[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by plib

Force absolutely defines what is owned.

Wrong. Put down your simplistic libertarian tracts.

Force may ultimately *determine* what is owned. But it doesn't define it.
The property law defines what is owned. The government has an army, but the government can't ignore property law. (In the developed world, anyway.) If the courts tell them that they are done, they are done.

The fact that most societies communally delegate that force to the police and the army doesn't make it any less the use of force.

We aren't talking about the use of force. We are talking about the use of force defining what property it. It doesn't.

It just means the robber barons have to work within different rules from their ancestors who gained/held the land by force in the first place.

Robber barons didn't work within rules. That was kind of the point. They took what they wanted. Hence the name.

Lawyers might like to think they define property, but they're just the peripheral minions who codify rules under which force, if necessary, is applied.

The legislature, typically subject to strict constitutional limits, define property law.

Try evicting some of the foreclosures now taking place in the US without the backup of the police if someone decides to start shooting the bailiffs. Or, more on topic, try imprisoning or fining copyright offenders without a police force to back up a court judgement.

Again, *force* isn't defining what property is. The law is defining that. People being evicted from their houses due to mortgage foreclosures are being evicted in accordance with various tenets of contract and property law; they aren't being evicted because might makes right. Similarly, people who were not evicted due to technical problems with their foreclosures due to bank sloppiness (and there were a lot of them) didn't get to stay in their houses because they outgunned police.

TL;DR: In developed socities with the rule of law, might doesn't make right. Even if might is necessary to carry out the laws.