Adam Haman and Matt Sands on Immigration, Property Rights, and Hostile Encirclement

by Stephan Kinsella on July 31, 2025

Delightful discussion with Matt Sands of the “Nations of Sanity” and Adam Haman of Haman Nature, Let’s talk property rights, human liberty, and Nations of Sanity, shall we?; both friends of mine (Adam an in-person close one) whose podcasts I’ve appeared on. ¹ In fact one of them had to do with one of the issues they discussed, hostile encirclement: KOL426 | Discussing Immigration and Homesteading Donuts with Matthew Sands of Nations of Sanity.

Adam and I were chatting about this so I thought I would share my effluence. VERY quick and dirty, no time to do more right now–

Hostile Encirclement and Forestalling

First, regarding hostile encirclement, I’ve discussed it before, including with Sands:

Matt and I discussed this hostile encirclement issue previously. See above links. As I noted I think the law can easily handle this. From previous post on Roderick Long’s site, Easy Rider:

Roderick, imagine a guy who owns an acre of land in Kansas. He’s surrounded by a patchwork of millions of tracts of land owned by other private owners. Say he wants to go to France. The only way to get there is to get permission to cross over the property of thousands of others. What if none of them grant it? Then does he have an easement over any property he selects, even though he doesn’t need it (he only needs a few). If he only has one easement-route, that seems arbitrary.

You can imagine the donut is owned by 100 people. Cross any of their tracts gets him in or out. Which one does he have an easement over?

Or how about this. Imagine a fully-owned planet. I want to fly to Jupiter. I can build a rocket, but I don’t own enough land to place it on. I need a 100 acre tract to use as a takeoff pad. No one will sell me their land. Do I have a “rocketpad” easement on — someone’s? — property? Otherwise, they’re “trapping” me here on earth.

***

BTW, Roderick, you may find of interest some of the following, drawn from a previous comment I made on a libertarian list–

“the problem of enclosing others’ estates is not a new one that is the product of the imagination of libertarian theorists in their armchairs. It is a problem since antiquity and the law has found ways to deal with it. Maybe libertarian, maybe not, but one would think that one would want to be aware of and analyzie these practical solutions which were found by people trying to find a just solution to an apparently conflict of property rights. Why we think we would be any better at it than them, I don’t know, assuming their attempt to solve the problem was not based on any non-libertarian premises or rationales. In short, maybe we can lean something from history? Maybe a study of continental civil codes, or the Roman law, or the common law, might prove fruitful? If a libertarian society were achieved, do we think judges faced with difficult decisions might not read up on what judges 500 years ago did in similar cases?

Now: as an example: see articles 689 etc. of the Louisiana Civil Code (

http://www.legis.state.la.us/lss/lss.asp?folder=222 ) — this contains
codified legal principles roughly based on those developed over centuries in
the Roman law (see arts. 693-94 especially)

Art. 689. Enclosed estate; right of passage.

The owner of an estate that has no access to a public road may claim a right
of passage over neighboring property to the nearest public road. He is
bound to indemnify his neighbor for the damage he may occasion.

Art. 690. Extent of passage.

The right of passage for the benefit of an enclosed estate shall be suitable
for the kind of traffic that is reasonably necessary for the use of that
estate.

Art. 691. Constructions.

The owner of the enclosed estate may construct on the right of way the type
of road or railroad reasonably necessary for the exercise of the servitude.

Art. 692. Location of passage.

The owner of the enclosed estate may not demand the right of passage
anywhere he chooses. The passage generally shall be taken along the
shortest route from the enclosed estate to the public road at the location
least injurious to the intervening lands.

Art. 693. Enclosed estate; voluntary act.

If an estate becomes enclosed as a result of a voluntary act or omission of
its owner, the neighbors are not bound to furnish a passage to him or his
successors.

Art. 694. Enclosed estate; voluntary alienation or partition.

When in the case of partition, or a voluntary alienation of an estate or of
a part thereof, property alienated or partitioned becomes enclosed, passage shall be furnished gratuitously by the owner of the land on which the passage was previously exercised, even if it is not the shortest route to
the public road, and even if the act of alienation or partition does not
mention a servitude of passage.

Art. 695. Relocation of servitude.

The owner of the enclosed estate has no right to the relocation of this
servitude after it is fixed. The owner of the servient estate has the right
to demand relocation of the servitude to a more convenient place at his own
expense, provided that it affords the same facility to the owner of the
enclosed estate.

Back and forth with Adam via email and whatsapp (lightly cleaned up):

Anyway re Sands and the C-shaped lot–when is this really a problem? The law already has a solution for it and it seems to be to be a fair one: if others enclose you, you get an easement to get out. If you do it yourself, you have no one to complain about. See above.

Sands probably doesn’t realize this but his argument is basically a variant of John Locke and his “enough and as good” caveat to homesteading, the Lockean Proviso, which both Hoppe and I reject. See Down With the Lockean Proviso; also Łukasz Dominiak, “The Blockian Proviso and the Rationality of Property Rights.”

Adam Haman: Locke. Yeah. I thought the exact same thing.

