[plib]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Wrong. Put down your simplistic libertarian tracts.

You obviously haven't been paying a lot of attention. I'm very far from a libertarian. However I'll give you irony points for a good simplistic knee-jerk reaction.

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

In other words lawyers mess about at the edges writing reams of paper on real estate and contract law once the real matter of who owns what is decided. If you noticed on your way to your knee-jerk reaction the phrase I used was " Force absolutely defines what is owned". I didn't say it defines the nature of property, I didn't say it defined the rules of ownership what I said what it defines who owns it. You can come up with all the legal definitions you want but the fact remains that if you can't defend something then you don't own it, or at least you won't own for much longer. If you disagree then I suggest you have a conversation with a Plains Indian, or any Indian for that matter - Sioux, Commanche, Navajo, Creek, I think you'd find they all have a similar view.

Robber barons didn't work within rules. That was kind of the point. They took what they wanted. Hence the name.
The legislature, typically subject to strict constitutional limits, define property law.

And that was kinda my point, the legislature can only define property law, and make it stick, if the robber barons go along with it, or there is enough force exerted on them by the rest of society to make them go along with it. Legislation on property law isn't worth a fart in the wind if they can't enforce it.

Again, *force* isn't defining what property is. The law is defining that.

Again, if you read what I said, I never said it did. I said it defines who owns it.

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.

And do you think the people who were evicted would have gone if they could have outgunned the police, and subsequently the FBI or Army? What, precisely, would have made them move out if they didn't want to? Absent the threat of force who would leave? And if they didn't leave the the bank's bit of paper defining the "tenets of the contract" is just a worthless piece of paper.

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.

TL;DR: If you don't believe force ultimately determines who owns what, society with "rule of law" or not, then go resettle Plains Indians on the great plains, or Palestinians in Israel, or white farmers on Zimbabwean farms (admittedly that's pushing the "rule of law" bit, but in a way proves the point even better). Even a country that purports to operate by "the rule of law" can only do so because the ultimate sanction of the law is the application of force. At which point lawyers are irrelevant.