I would tend to favor bloodline as a starting point, but if there are no known close relatives then the problems of time and expense crop up. A modest estate could easily be eaten up by search costs, and when the potential relatives become sufficiently distant there is an increased likelihood that a closer relative will be missed. In my case my father was an orphan, so I can't trace back to any of his relatives, living or dead, except indirectly by DNA. Perhaps the search for relatives should stop after a uniform designated time has elapsed or a uniform percentage of the estate has been depleted in the search.

OK. But I'm not talking about property that was ever in the public trust. I'm talking about property that belonged to someone, now deceased. We seem to differ only in the degrees of kinship the probate court ought to trace. I plump for unlimited tracing. You don't. Obviously you would set the limit at some degree of blood relations, or marriage. Where would you set that limit?

We have a pun with "OWN" in Germanic languages. The root is "one." To say that you OWN your OWN self is poetic truth, but confuses the concepts. As Irshultis pointed out, someone has to have these rights. A bundle of separable rights in property can only be held by a person. Personhood is antecedent.

The root meaning of "property" is also lost. I have a coin from Cato the Younger. The obverse says PRO PER. He struck them from his own silver on his own authority to buy the (temporary) loyalty of the people of Utica. (There's a lot of PRO words and PER words in Latin, both rooted in PR="first"). We accept it as "for himself" but it just meant "for during" i.e., for the exigent circumstances.

My point is that we build concepts that are represented by somewhat arbitrary sounds. It is something of an accident that we call stuff "property." We could call it "vork." But it is not entirely an accident. The word "property" was invented from PRO PER (as in "right and proper") for a reason, otherwise, it would not have been understood by the people of the Middle Ages. The Romans understood "propertus" only as "haste." The underlying idea, though, is that ownership in property is fleeting, not eternal.

That may be a false idea. The seemingly obnoxious Digital Millennium Copyright Act might correctly identify the fact that intellectual property - Mickey Mouse in particular - never passes to the public domain, but must always belong to someone.

Thanks. I tried to write a single sentence referring to "property rights" without the precondition of "property" and it was hard to do. I agree with dbhalling's obvious assertion that you can have a "bundle" of separable rights in something, but, as you note, the existence of the "something" is a precondition.

Rand pointed out that in the case of copyright, the law properly protects the expression (print, performance), but not the ideas. You cannot prevent someone from knowing what they know. That is the "brainwaves" you refer to: they are not separable property, but in and of your person -- at least for the present...

There was a libertarian theorist, Andrew J. Galambos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_... who gave lectures for which he demanded and got people to sign non-disclosure agreements. He prevented them from repeating his ideas, apparently, but, of course, could not prevent them from applying them to their own lives -- which was the purpose of the lectures.

I appreciate the intention, but an "Objectivist society" is not a society of Objectivists. I mean, like the Renaissance or Classical Greece, the broader culture can have an implicit philosophy of lowercase-o objectivism, without everyone being a Rand Fan. In this case, I point out that you can not care one whit what happens to your "stuff" when you die. In The Fountainhead Henry Cameron ordered Roark to destroy everything in his office. (In fact, Cameron's inner conflict there is touching: on the way to the hospital, he says that he does not want to leave anything behind, but points proudly to a skyscraper: "I built that." ) You are under no obligation to have an attorney or a testament.

I agree that estate taxes are ridiculous: the taxes were paid on them already.

That is interesting. Thanks for that. It solves a lot of common problems. It still leaves open the cases of original property rights for creations and inventions (copyrights and patents).

Again, above, I cited the case of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle versus Jack London. Doyle's estate jealously guarded their rights under UK law, whereas London's works passed into the public domain. As such no one owns them and anyone can use them.

The fact is that intellectual property is non-rival and non-exclusive. So, it must be governed by different laws than land or automobiles. Indeed, cars as "chattels" are separable from the land on which they sit. So, machineries, tools, etc., objective considerations indicate that they should have different kinds of laws, not just rules derived from real estate law.

Hold an auction. (See below in reply https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

Hold an auction. Government surplus already has been auctioned off as the normal means of redistributing to private ownership that which was in the public trust.

That was one proper way that the airwaves have been privatized (although the government wrongfully continues to "manage" or "oversee" their use). See "The Property Status of the Airwaves" in Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal. In fact, the Nash Equilibrium auctions brought spectrum rights to new owners at less cost to the individuals, but with greater return to the government.

A simple random number drawing (lottery) would also work, and that also been done.

As a philosophy of reality and reason, Objectivism seeks answers that are based on absolute truths. From that rational-empiricism (the "scientific method"; small-o objectivism), the goal is to find truths that do not depend on tradition, intuition, or revelation.

"Bloodline" might seem obvious to you, but my wife's family has been in America so long that they do not know who the first immigrant was. My four grandparents all came from different places in Europe. My wife and I have this amusing argument about who is "really" a relative. In your case, would you exclude "affines" (what we call "in-laws")? You cannot prove that one way or the other. It is not objective.

Government should NOT profit at all. Parties interested should enter a non monetary lottery. These parties cannot work for, represent or at anytime done business with any government what so ever.
Another consideration is to allow the community to decide by vote what is to be done with said property.

