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Which of the words are you having trouble defining? Which "sweeping moral claims" do you find fault with? Which "unproven assumptions" are you referring to? What goal posts do you perceive as moving? If you don't understand something I said or if you disagree with me then please ask questions or make a logical argument, don't just assert that I am lazy and then make no case to support your own position. Civil discourse is all that I ask of you. The simple claim that I made, which I would love to hear your logical refutation of, is that the Homesteading Principle (as it is currently described on this site, at least) is immoral because it does not provide a rock-solid guarantee that everybody can have access to the world's resources in order to at least be able to feed themselves. It places the right to property higher than the right to life. Now please, refute away.

Let me just say that I am not an anarchist but I have enjoyed reading these forums and I've learned much about the inevitable abuses of state power. I hope to engage in civil(!) discourse about one of the fundamental problems I see with anarchism. First, a little about me. I founded a mid-sized IT company in a Midwestern town, having worked my way up from a very poor childhood. One of my job functions is to learn the way that other businesses work and then help them to develop processes that improve their efficiency. These days business owners and CEO's often come to me for advice not just with their technology but also with their entire business workflow. I tell you this only to establish that I have a very good understanding of free market principles and of how our economy works. I also know what it means to have nothing, to wonder if there will be food on the table or a roof over my head. This brings me to the topic of this particular thread, which is my belief that the homesteading principle (at least as it's been described on this site) is immoral. Any property ownership system which does not guarantee every single person the ability to shape the resources of the world into food and shelter is inherently flawed. Explained another way, survival for each of us depends upon resources from the land and seas. Only once we (collectively) have raw materials in our hands can we shape them into something useful. It's not moral for any one of us to hoard more resources than are necessary for our survival if there are still people who are starving because property ownership has denied them access to the resources of the world. Only once all people (who are willing to work) have eaten is it ethical for anybody to accumulate additional resources (property). Every person in this world should have an equal right to life, don't you agree? Doesn't the right to life supersede the right to property? So how can we ensure that every person has an equal right to shape the world's resources to provide for themselves while still protecting the concept of land ownership? I'd love to hear your insights on this.

From a moral perspective, how does "satisfying the DRO's customers" make any difference to the person who chooses not to be a "customer" of a DRO? If the DRO were to inflict violence upon that non-customer in order to enforce their will, claiming that it has a moral right to do so because their customers gave them permission based upon some "homesteading principle" which not everybody in the world agrees with (myself included), then how is it any different from a State doing the same thing? Oppression by any other name is still oppression.

1. If somebody doesn't subscribe to your idea of a "homesteading principle" then do you (or your DRO) have the right to use physical violence against that person to enforce your belief system? The "homesteading principle" you speak of would have been just as destructive to the nomadic Native American culture that existed here as was, well, homesteading. 2. What "moral rules" were broken by the person in the example I gave? Walking across the grass, digging up food that was unplanted by the hand of man, sexual reproduction between consenting adults, eliminating bodily waste, and sustainable harvesting of a tree - which of those is immoral? They have not destroyed any of the "property" that you have created, so why would you or your DRO have the right to initiate violence against them? 3. If a DRO can use violence against somebody for walking on grass and heeding the call of nature then what makes them a morally superior choice to a State? 4. I think that "Might makes Right" is the rule of Nature, like it or leave it, and that we as a human society are trying to rise above that, and to that end (at least for as long as we are resource-dependent creatures of nature) we need "States" to adjudicate property rights and to resolve differences between Sovereign Equals. If you want to call your flavor of state a DRO then so be it, just don't think that it's anything different or morally superior. 5. Wealth comes from people who use the land and resources - well said. You have to have land in order to use it, and I guarantee that if you (collectively) take all the best pieces of land in this world as your own under some "Homesteading Principle" and tell all the people who are born into this world after you that they must subjugate themselves to the land owners or find a beautiful plot in Antarctica, then you had best be prepared to defend yourself from physical aggression because the people who are left out of that system will feel mightily oppressed. That would be an even worse state of affairs than what we have now with our inheritance system - once somebody owns land in your system they would never be motivated to sell it because to do so would be selling their very independence. 6. What if, when this "great homesteading land grab" occurs, a woman is going through pregnancy and can't physically move to stake a claim for herself or her unborn child . Is she then consigned to a life of servitude, working for somebody else and having to give over a percentage of her wages to some land owner? 7. Sovereign Equality (a term I coined, sorry for the confusion) means that we are all equally free to pursue our own happiness as long as we don’t infringe upon that same right of others. “Sovereign” means that each and every one of us, every man, woman and child, is completely free-willed to make choices that affect ourselves and our immediate environment. Every one of us is master of our own ship, sovereign of our own destiny. This is an immutable fact of existence, not some 'right' granted by States. States might be able to limit the choices available to a person or motivate them to make a certain choice but they can never actually force an individual to make a particular choice. Though it might cost them their lives, people always have options. The term "Equality" in this case is not meant to describe a person's status in life - there will always be rich and poor, healthy and sick, happy and sad. Equality in this case means equal protection by society of each person's right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. This includes equal access to the resources of the world and to the mechanisms of trade. Taken together, the term "Sovereign Equality" is an instruction to future governments on how to govern their citizens. It means that we as sovereign equals, by choosing citizenship, have chosen to grant our government the right to govern us, not the other way around. Government doesn't grant us rights, we grant it rights. We Sovereign Equals should then strictly limit government's role to defending life and liberty and protecting each person’s (not just citizens) right to pursue their own happiness. Each of those purposes are best served by adhering to the principle that all people are equally free to seek their own happiness in whatever manner they choose as long as they don't infringe upon that same right of others. If you think about it, all crimes, whether murder, theft, fraud, vandalism, arson, or any of the others that you can think of, are actually at their core an infringement upon somebody else’s right to live the life of their own choosing, aka an infringement upon their Sovereign Equality. Quite simply, Sovereign Equality is the only rule that people would have to follow for a society to be just. Unfortunately, even in a just society there are differences of opinion between people. Some entity with the ability to enforce decisions, whether you want to call it a State or a DRO, is necessary to arbitrate those differences of opinion and keep people from killing each other. 8. One of the most important roles of the State (or the DRO in your scenario) is to protect our lives, and since we all need food, water, and shelter then it is the State's role to ensure that all people have equal access to the resources of the world in order to provide for themselves. In times gone by, people would hunt for their own food and build their own shelters. Today people do not have that option - all land is owned, all wildlife is managed, and all livestock is spoken for. The only way for most people to feed themselves these days is either to work at a job, beg, or steal food from someone else. For certain people (disabled, elderly, uncharismatic) finding a job through the normal mechanisms can be difficult. Rather than force people into a terrible equation – beggar, thief, or die - society should provide a mechanism for every person to be able to get a job and go to work. Our entire ability to survive as a species is based upon our ability to use our labor and ingenuity to manipulate the resources of the Earth to create food and shelter for ourselves and our families. Since all land is controlled by the States of the world, it is the responsibility of States to ensure that the basic survival needs for all of humanity are provided for out of those land resources before any resources are extracted for profit. If you can imagine that our entire economy is one big pie from which everybody must eat, then you will understand that everybody’s meals must come out before we can have a surplus with which to enrich ourselves. It is people’s individual responsibility, not government’s, to shape those resources into something useful. That is why people must work to support themselves.

