Would seem that fences or other means to keep people off your property (dogs work also- I have two pit bulls and no one comes on my property without my approval !) would be more effective than anything else. Secondly, imprisonment only costs us money, so send the immigrants back right away. Thirdly, most of them just want to survive, so let them survive here if they want by giving them temp work permits, BUT NO FREEBIE CITIZENSHIP BENEFITS like welfare, schooling, medical care, section 8 housing etc. I would also remove minimum wage requirements to lessen their desire to just come to the USA and encourage them to get their own country's economies in order.

I cannot totally agree. I understand the point but I hate anyone to tamper with what is mine. Does the government own property? Yes. Does that make the government a private property owner, or does that make the citizens co-owners of the property with the government just controlling it for us? If I take the problem down to a more personal level; Say I own a very expensive watch. Should I allow an illegal to take it from me if he doesn't have one? Could he 'borrow" it without my consent? Let us face reality, we don't live in a free country. OK, I understand Atlantis will be free(er) and the ideal will be more likely, but not here -- not now.

"My postion is fully consistent. Not only the post office, but streets, roads, and above all, schools should all be privately owned and privately run." -Ayn Rand, the Playboy Interview, 1964.

To my mind if you are the universally recognized entity that can grant title to a piece of property, you own it. I understand that philosophically you don't want the government to own property, you have to face the objective reality that they do. No one else does and no one else can unless the government grants it to them under the terms the government specifies.

I have no problem with the government owning property if the government is acting as an agent of its citizens as a corporation acts as an agent of its shareholders.

Hello DB:
Please explain your stance.
I really need to know, having been put to death 31 years ago.

Holy shit!
You're scaring me.
Mama Nature will end me soon enough without any help. I do, however, have the benefit of having enough $$ so as to not burden anyone. Everything is paid for, including house and 10 year old mini van.
Half jesting? Which half should I be afraid of?

” The logical opposite of the freedom to travel, is imprisonment."

So the individual's freedom to travel gives them the right to traverse any place on earth, private or public, as long as they (the traveler) have no clear intent to harm anyone.

This implies that any tribe, country, or nation can have no control of its borders, that all humans are citizens of the earth who can live wherever they choose.

So if America wants to control immigration by controlling its borders, they are, in reality, imprisoning 7 billion humans who might want to come and live here.

What would this stateless utopia of yours look like? What form of government would it have? Would this "right to travel" supersede all private property rights as to ownership of land?

I am trying to reconcile the historical reality of how the government came to be in possession of the land and how our titles derive from what was an act of aggression. It's a distasteful reality, but a reality none the less.

Many stalwart Objectivists are trying to fit the reality of what happened into an objectivist philosophy and the results don't quite make sense -- at least to me.

I think one has to face the reality of what happened and move on. That the government should sell as much of the land it holds into private hands leaving only as much as it needs.

As to the property tax meaning that you only rent your land. I think that is a false equivalence. The government can seize your property for almost anything. It doesn't have to be property tax. Obviously I don't approve of that.

The argument is good but I do have some unease, here goes-

Starting from the concept of property rights is correct. Then, it is necessary to put the question, Who owns the thoroughfare? The answer is- the people, the nation, the citizens. The owner has delegated management to an agency - the government. That agency has fiduciary duty as it is impractical for the owners to take on the management. The agency may legitimately restrict access (of non-owners) if that decision has the ok of the owners. Such restriction does not need to be defended to any outsider, it derives from property rights, it only needs acceptance from the owners.

" This argument shows a flawed understanding of property rights. You obtain property rights in something because you made it productive or created it. "
Yes, but this is not a full definition unless inheritance is denied. The thoroughfare is owned by citizens who have ownership by a process akin to inheritance.
Much the same conclusion would be reached by defining the owner as government with government in turn being owned by the citizens.
A logical way you could disagree would be by legitimizing government having more power than most Objectivists would allow- by banning discrimination on grounds the political class de jour does not want. This detracts from property rights.
Or, you could propose that every living person everywhere has an equal share in ownership of all land not privately owned, I wouldn't.

" the gulch is private property and that private property did not limit anyone’s ability to travel freely."
To my reading, the border protection fence was quite effective in keeping people out. Technology that can not be seen beats fences and guards.
Wrt getting out once in, you could argue about Dagny being a prisoner or not.

What I really like about dbh's paper is what I call a timetable, it starts from "There is a principled solution .."

I'm not sure that I don't go back to Friedman's concept of being "compelled into contract" that takes away something from one (or many), which was never accepted. Perhaps there is no legal basis for this, but it seems logical.

