The homestead principle is the principle by which one gains ownership of an unowned natural resource by performing an act of original appropriation. Appropriation could be enacted by putting an unowned resource to active use, joining it with previously acquired property or by marking it as owned. Proponents of intellectual property hold that ideas can also be homesteaded by originally creating a virtual or tangible representation of them. Others such as Stephan Kinsella argue that since tangible manifestations of a single idea will be present in many places, including within the minds of people, this precludes their being owned in most or all cases. Homesteading is one of the foundations of Rothbardiananarcho-capitalismand radicalneoliberalism in the form of right-libertarianism.
In his 1690 work Second Treatise of Government, Enlightenment philosopher John Locke advocated the Lockean proviso which allows for homesteading. Locke famously saw the mixing of labour with land as the source of ownership via homesteading: However, Locke held that individuals have a right to homestead private property from nature only so long as "there is enough, and as good, left in common for others". The Lockean proviso maintains that appropriation of unowned resources is a diminution of the rights of others to it, and would only be acceptable if it does not make anyone else worse off.
Libertarian philosopher and Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard argues that homesteading includes all the rights needed to engage in the homesteading action, including nuisance and pollution rights. He writes: Rothbard interprets the physical extent to which a homesteading act establishes ownership in terms of the relevant "technological unit", which is the minimal amount necessary for the practical use of the resource. He writes:
Hungarian political philosopher Anthony de Jasay argued that a homesteader, having a claim prior to any other, must be prima facie considered the owner of the resource, in accordance with the principle "let ownership stand":
Similarly to de-Jasay, Hans-Hermann Hoppe argues that the denial of the homesteading rule entails a performative contradiction. That is because honest argumentation must presuppose an intersubjectively ascertainablenorm, and all norms not relying on the original establishment of a physical link to the owner are subjective in nature, and therefore contradict the presuppositions of argumentation. He writes:
Ayn Rand
has not elaborated on the characteristics of homesteading, but she had expressed support for compatible laws such as favourably citing the Homestead Act :
provides the ad coelumdoctrine by which landlords own everything below and above the land, up to the sky and below the earth to its core, with the exception of volatile minerals such as natural gas. The rules governing what constitutes homesteading were not specified by common law but by the localstatutory law. Common law also recognizes the concept of adverse possession. Murray Rothbard criticized this doctrine as incompatible with his own homestead principle as a literal application prevent aircraft from traveling over someone's land, further arguing: So long as the aircraft did not damage or disturb the land, the owner would not have a claim. By the same principle, ownership of mineral and water resources on or under the land would also require homesteading, otherwise being left unowned.
Statutory law
In the 19th century, a number of governments formalized the homestead principle by passing laws that would grant property of land plots of certain standardized size to people who would settle on it and "improve" it in certain ways. Typically, such laws would apply to territories recently taken from their indigenous inhabitants, and which the state would want to have populated by farmers. Examples include:
