Dear Joe,

I did not mention "pure purchase", but "true purchase". If you pay for something that the seller does not truly own, then you have not truly purchased that thing.

Now in the case of South Australia, the state favoured a specific group - aborigines, then granted that group specific privileges. It's like telling a woman: "Since I like you, I choose not to rape you and being my favourite, I won't allow others under me to rape you either" - how gracious... what a great favour... Should she really feel indebted? Also what about others who are the land's natural owners, but are not liked as much because they do not happen to be aborigines?

Surely one may utilise their property in several parallel ways, but it needs to be theirs in the first place. Grabbing land by force does not count as ownership.

Now it's been a long time since I heard such a wishy-washy statement as "because ultimately it belongs to us, the people, you and me, administered through the State", as socialist as "give me your coat because it ultimately belongs to us, the people, you and me, administered by my wife, who decided that I should feel warmer" can be, in other words "it's all mine and mine type of people's - you own nothing because the guns are on our side".

Wow! Yutsie, Go buy a bottle of Bis-Pectin. It's really good for cases of "M.W.S" better known as Diarrhoea.

Hi Yuyutsu,

Sorry, you wrote 'true purchase', my old eyes misread it.

No, you still don't understand: what you are purchasing is the right to use something, on specified conditions, perhaps for a certain time or in perpetuity. But 'ownership' is always conditional - you are holding that land from the State for certain purposes, nd the State is the ultimate holder on behalf of the people.

If you don't think there is, or should be, a State, then that's another matter. We can talk about anarchy and anarchism if you like :)

Joe

Hi again Yuyutsu,

Sorry, I have a very poor attention sp

You suggest that " .... in the case of South Australia, the state favoured a specific group - aborigines, then granted that group specific privileges. .... "

No, on the advice of the British Government, particularly Earl Grey, [see Henry Reynolds and Jamie Dalziel's article: http://www.unswlawjournal.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/17_reynolds_1996.pdf

in SA, the rights of Aboriginal people to use land as they always had done was no more or less than a recognition of a pre-existing situation - it wasn't some sort of privilege. In fact, what went with it was a denial of the right of Aboriginal people to exclude strangers from their land.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the land's natural owners" and your slag-off of Aboriginal people. British common law usually meant that whatever form of land relationship was in place at the time of conquest or settlement, was recognised.

That seemed to be the case across the British Empire: See C. K. Meek (1948), extracts, on my web-site: www.firstsources.info, on the Land Page. It also seems to have been the case in New Zealand: see the extracts from Sir H. Kawharu's book on Maori Land Tenure on that same web-site Page.

But your assertion that governments or states have no rights to declare an underlying title to all land under its administration, and control over its uses, is intriguing. It seems to have been the rationale for squatting in Austtralia, for seizing huge areas of pastoral land in the eastern states in the nineteenth century. As you say, "Grabbing land by force does not count as ownership."

Without the protection of states, such as it may be, anybody 'seizing' land would have to defend it against any other would-be 'owner': what you are proposing are the 'rights' of the strongest to seize as much land as it can, and expel anybody weaker. Is that what you have in mind ?

[TBC]

[continued]

Yes, perhaps in a Hobbesian world of power going to the most brutal, rape would not be a crime - it would be the undisputed right of the most powerful, the sort of right that Muhammad seemed to assume he and fellow-Muslims had over female slaves.

We can see that in the history of Islamic invasions across the Middle East and north Africa, Spain and central Asia, India and the Balkans, over the last fourteen hundred years.

Are you sanctioning that sort of reversion to savagery ? I'm sure that you aren't :)

Joe

Dear Joe,

I denounce violence - be it of the savage variety or of the civil variety.

Savage violence is obviously wrong, but that is uncontested so we don't speak much about it, whereas some members of this forum do condone civil violence, so I have taken up that issue.

Regarding anarchy, a classical anarchist believes that any rule is wrong, while I only claim that ruling over others WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT is wrong.

I do not consider it wrong when people freely agree to be governed by others, especially if it enhances their security. What is wrong, is when one person rules over another without consent. A body of people, large as it may be, should not have more powers than the sum of the powers that were freely entrusted to it by its members. Specifically it should not have the powers to order around non-members; to enter their natural property without consent; or to assume non-members to be members. When a large body of people such as a state does so - that's civil violence!

So states are OK, so long as they are based on a freely-entered agreement among its members, rather than on some arbitrary territory. So far however, I know of no state that complies with this basic decency.

Natural ownership involves an intuitive sense of decency and the golden-rule. Yes, it is difficult to define, but that doesn't make it any less real. At times it is obvious, like in the case of a family that lived on and farmed a plot of land for 50 generations which nobody contested for the last 100 years. At other times it is not as obvious and perhaps is difficult to tell whether a land belongs to A or B, but nevertheless it still clearly does not belong to C. Squatting by itself is insufficient to establish ownership, but rather a combination of investment, development, dedication, non-violence and common-sense.