Does land fall under property rights?
Property rights fall under the concept of “rights” in general, and the basis of rights is the right to life, “the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life.” - Do you think that one keeping the land they have earned violates another’s ability to live his life? Why do they need your land in particular in order to live their life? As long as *some* land is available in which they can achieve their values, it seems like their ability to live is not being interfered with.
You said: “I agree with the principle of homesteading in that when the land is transformed via production, those who are transforming have a right to do that without interference.”
I also think their claim to ownership on that property is justified… “He is a contractual animal. He has to plan his life long-range, make his own choices, and deal with other men by voluntary agreement (and he has to be able to rely on their observance of the agreements they entered).” In order to plan long-range and deal with people in terms of clear agreements, it’s important to draw specific lines for what is your land, and for those to be respected. By then having ownership of that property, you can make plans and think of trade-offs. It exists as a potential to be exploited exclusively by you. “It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.” - If one is capable of earning ownership of land by means of production through the homesteading principle, doesn’t one have a right to *keep* what has been earned? Once you’ve earned the ownership of that land, you should be able to keep what you’ve earned, even if you’re not actively using it productively. Wouldn’t you agree there is inherent value in being able to keep what you own?
I just mean, that for a rational person, knowing that you get to keep what you own indefinitely, adds a great deal of value to your life, no? Suppose you work some unclaimed land, turn it into a farm or whatever, and by that principle acquire ownership of the land. In the context of a rational person, the concept of permanent ownership is valuable for your long-term plans. Property ownership doesn’t shift underneath you just because someone comes along with any arbitrary claim about that particular piece of land. Any particular time period you choose to say ownership expires would be arbitrary, no? If I, or my company, has a 100 year plan, doesn’t that land, as a part of a rational person’s productive context, still hold productive value, even if it’s not actively being worked for whatever small period of time? I’m alluding to a similar point made in Atlas: big companies like a railroad have 100 year contracts, how are they supposed to operate in a rational manner if the laws are being changed underneath them from moment to moment by the whims of politicians? If I am running a huge company with a decades-long plan to build out an area of land that I own, why should somebody else be able to come in and say, “this piece of land I’m going to use and develop for my own purposes, because your plan is taking too long” - and destroy your plan entirely. Doesn’t that seem quite destructive? Why are we cutting down the greatest / most ambitious / most valuable pursuits of rational men, in order to satisfy the needs of the short-range men, who actually don’t have any basis for their claim in the right to life in the first place, given that there are other places they can go?