Quote:
Originally Posted by plib
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.
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.
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, if you read what I said, I never said it did. I said it defines who owns it.
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: 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.
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"Libertarian" because libertarians are always eager to point out that laws are enforced at the point of a gun.
But your whole point is basically that the government enforces its laws? Which may include the use of force? I don't disagree with this of course, but I think it's a fairly trivial point for you to have gone to such lengths to explain.
My point is simply that what "property" is is defined by law - which you seem to agree with?
My larger point, though, is that property in land is not any more "natural" than owning a copyright is "natural." In both cases the nature of the property is defined by law, not by nature. The fact that someone can use force to defend a piece of land he is farming is no different from the fact that he can also use force to defend his intellectual property. It's not the force that defines the property.
Re: Indians - Interestingly, the abstract of title for my house begins: "All of the land in Indiana originally belonged to the Miami Indians;" it then follows the land as it is ceded to the US by some treaty around 1820, sold by the US to someone in 1821; then sold and subdivided until I purchased it.