So let us say it happens, as it so often does, that a local government intervenes in a property dispute between corporation X and land owner Y. The local government offers to pay Y above-market value prices for his land, so that X may move in (They never do offer above-market prices, but let’s pretend they do to be nice). The land owner refuses to sell his land. So the local government initiates eminent domain at the behest of Walmart, condemns the land of Y and gives it over to X.
Question: What right does X have over their newly found property? Must we assume they have some right that prevents Y from reclaiming it as her own? Or let us say Y washes her hands of it. Does business X then have legitimate ownership of the land? Why is anyone obligated to treat this business as anything but a business that obtained land by theft, if we asssume eminent domain to be unjust and tantamount to robbery(which it is).
My theory, and the theory of other libertarian and classical liberal thinkers, is that the theft of some property P by some agent X against victim Y does not entitle X to property P, and that Y is capable of retrieving it back through the use of what would be retaliatory force. More radically, anyone is welcome to treat the property as a sort of commons, since there has been no just acquisition of land.
Rand, to my knowledge, never dealt wit such questions. My assumption is that she would be fine with this. Am I correct? Your opinions?