What drivel. An overflowing stack of non-sequiturs and straw-men attacks to derive a hilariously bad conclusion that those who want everyone to equally play by the rules are xenophobic and hate freedom. God damned laughable.

Yes. Omg we agree

I read the article and while I better understand where you're coming from I still contend that you, the author, Locke and Rand are wrong. The moment anyone stakes a claim they have limited someone else's ability to travel freely - this is not wrong. To say that it is puts everyone else's rights over my own. A national border is a claim by the people of nation AND it is legitimate for that people's government to regulate who comes into the country do not cause foreseeable harm and ensure those who enter legally don't overstay their welcome. Severn billion peoples individual right to travel can kiss my ass when it comes to my land, my house, and anything of mine.

Scenario:
1000 people find the Gulch. They make camp on the fringe and build. Soon their population grows, they trade with the Gulches,they expand taking more land, and their customs, culture and ideology begin to present themselves in the Gulch's youth. In time their numbers swell to the point where there is no physical buffer, they do their business and govern their lives. Soon rules are made by that group and they insist on their part of the gulch things are done their way and the people of the Gulch find their kids sympathetic and even favoring this different way.

Without some degree of filtering/restricting/determining who enters the Gulch loses its ideology in one or two generations simply by population saturation.

I apologize, you are right I haven't read the article (not sure how I missed it). I will now and be honest in my appraisal.

"Giving title" means acknowledging and recording the title, not giving the property. It would have made no sense for individuals to arbitrarily make competing claims for arbitrary amounts of land under anarchy. The role of the government in the settling of the unowned land in the west was for an orderly procedure of settlement in accordance with objective rules, within the geographical jurisdiction of the government. It could do that because it was the government enforcing property rights law, not because it gave away land. Jurisdiction does not mean ownership. The government did not "send armed soldiers to move other people out". Wandering tribes of warrior Indians had no legitimate claim to exclude individual settlers on the land. Individual Indians who chose to live under civilized law as individuals had the same rights as other settlers, and some did so. Most chose to remain primitive tribalists.

I doubt someone who was a follower of the Austrian school would claim me. I'm just trying to work out the implications of Objectivism based on my observations of the real world and my reasoning.

I understand that at least some disagree with the concept, the negative points make that clear, but I would like someone to clarify how a governmental entity which does not own property can nevertheless give a title to it to an individual or corporation. Clearly there is some basis of control. There is only one government who can do that, you can't, for example, get the government of Nicaragua to give you a title to Northern Nevada, the United States owns, or controls, that.

The reason a number of us keep bringing up The Gulch in this discussion is that it represents at least Ayn Rand's fictional attempt to describe a community of producers who followed her philosophy.

The fact that it was the private property of a single individual as well as the secrecy, oaths, and exclusiveness demonstrates the problems that constructing such a thing in the real world entail.

Single ownership would not be attractive to most of the individualists on this site who would like to own their own land, thank you. And once that happens you have to have ways for them to jointly manage any land that is considered for common use.

While the basis of rights is the individual, many of our commercial activities are carried out by many individual acting jointly. Frequently property is jointly owned. I am a major shareholder of a company that owns our office unit. The office unit, itself, is part of a condominium structure and fourteen other companies or individuals own the other units. There is a common area owned by all of us, but we can jointly control access to that area.

This is very common.

Yes. Our property rights don't give us the right to stop other people from getting together and trading with one another if they so desire.

Reading the referenced article and the comments about it, I can't decide if some just don't get property rights or that they just don't like the ideas of freedom of the individual. I'm beginning to think that when it comes to their own personal property, they get property rights just fine -- but when it comes to others on someone else's property or on public thoroughfares, they just don't like the others exercising individual freedom.

No you did not read the article and you do not understand property rights in land, which was the whole point of the post.

Private property has everything to do with the right to travel freely.

From the first time someone made a rock wall to sleep behind, or pitched a tent, or turned some ground to plant, the right to travel freely was restricted. Unless you advocate open borders and one world governance and are you yourself are a collectivist, your (Rand's?) right to travel freely simply cannot exist anymore because of individual private property and national boundaries. To deny fact of reality is disingenuous and irrational.

Okay, but that has nothing to do with the right to travel freely.

But the land could be claimed because the government allowed it to be claimed and would give you title to it, which you could then use to document your ownership.

And, while it's not a particularly objectivist approach, the reason the government could do this is because they sent armed soldiers to move other people out of the way so that you could claim the land.

If I am acknowledged to be the one who can give you title to the land that no one will contest, it seems to me that I 'own' the land. And if the government can give you that title, then it own's the land. You cannot simultaneously say the government doesn't own the land and that it has the authority to give you title to it.