gnarlylove
Senior Member
Except as I've already pointed out, the natives did have a claim to the land. They were the original owners of the land because they homesteaded the land themselves. That a government came along and exterminated them is not evidence of property rights, but rather evidence that property rights have been violated. You want to vilify private property for the crimes of imperialist and expansionist governments, but I'm afraid that's not going to fly.
Ownership of property gives the owner every incentive to preserve that property so that it can be as productive as possible for as long as possible.
Why think those who homestead land own it? Again, pragmatism asks if you will be so kind to produce one practical difference between owning a thing and not. Just because I repeatedly use a tooth brush and call it mine, a personal item of familiarity, gives me no right to own it and therefore dispose of it how I see fit. Surely if I had no involvement in its design or inception I must therefore not have any claim of ownership. The object owned by another that did not make or participate in its crafting is a strange concept indeed but is the foundation of wage labor surplus leading to profit.
Homesteading offers no reason to think we own something and we must keep in mind what "to own" means. It means you have entire rights to dispose of the thing owned as your heart desires. Homesteading sounds quite the opposite: it involves cultivating it and treating it with responsibility and care because not only does how you dispose of it affect you (as property makes you think) but also benefits or harms every other creature on the planet if used responsibly. Property and ownership frees you up from responsibility. The police and army are not granted access to those property owners. They cannot enforce certain common-sense laws on private land, many others are exempt with permits like coal companies in WV, dumping tens of thousands of gallons of waste on "their property." Property allows you to do what you want in order to achieve short-term ends, neglecting long term costs. It is property and no other concept that creates this absurd condition we see in operation, neglecting the future.
Your mythologizing of property is disgusting. It has a distinct history and those who owned property saw unprecedented opportunity to grab more property as did everyone who came to America. We know who came out on top, the Rockerfellers etc. That's because property owners forged an alliance with the government, as they always do in every single case and would do all over again and you'd have to be blind not see this relationship (see All the President's Bankers). They do this because they understand what it means to have property (you clearly don't have a modern clue what property is except for some myth). You cannot extricate out your fancy theory on property that property owners do not respect or abide by. Your idea of property is not property as such, but some sterilized possessive-ness that says homesteading is a key source of property. Sounds completely ad hoc for you to claim that. Property simply does not inhere that way...it operates according to prices, not homesteading..and for you to wish for the success of capitalism you should have known this.
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