[From my Webnote series]
Other:
- Libertarian Answer Man: What if all the land is already homesteaded?
- “prior-later distinction” search at StephanKinsella.com
Libertarian Answer Man: Co-ownership and Ownership and Punishment of Criminals:
LFFS, ch. 4, n.6, citing “Defending Argumentation Ethics” (LFFS, ch. 7), especially the section “Objective Links: First Use, Verbal Claims, and the Prior-Later Distinction,” and the references in “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, Inalienability” (LFFS, ch. 9) to various writings by Hans-Hermann Hoppe on this issue; also Stephan Kinsella, “The Essence of Libertarianism? ‘Finders Keepers,’ ‘Better Title,’ and Other Possibilities,” StephanKinsella.com (Aug. 31, 2005); idem, “Thoughts on Intellectual Property, Scarcity, Labor-Ownership, Metaphors, and Lockean Homesteading,” Mises Economic Blog (May 26, 2006); “Selling Does Not Imply Ownership, and Vice-Versa: A Dissection” (ch. 11); idem, “KOL259 | ‘How To Think About Property,’ New Hampshire Liberty Forum 2019,” Kinsella on Liberty Podcast (Feb. 9, 2019).
KOL468 | Is Group Ownership and Co-ownership Communism?:
From Stephan Kinsella, “How We Come To Own Ourselves,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) [LFFS]:
In the text above, I noted that “first use” is not the ultimate test for the “objective link” in the case of body ownership, but that rather it is a person’s direct and immediate control over his body. See also, on this, Rothbard, who argues in favor of self-ownership because the only logical alternatives are “(1) the ‘communist’ one of Universal and Equal Other-ownership, or (2) Partial Ownership of One Group by Another—a system of rule by one class over another.”[26] However, Alternative (2) cannot be universal, as it is partial and arbitrary; and Alternative (1) either breaks down in practice and reduces to Alternative (2), or, if actually implemented, would result in the death of the human race. As Rothbard writes:
Can we picture a world in which no man is free to take any action whatsoever without prior approval by everyone else in society? Clearly no man would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish. But if a world of zero or near-zero self-ownership spells death for the human race, then any steps in that direction also contravene the law of what is best for man and his life on earth.[27]
Hoppe also writes on this:
If a person A were not the owner of his own body and the places and goods originally appropriated and/or produced with this body as well as of the goods voluntarily (contractually) acquired from another previous owner, then only two alternatives exist. Either another person B must be recognized as the owner of A’s body as well as the places and goods appropriated, produced or acquired by A, or else all persons, A and B, must be considered equal co-owners of all bodies, places and goods.
In the first case, A would be reduced to the rank of B’s slave and object of exploitation.… such a ruling must be discarded as a human ethic equally applicable to everyone qua human being (rational animal). From the very outset, any such ruling can be recognized as not universally acceptable and thus cannot claim to represent law. For a rule to aspire to the rank of a law—a just rule—it is necessary that such a rule apply equally and universally to everyone.
Alternatively, in the second case of universal and equal co-ownership, the requirement of equal law for everyone is fulfilled. However, this alternative suffers from another even more severe deficiency, for if it were applied, all of mankind would instantly perish. (And since every human ethic must permit the survival of mankind, this alternative must be rejected.)
… This insight into the praxeological impossibility of “universal communism,” as Rothbard referred to this proposal, brings us immediately to an alternative way of demonstrating the idea of original appropriation and private property as the only correct solution to the problem of social order.[28]
And in another work, Hoppe adds:
What is wrong with this idea of dropping the prior-later distinction as morally irrelevant? First, if the late-comers, i.e., those who did not in fact do something with some scarce goods, had indeed as much of a right to them as the first-comers, i.e., those who did do something with the scarce goods, then literally no one would be allowed to do anything with anything, as one would have to have all of the late-comers’ consent prior to doing whatever one wanted to do. Indeed, as posterity would include one’s children’s children—people, that is, who come so late that one could never possibly ask them—advocating a legal system that does not make use of the prior-later distinction as part of its underlying property theory is simply absurd in that it implies advocating death but must presuppose life to advocate anything. Neither we, our forefathers, nor our progeny could, do, or will survive and say or argue anything if one were to follow this rule. In order for any person—past, present, or future—to argue anything it must be possible to survive now. Nobody can wait and suspend acting until everyone of an indeterminate class of late-comers happens to appear and agree to what one wants to do. Rather, insofar as a person finds himself alone, he must be able to act, to use, produce, consume goods straightaway, prior to any agreement with people who are simply not around yet (and perhaps never will be).[29]
