AOL News is reporting that Daryl Hannah and others were arrested trying to stop a landowner from developing his Los Angeles property. Squatters have been using Ralph Horowitz’s 14 acres to grow crops while he “was paying $25,000 to $30,000 a month in mortgage and other land costs.” None of the protestors, including Hannah, Willie Nelson, or Danny Glover, were willing to demonstrate their preference that this land remain undeveloped. Oh, they demonstrated, but they never opened their wallets to show their true preference rank.
AP quotes Hannah as stating, “I’m very confident this is the morally right thing to do, to take a principled stand in solidarity with the farmers.” Just try this on her property and see if she still considers squatting a moral right.
Read Police Arrest Tree-Sitting Daryl Hannah for the whole story.
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Treating state “owned” property as being actually “unowned” morally *is* the orthodox Rothbardian position as I understand it.
First, “the Rothbardian position” is irrelevant. We’re not Randians. A position has no force just because Rothbard proposed it. However, in this case, as usual, Rothbard is right; but you are wrong! Your suggestion that the moment the state steals something it immediately becomes unowned and ripe for homesteading is not at all what Rothbard talked about. What he actually said is that the original owner (that’s Horowitz et al., in this case!) should get his property back, but that for most “state owned” property the original owner is not obviously identifiable, and that in that case it’s homesteadable.
– The Ethics of Liberty, ch. 24
“However, in this case, as usual, Rothbard is right; but you are wrong!”
Thank you! That’s very interesting. I’m more familiar with earlier works that didn’t feature that qualifier so explicitly. I gladly admit my mistake.
However…
That still leaves RadGeek’s objections, perhaps most notably that Horowitz is not the original owner of the *entirety* of the property in question.
Regarding that particular point, wouldn’t that seem objectionable to you? Why or why not?
What are the requirements for considering land abandoned? The Nature Conservancy buys land and leaves it unused and unimproved so that it returns to its natural state. Does that give someone the right to squat on it after 21 years?
No. But if the squatter uses the land for 20 years and the owner hasn’t showed up to kick him off in all that time, that’s a good indication that the owner doesn’t care (i.e., has abandoned) that land. The squatter has to be there for 20 years, not just show up 20 years later. If the Nature Conservancy lets people live on its land for 20 years, without paying rent or in any other way acknowledging the NC’s ownership, yes.
Indeed, Horowitz and the others should get their property back. Horowitz only legitimately owns a share of the property (partial ownership of the entire property, not full ownership of a part of the property, to answer a question above). However, that only means that the other owners can legitimately claim their shares back from Horowitz after this sale, if they don’t claim from the government today: it doesn’t have anything to do with the “sale” to Horowitz, or with the farmers, etc.
Regarding the above question about reclaiming land illegitimately sold to WalMart: yes, the original owners should be able to claim back the land; no, they can’t just blow up WalMart’s property on that land. They’ll have to negotiate with WalMart to decide whether WalMart moves their buildings, pays rent, or whatever they can agree to. The buildings, etc., still belong to WalMart. It makes for an awkward situation, no doubt, but it can still be resolved without violence and/or destruction of anyone’s property.
“As it happens, there are a number of people who lived or had businesses on land that was seized by their city government and then turned over to Wal-Mart, who then set up stores and parking lots on it. Are you claiming that the homeowners or business owners victimized by the land seizure have a right to come in 15 years after abandoning the land to the city government, forcibly seize control of the plot on which the Wal-Mart sits, blow up the store and tear up the parking lot, and then take over control of the plot, after more than a decade of continuous operation? I”
I say yes, absolutely. Wal-Mart knew the entire 15 years they were using stolen property. They deserve to lose it, and it morally still belongs to the original owner.
@Peter
“The squatter has to be there for 20 years…”
In terms of legality, that may be the case. I’ll take your word, for sake of argument, as to the letter of the law.
In terms of morality, though, what is non-arbitrary about the number 20, as opposed to 10 or 13?
Another important question:
Was the land really “owned”, in a moral sense, by the investor groups if it had never been put to any use in the first place?
If the farmers were the first to ever really do anything with that land, then they would surely be the rightful owners in a moral sense — that is, if it had never actually been homesteaded at all in the first place by Horowitz and associates, regardless of what machinations have occurred with regard to the official title to the plot.
Does anyone know the development status of the land prior to the eminent domain seizure in 1985?
Based on you moral law, can anyone invest in land for its future value? Can someone buy and morally own land with oil or coal reserves though the intent is to wait five or ten years before extracting the minerals? As I understand your discussions, no one could claim such land as their own since they have not worked it. Rothbard does not require land to be worked, else anyone with wooded acres would be subject to squatting claims.