From A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre:

Forestalling and the Blockian Proviso

One of Walter’s most interesting arguments involves donuts. Well, not actual donuts, but homesteaded strips of land that encircle an unowned center region—think of it as a bagel or donut-shaped parcel—such that the homesteaded strip prevents people on the outside from reaching the inside, because they would need the donut-strip-shaped owner’s permission to cross, to access the middle part.

Walter argues that libertarian law would not permit people to homestead in a way that blocks others from homesteading unowned resources. He argues that just as nature abhors a vacuum, libertarianism abhors unowned property; that “[t]he whole purpose of homesteading is to bring hitherto unowned virgin territory into private ownership.”[27] One cannot prevent or “forestall” someone from homesteading unowned resources.

Block imagines someone who homesteads a donut-shaped circle of land, who won’t let anyone cross his land to get to the unowned property in the middle of his donut. He argues that libertarian homesteading theory “abhors” land that cannot be claimed nor owned because of the land ownership pattern of a “forestaller”—a person who has encircled the land. In other words, if your property is somehow “necessary” for others to use to get to unowned property, they have a sort of easement over it. I have referred to this as the Blockean (Walter prefers Blockian) proviso, a term which Walter has adopted: the idea that someone may only homestead a resource that is a potential means of access to other unowned resource so long as “enough and as good” access to the unowned resource remains available.[28]

Some Objections

There are various objections one might raise to this entire argument. First, let’s note that in terms of the geometry of the surface of a spherical object, there is no difference in kind between the “inside” and “outside” of a circular strip of land. Imagine the donut is the equator. Then the northern hemisphere is one “hole” of a donut, compared to the southern hemisphere “outside”, and vice-versa. If the donut is smaller than the equator, then the only difference is that the inside is smaller than the outside in terms of area. People living in the donut hole would be unable to homestead property outside the donut.

Or imagine a large island or continent. If someone homesteads a road from the east to the west coast, this is not a donut, but people on the south side would be prevented from homesteading unowned property on the north side, and vice-versa. And yet this situation would be topologically identical to the homesteaded “donut” strip around the equator, separating the two hemispheres. So Walter’s theory is not really about donuts or bagels; it’s about having ownership of a resource that prevents others from crossing it—that is, from using it—to achieve some goal (such as reaching or homesteading unowned land). But the very purpose of property rights is to allow the owner to exclude others from using it.[29] So the entire objection to owning a plot of land due to its shape is a bit odd.

Second, notice that the entire argument is not a rigorous, systematic one, but is based on metaphors and appeals to intuition. From the bromide, “Nature abhors a vacuum,” which is not any kind of moral or normative truth, Walter argues that libertarianism “abhors” unowned property. What libertarianism abhors is aggression, which means use of someone’s owned resource without his consent. Libertarianism has rules about property acquisition; and it allows and recognizes the homesteading of unowned resources, but it does not “abhor” unowned property.[30]

Van Dun’s “Hostile Encirclement”

Libertarian legal theorist Frank van Dun makes an argument opposing “hostile encirclement,” which to my mind is similar to Walter’s forestalling reasoning. I have criticized both of these arguments.[31] So I find it curious that Walter tries to thread the needle by criticizing Van Dun’s thesis, even though, to my mind, his and Van Dun’s arguments are similar (and similarly flawed).[32]

Sands is basically saying that when you homestead the last house you’re not leaving “enough and as good” because before that, other people have a way around it, but when you close in that circle, that last guy hasn’t left enough and as good, so that’s that’s the one that can’t be homesteaded or something.

But I mean this “right to travel” sounds like a positive right to me. “I want to go to Germany, but there’s no way to get there.” I guess there’s a positive welfare right for me to get there. ²

[7/31/25, 7:32:53 AM] Stephan Kinsella: OK, I see now that right after I said that you guys did talk about the and I liked your thing I never thought of before, that people who travel to a place might have homesteaded an easement—similar to the idea of Hoppe I discussed previously. ³ The idea is that you have a previously homestead at the easement just by traveling. But that’s not always the case as you noted because you could have a parachute example. But Sands is coming up with weird examples because it’s like he wants there to be a “right to travel.” But that requires artificial assumptions like if you can’t cross my property to get from a to B then there’s a difference between “inside” and “outside” and there’s not really a difference between inside and outside geometrically. (See Grok conversation on this.)

[7/31/25, 7:33:21 AM] Stephan Kinsella: And it’s just not really a real world problem that ever exists no one’s ever really trapped. I mean this is just not a problem and even if it is a problem, it’s not something that’s a problem for libertarianism anything more than anything else I think that basically this is a sneaky way for him to basically say property rights are not “absolute.” Another sort of strawman that I critique elsewhere. ⁴

[7/31/25, 7:34:47 AM] Stephan Kinsella: Anyway, you’re talking about some economist who argues that it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter where you allocate property rights. I think it’s not Posner but I think it’s Ronald Coase. [Found it: From On the Non Liquet in Libertarian Theory and Armchair Theorizing:

This reminds me of the idea of the law and economics crowd that if not for Coasean transaction costs, it would not matter where costs were initially allocated, such as whether the railroad should be liable to the farmer for fires caused by sparks from the railroad; if they are allocated incorrectly, then the parties will take this into account and move on. However, transaction costs cannot be neglected, so it does matter; justice matters. ⁵

White Pill/Maresca

You mentioned the White Pill. I first I thought you meant Michael Malice, but I see now you meant Mark Maresca. ⁶

Giving Back the Expropriated House?