I'm new to this forum and I just discovered Stefan Molyneux and the theory of anarchism a couple days ago. After reading several of his ebooks and listening to some podcasts I am left with one important question, which is "How are property rights resolved?" I was going to jump on Skype to ask that question of Stefan but then I found this thread and I figured I'd see if anybody else might already have that answer. It seems to me that Boris is absolutely right. Why should any person, as a sovereign equal, be forced to subscribe to some concept of a "homesteading principle", and how do you propose to force that person to accept the legitimacy of DRO's without the threat of physical force? Regardless of how that person became a functional adult (take yourself or myself, for example, already functional before an anarchistic society were to emerge), let's assume that that person is now fully capable of supporting themselves by drinking rain water, picking berries, fishing streams, chewing on willow bark, and harvesting wood to build a shelter. What would prevent that person from walking across "your" land without your permission, defecating in your rose bushes, having sexual intercourse outside your daughter's bedroom window, and digging up your ground to harvest all the truffles? Of course you will ask them to stop, ask them to leave your property, and they will politely explain that you have no more legitimate claim to the spoils of nature than they do, and because they provided the labor to dig up the truffles they have earned the right to eat them, and by chopping down your favorite oak tree they have provided the labor to create firewood and shelter for themselves, and by planting another acorn they have caused no harm to nature. You explain to the "squatter" that you have bought and paid for the privilege to use that land exclusively, and they will say "Well you made no contract with me so I don't recognize the validity of your claim." You warn them that you will report them to your DRO if they do not comply, they say go ahead, it makes no difference. The DRO sends out representatives to do their best to cajole the squatter into leaving, using every non-violent weapon in its inventory, even offering them cash to move on, and still the squatter refuses to leave because they like the incredible view (and they are really enjoying nettling the DRO). The DRO explains to the squatter that they will be ostracized by society, shunned for going against the will of the people, their name on a permanent list of troublemakers who are not allowed into grocery stores or gas stations, and the squatter replies that they don't really care, everybody except their dog dislikes them anyway, and if they want groceries they'll just make up a new name. The DRO replies that all people will then be required to present an authorized photo ID, registered in a database, to buy groceries and gasoline and enter into contracts, and the squatter asks "What kind of freedom is this anyway, where I have to be numbered and registered like a holocaust victim in order to eat?" As you can see, Without the threat of physical violence the DRO would be completely toothless, barking up a storm but with no real power to force compliance. If a DRO can't effectively defend the property rights of its members then it lacks usefulness except as a simple arbitrator. And if you were to give the DRO the power to enact violence on your behalf in order to enforce your way of thinking then how would that be any better than giving a State that same power? The one thing that everybody here seems to forget is that Mother Nature is the boss of all of us. Property rights are not granted by some "homesteading principle", they are granted by nature's law, which is that Might makes Right. Nearly every war in history has been fought with the goal of land or resource acquisition, with the winners taking all. One of the biggest reasons that States exist is to lay claim to land on behalf of their governing bodies (who happen to be the citizens themselves in a democracy) and to defend that land against those who would seek to claim it as their own. All wealth comes from the bounty of the land in one form or another, whether that land is mined, cultivated, harvested, industrialized, commercialized, or just used as a resting spot by laborers or thinkers. Humans may be able to shape those resources to great effect, but access to the land and its resources is still totally necessary for each and every person in the world to be able to survive. Access to the world's (by extension, the universe's) resources is our birthright as sovereign equals. We, all 6 billion of us, are the current "owners" of this planet we call Earth, each of us equal in our right to survival. If you were to try to deny somebody access to food or water then you should be well prepared to demonstrate your Might, for they most surely will be demonstrating theirs.