@Jim
The principle is that to credibly assert initial ownership of a given parcel of unowned land, that land has to be transformed in some way and that this is where legitimate ownership originally arises from (homesteading as an extension of self-ownership).
I’ll certainly concede that there are plenty of grey areas as to the application of that principle. I’m just asking about the development history (and title history) of the land in question at this point.
@Jim
To clarify:
“…can anyone invest in land for its future value?”
Certainly, provided the investment was purchase from someone who had legit title in the first place. Hence my line of questioning re: development history and title history.
Peter,
I’m not sure I understand your claim about Wal-Mart’s use of seized land. If, after negotiations, Wal-Mart refuses to clear off the land, do the homeowners (or whoever) then have a right to evict them by force, knock down the building, etc.? I.e., are you suggesting negotiations merely as a means to avoid disproportionate violence, or are you suggesting that Wal-Mart has some deeper claim not to simply be forced off the land at the pleasure of the people it was seized from?
Paul,
Do you think that occupancy and transformation of the land has no impact on the former possessor’s rights to recover it? What if (unlike Wal-Mart, in most cases) the person occupying and using the land is someone who simply came to it long after it had been taken, rather than having colluded with the city government in the process of getting it stolen?
Also, do you think that there is any amount of time that could pass or anything that either the current possessor or the former possessor could do, that would count against the former possessor’s right to recover the specific property that she lost (rather than just recovering compensation from the aggressors for the lost property)? E.g. could the homeowners forcibly recover the land 20, 30, 40 years later? From anybody who happened to be on it, if Wal-Mart later closed down and “sold” to someone else? Etc.?
I don’t think your position is crazy, but I’m inclined to doubt that it’s true, and I’m interested to know what limits, if any, there are on it.
Vince,
Here’s something that puzzles me about your position as stated. If Horowitz and the farmers BOTH have a rightful claim to the property, then by what right can Horowitz forcibly exclude them from it (bodily removing them from the land, bulldozing the gardens, etc.)? Horowitz has a right to evict trespassers from his property, but if the farmers have a moral claim to the land then they are not trespassers, and he does not have a right to evict rightful owners from their own property, does he?
In terms of morality, though, what is non-arbitrary about the number 20, as opposed to 10 or 13?
Nothing. That’s just the number that was chosen under the common law. Certain socialist types would set the number at 10 minutes or something. That’s obviously too short. Perhaps 20 years was about the average productive life span at the time it came about, or something.
Was the land really “owned”, in a moral sense, by the investor groups if it had never been put to any use in the first place?
I don’t know whether it was legitimately owned by them, but whether they put it to use is completely irrelevant. If someone first homesteaded it 5000 years ago, and it’s been sitting idle ever since, simply passing title from one person/group to another, it’s still legitimately owned.
If the farmers were the first to ever really do anything with that land, then they would surely be the rightful owners in a moral sense — that is, if it had never actually been homesteaded at all in the first place by Horowitz and associates
If it had never been homesteaded by Horowitz and co., or by whoever sold it to Horowitz and co., or by whoever sold it to whoever sold it to Horowitz and co., or … ad infinitum, then I suppose so.
Based on you moral law, can anyone invest in land for its future value? Can someone buy and morally own land with oil or coal reserves though the intent is to wait five or ten years before extracting the minerals?
Of course, yes. But if it’s never been properly “homesteaded”, then how does that person buy it? Buy from whom? There has to be an existing owner to buy from!
I’m not sure I understand your claim about Wal-Mart’s use of seized land. If, after negotiations, Wal-Mart refuses to clear off the land, do the homeowners (or whoever) then have a right to evict them by force, knock down the building, etc.? I.e., are you suggesting negotiations merely as a means to avoid disproportionate violence, or are you suggesting that Wal-Mart has some deeper claim not to simply be forced off the land at the pleasure of the people it was seized from?
Since WalMart committed no criminal act, they have the right not to suffer property damage, etc. I don’t know how to handle the hypothetical case where no negotiated resolution is possible (both parties would be in the wrong), but it’s not a credible scenario. They’ll work something out, because they block each other entirely from any use of the land/buildings, and that serves neither of their interests.
“Since WalMart committed no criminal act…”
What, if any, degree of collusion with the state qualifies as a criminal act in your opinion and why (or why not)?
“Of course, yes. But if it’s never been properly “homesteaded”, then how does that person buy it? Buy from whom? There has to be an existing owner to buy from!”
That’s my point, sir. If land had never been homesteaded, that would mean that there had never been a legit owner to buy it from. Therefore, legit title had potentially never been established by anyone in the first place.
This would not be an uncommon occurrence, especially in the western US, because the state acquired vast tracts of land and several speculators bought the official titles to these lands from the state.
I am asserting that those titles would not be legitimate if those who acquired such fraudulent titles had never done anything later on to actually make the land their own in terms of homesteading.
