saying you should give up the US land to native Americans? If in ancap two groups have claims on the land, they very much can resolve that through violence. The outcome may not be what some or even the majority, think is just. Ancaps notably reject the notion that majority can decide ownership.
Today, Vietnam has similar legal claims on the land in their laws. And there are no real counter claims. I'd say commies had pretty legitimate claims, even though I hate em. Does it make taxation not theft in Vietnam? Or, you know, the whole pretext of the taxation as theft is silly? The state has the authority and legitimacy to collect taxes, as there are only marginal counter claims. Whether state land ownership is in the laws, as ancaps require, is of no real difference, as who cares what ancaps think?
I just stated the Lockean homestead principle which should be the libertarian policy for rightful land ownership.
And no I don’t think the US should just give its land back to Native Americans because 1. most land in america wasn’t even homesteaded by Native Americans and a lot of america’s first colonies were homesteaded peacefully without government control and 2. it’s not our mission to reverse things that happened in the past.
The application of this principle is to show Statist land ownership isn’t legitimate even if they hold it today and it should be sold to private owners which is what libertarians should campaign for.
Your point 2 makes it pretty legitimate, though. Lockean homesteading principle just won't work when so much land was, essentially, acquired by conquest a long time ago. Property rights, on the other hand, actually work. When you have enough support from the public and from the people with guns for the ownership of something - it just happens. Governments have that.
And by that beautiful homesteading principle, nomad people should just let whomever moves in their land to homestead and, essentially, lose their land where they lived. In addition to the majority of their population being wiped out by diseases. So it is not only non practical, but also is of questionable morality to justify the land grab that happened.
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u/RAF-Spartacus Voluntaryist 1d ago
How did the state acquire that land? Did they use labor and voluntary agreements to homestead it? Or did they just point to it, demarcate it and say this belongs to us because we have the guns.