[7/31/25, 7:37:53 AM] Stephan Kinsella: By the way, notice that Sands gives us an example earlier on that everyone does when they talk about you know getting rid of the state and reimbursing people for state owned property, and he gives this example that if the government steals your house then you have a particular claim to it so they have to reimburse they have to give you your house back. Why does everyone use this example? That’s not how it works; when the government takes your property, they condemn it or have eminent domain, and they pay you for it. They never just “take it.” They always pay you just compensation for the house so you’ve already been paid by the taxpayers so the taxpayers do have the claim claim to the house not the person who it was “stolen” from. ⁷

Riparian Rights

Re your comments on “Riparian” — it’s interesting that Richard Epstein is obsessed with riparian rights under Roman law. See The Beauty Of Roman Law and this playlist, lectures 15 and 16, linked in Epstein on Roman Law.

On Too Many Lawyers

[7/31/25, 8:07:53 AM] Stephan Kinsella: Let me run an idea by you see if you agree with me since we seem to agree on so much so sometimes people I don’t like Jeff Deist or whatever they criticize lawyers and we have too many lawyers. You’ve heard that before so if we had a free society tomorrow we would have few lawyers initially because you know let’s say 2/3 of all the lawyers are doing things or maybe half I don’t know let’s say half the lawyers are doing things that wouldn’t need to be done. There wouldn’t be a lawyers helping people navigate the patent system or the FDA or the SEC and they wouldn’t have to be defense lawyers defending people from tax charges or from drug charges, etc.

OK so you have fewer lawyers because there’s fewer positive laws and fewer malum prohibitum laws. OK, so let’s imagine a free society with X number of lawyers. I think that as society got richer, you would have more lawyers and the reason is because the richer we are the more you can afford to bring a lawyer into a situation like you wouldn’t need to have a lawyer it wouldn’t make sense to pay a lawyer to negotiate a $1000 contract. It’s not cost-effective so people put up with the crude contracts they can do without lawyers. Or if you have a dispute with someone and it’s only a $3000 fee or or dispute it’s not worth it to hire a lawyer so you sort of just settle.

But there’s $1 billion deal you are doing, you can afford to hire the lawyers to paper the deal and to negotiate the deal and to see if there is a contract breach. So I wonder if as we got richer and richer and richer than it would make sense to have lawyers involved in more and more details that we just can’t afford now. So you would resort to lawyers more, in a free society. Just like in a healthy and rich society some people would use a therapist on occasion, but if we’re living at poverty level and working from dusk till dawn and living hand and mouth lives, even the people that need therapy don’t have time to do it.
[7/31/25, 8:10:06 AM] Stephan Kinsella: Curious, what you think about that cause I’m not 100% sure me maybe there would be less lawyers because people would be more peaceful and there will be less disputes but still I think my point is that the richer we are the more lawyers you would tend to have per capita or per per GDP dollar or something.

Adam:

Good question, re lawyers. My intuition is that there would be at least as many lawyers in a free society, and they would (once again) be well-respected because they were doing legitimately valuable things. I suspect you’re right that their number would be somewhat correlated to the overall wealth of the society.

On the other hand, one could imagine custom or norm or tech (AI?) changing such that fewer lawyers were required/demanded. Hard to say. But forced to bet, I’d say we’d end up a bunch of lawyers. Maybe less per capita than now because so many get their JD just so they can wet their beak. Dunno.

On Propaganda and the Prisoner’s Dilemma

[7/31/25, 8:30:36 AM] Stephan Kinsella: By the way, when you ruminate about propaganda and maybe a human nature that we have a state and we we trust these institutions and we reluctant to try a free solution because we compare that to utopia one theory I have which I haven’t heard anyone else talk about is I think the state is good at propaganda?

That’s the one thing is good at destruction and propaganda but why is it good at propaganda and making us believe in the “great fiction”? ⁸

I think it’s because of the I think it’s because of a version of the prisoner dilemma, or something from the Public Choice literature perhaps, … whatever you use to describe that phenomenon where if you have 100 people and there’s one guy with a gun or three guys with guns they can control the crowd with a threat, but if just one guy would rush the guards they could overtake them, but they don’t because you don’t wanna be the guy to die so I think there’s something like that in in a large society with democracy is that everyone gets their piece of the pie by voting and it becomes a war of all against all and and there’s no incentive to watch the state because you special everyone specializes in their own life and people that noticed that they they acquire power by doing things that no one has time to supervise and they they trust these guys to do what a normal person would do, but then the guy gets in power and he abuses it because it’s natural to do so so I think that the state is in a way natural but you could see in involving humanity in the future that gradually slough it off, and it becomes a husk of itself and just a remnant sort of like the monarchy is in England. It just sort of a historical curiosity with no real power. You could imagine that happening and 500 years to the federal government or something.