This doesn’t even mean building or tilling would have been necessary. Perhaps the original homesteader, who also presumably acquired official title from the state, merely grazed cattle there.
This could impact my opinion of the SCF case. I will elaborate if it’s not clear from what I’ve already said.
What, if any, degree of collusion with the state qualifies as a criminal act in your opinion and why (or why not)?
Actually carrying out criminal acts, only. If simply “collusion with the state” is sufficient to label one a criminal, we’re all criminals if we pay taxes, etc. (I’ve heard that Osama bin Laden claimed that the WTC was a legitimate target because the people there paid taxes and “colluded with the state”. In short: bullshit!). Of course, you can argue that occupying someone else’s land at the state’s behest is overt criminal behaviour, and it is, but unless WalMart’s board are educated libertarians, they won’t see it that way, and you can’t call every non-libertarian a criminal when they just go along with what they’ve been taught is right. Lawyers have a saying: actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea – an act doesn’t make a crime unless the mind is guilty.
I am asserting that those titles would not be legitimate if those who acquired such fraudulent titles had never done anything later on to actually make the land their own in terms of homesteading.
Well, I would agree; I just doubt there’s very much land where that is the case (I could well be wrong, of course)
Peter:
Do you think that Ralph Horowitz is similarly obliged to work out a negotiated resolution with the urban farmers, rather than simply having them bodily removed from the property and bulldozing their gardens?
Rad Geek, good questions:
What if (unlike Wal-Mart, in most cases) the person occupying and using the land is someone who simply came to it long after it had been taken, rather than having colluded with the city government in the process of getting it stolen?
I think then that that person has been defrauded by the government. Whether he makes a deal with the true owner to assume rightful ownership, or gives the property back, the government owes him serious compensation and damages. There are two parties that need to be compensated in this case, the rightful owner and the innocent receiver of stolen goods.
Also, do you think that there is any amount of time that could pass or anything that either the current possessor or the former possessor could do, that would count against the former possessor’s right to recover the specific property that she lost (rather than just recovering compensation from the aggressors for the lost property)? E.g. could the homeowners forcibly recover the land 20, 30, 40 years later? From anybody who happened to be on it, if Wal-Mart later closed down and “sold” to someone else? Etc.?
I can’t think of any specific time limit to set for the true owner to reclaim his property, but it’s a good question. As long as the claim can be demonstrated, why have any time limit? If the current occupier uses the property in good faith (not having colluded in its theft), then I don’t think violent seizure is justified. However, compensation from the thief (the government or Wal-Mart or whoever) can rightfully be taken, by force if necessary. In a free society, there’d be courts willing to hear such a case (but then, there’d be no state to steal your stuff in the first place).
I don’t think your position is crazy, but I’m inclined to doubt that it’s true, and I’m interested to know what limits, if any, there are on it.
Well, I suppose the main thing is to remember who the initial aggressor was, remember who the rightful owner was and still is, and not to injure an innocent third party.
Do you think that Ralph Horowitz is similarly obliged to work out a negotiated resolution with the urban farmers, rather than simply having them bodily removed from the property and bulldozing their gardens?
He can’t damage their property, but simply kicking them off the land doesn’t necessitate property damage (of course, if they put up a fight, they become criminal aggressors, and then he can use force to expel them). Bulldozing their gardens: well, they can take their plants away; the issue of where they might take them is irrelevant here; the situation is not the same as if they had fairly permanent erections there (to forestall the inevitable response: I mean buildings, not priapism), like a WalMart store. He can’t go knocking down buildings, etc., or he becomes a criminal aggressor, and the farmers can use force against him. [Now, if the farmers read this and hurriedly go put up some shack to forestall Horowitz, then they do so with mens rea, and, ignoring the difficulty of proving it one way or the other, he could knock that down if necessary]
The Horowitz debacle is a bad illustration of property rights, or perhaps a very good one, once the entire story is know.
The property was originally owned by Horowitz, as a farm, when the government of Los Angeles used eminent domain to put a sewage treatment plant there. For some reason they never got around to it. Due to an intricacy of the law Horowitz was able to reclaim the property for the exact same price the government paid him for it – because they didn’t use it for the purpose of the eminent domain. This was a bad deal for the government as property values had risen significantly.
When he reclaimed his property, he discovered squatters on it that had moved in while the government owned the land. He discovered this when he planned to use his property for a purpose other than the farm it was when he owned it the first time. He went through all the legal proceedings to get them evicted, with active opposition from the very same government that stole the land from him in the first place. This includes a beauty assessment of his plans – he was going to replace a farm with a warehouse, and that isn’t as pretty as the farm (or the sewage treatment plant the county intended apparently).
Eventually he won back not only his property but the use of his property.
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