Who produced the property?
Bank accounts should go to the bank.
Cars should go to the prior owner or manufacturer.
Land should revert to prior owner.
Unless this imposes a financial obligation those parties do not wish to assume. That said, property tax should be unlawful.

Since the (fictional) example of the motor invented by John Galt appears in Atlas Shrugged, it is appropriate to explore what the example of his subsequent use of the motor implies about a proper Objectivist theory of intellectual property. Here in the Gulch there are many competing views on this topic.

Yes. A vessel is different than cargo. I am not an lawyer or real expert on the subject, but read about salvage and salvage law in my Marine Propulsion and other professional magazines. The laws that govern this are Admiralty Law and Marine Salvage.

I find it interesting how specific, deep and broadly accepted these laws are. However, even a titled, large vessel, once it meets the criteria of "abandoned" is simply claimable by a salvage agent (real innovative, aggressive, risk-taking cowboys). I do not know the criteria for the salvage team maintaining claim, or eventually abandoning claim, but there are rules. Once the salvage team has claim, the original owner is out, unless teh owner hired the salvage agent under a specific contract to recover what is possible.
Those cowboys can really be something. Sometimes they recover the entire ship, and it may be refurbished. Sometimes they strip it in place an sink it. One clear issue is if the "abandoned" vessel impedes a waterway. This must be rectified quickly, and changes the calculus.
Cargo, is categorized (stolen from Wikipedia):
Flotsam is floating wreckage of a ship or its cargo.
Jetsam is part of a ship, its equipment, or its cargo that is purposely cast overboard or jettisoned to lighten the load in time of distress and is washed ashore.
Lagan (also called ligan) is goods or wreckage that is lying on the bottom of the ocean, sometimes marked by a buoy, which can be reclaimed.
Derelict is cargo that is also on the bottom of the ocean, but which no one has any hope of reclaiming (in other maritime contexts, derelict may also refer to a drifting abandoned ship).

The remote, hazardous marine environment made these rules necessary a long time ago when capitalism and ruled. Seems like a good place to start by analogy for the benign environment of whiny land lubbers.

True, in the real world. Gulch use of the motor might be commercial, but it is non-competing, because 20th Cent Motors did not have access to the Gulch economy. This example is fictional though, so applying real world IP laws might be difficult.

Does maritime law distinguish between titled and untitled property? Cargo from a wrecked ship, washed ashore or fished out of the water, seems different from the ship itself, to which someone holds a clear title.

That depends on the circumstances of the "abandonment." If the owner has died intestate, and left no issue, then (as I said to MikeMarotta in another thread) the probate court must hire an ancestry tracer to find the next of kin--however remote a cousin, or however many times removed the cousin is, from the owner.

Now if the owner walked away from the property because he could not satisfy an obligation to it, then the property title passes to whoever laid the obligation on him. Here we deal not with abandonment by death but with foreclosure.

Thus if an owned thing has a title, some person has a claim on it.

Now if it doesn't have a title, then finders keepers, losers weepers. True, or false?

Bloodline has by tradition been the method for determining how title to property passes when its owner dies intestate. By default, the property passes to the next-of-kin. Now by listing a property as "unclaimed" after death, the original poster projects a situation in which the person has no living relatives any nearer than a ridiculously high-number degree. In which case the probate court has no choice other than to turn to an expert in ancestry tracing to find, if necessary, a tenth cousin once or twice removed to inherit.

How else would you have property title pass by default if the owner dies intestate?

Why should genetics ("bloodline") be important in passing ownership? By putting "nearest of kin" in quotes are you suggesting that the probate court find any "deserving" person and pass the property on to them?

The Objectivist theory of unclaimed property (as I understand Ayn Rand's brief comments on this) does not allow the government to take the actual property for its own use. The government is only the keeper of title to the property.

Easily enough, the composer of a song dies without leaving heirs. I am not sure of the present status, but for about 100 years, the estate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle jealously guarded their property rights, especially in the "Sherlock Holmes" stories, even maintaining staff to send out form letter replies to people who wrote to 221B Baker Street. But you can reprint any Jack London book you want to; and you can write a new dog story about King, if you want.

According to some theories of intellectual property rights, Galt would not be entitled to make one for his own use either, regardless of whether it was intended to be used for commercial purposes.

Right to your OWN life

Most likely start from the right to life. Without life no rights are possible.

If an invention is created by employees of a business, the invention is owned by the business, as is the prototype (it was made by the business). Galt cannot legally re-make onother one outside the business and use it to compete with it. But in the Gulch he is not competing within the economy.

No all rights start from property rights.

In a fully Objectivist society, people would responsibly protect their property and have wills or designated powers of attorney. There should be no such thing as estate taxes and government appropriation.

I’m not sure what, exactly, constitutes “abandonment” of intellectual property. Atlas Shrugged brought up a scenario that touched upon this issue but didn’t fully resolve it. Dagny asked John Galt why he left the prototype of the motor he invented to the Starnes heirs, and he replied, “It was their father’s property. He paid me for it. It was made on his time.” This being the case, did the Starnes heirs eventually cease to have intellectual property rights in the motor, empowering John Galt with the right to re-create it? I haven’t come up with a good answer to this question.