Letters to the Editor
Dear Sam:
I
don't have anything to say about the article on the first page [Signaling
for a U-Turn, August 2011, page 1], but rereading the article on
property and theft [Losers
Weepers, August 2011, page 2] brought some questions to my mind.
Early in the article, you mention the possibility that someone might simply
claim some unoccupied land, and defend it by force. Is that situation
really the same as theft? I grant that force is involved in both
cases, but assuming that the land had never before been claimed or occupied,
(a big assumption) then is it possible that the initial claimant has a
more valid claim than anyone who takes it from him by force? Also,
if this is taken as true, then it might be possible, although extremely
difficult, to trace back some legitimate ownership of some land.
Another question, perhaps outside of the scope of the article, is:
How does the concept of ownership arise? It seems to me that no one
would think to claim ownership of land, if that idea was not present in
the person's culture. Is it possible that notions of property ownership
are so linked to specific cultures that there can be no valid extrapolation
between cultures?
Could
land be owned by some person or group merely as a result of occupation,
without any conscious knowledge of property ownership?
I'll
try to address your questions and comments in the order in which you presented
them.
Consider
the people who lived on the Great Plains prior to the arrival of white
men on this continent. Those people didn't permanently occupy any
particular piece of land but they used all of it. Their unobstructed
access to the land was necessary for their survival or, at the very least,
for the continuation of their culture. When white men moved onto
the land, then the survival of the people who previously lived there was
threatened, even though they didn't occupy specific pieces of the land.
When those people tried to defend their use of the land, they were deemed
to be hostile and they were killed. I believe that such appropriation
of such unoccupied land is every bit as much an instance of theft as if
the land had already been parceled into lots and covered with strip malls.
Just
because a piece of land appears to be unoccupied, that doesn't mean that
it isn't relevant to somebody's survival, even if the land is only a watershed.
Whether or not any particular bit of land was necessary to somebody's survival
when it was most recently stolen would be difficult to know. I doubt
if anybody who ever moved onto unoccupied land bothered to verify that
it was unused before he stole it.
Regarding
your comments about the concept of ownership, I believe that the idea is
inherent in human nature. Grabbing things is one of the first activities
of small children. You don't have to teach them to steal toys from
one another. You try to teach them not to do so. The notions
of ownership and theft spring unbidden to the human mind, from toddlers
and their pacifiers to emperors and their realms. The ideas are inherent
in us.
Regarding
your question about the conscious knowledge of ownership, I believe that
people are aware of their personal interest in their personal possessions.
In some societies, people might not have much in the way of personal possessions
but I doubt if that excludes the notion from their awareness.
You
used the two terms land and property, in your message, as if they're synonyms.
That might not be accurate. Property is a difficult word to define.
In Black's Law Dictionary (Fifth Edition, 1979), the definition is almost
two pages long and mentions 20 different classifications of property.
More important, however, is certain information that's found in Bouvier's
Law Dictionary, from 1889. Bouvier defined property not as the thing
itself but as the right and interest that a man has in the thing.
That makes the definition more confusing to me, and seems a little silly,
but it is preliminary to the really important part of Bouvier's definition,
quoted next.
| September 2011 | Frontiersman, c/o 4984 Peach Mountain Drive, Gainesville, Georgia 30507 | Page 1 |
