I never heard the phrase “property is theft” before.
But to answer your question about “a car or a book”, I don’t see them as any different than real estate. When someone dug the ground to get metal to build the car with, or chopped a tree for wood to make paper with, where did they get the right to do that? One could easily argue that raiding the land for its resources is an even worse theft than merely living on top of it.
A hypothetical that doesn’t exist in real life of all known history is useless for starting an argument based on it (no matter how beloved this mythical free land is for liberatarian argumentation).
Are you being paid a fair wage, or is the employer skewing the situation because 500 people applied for a single opening? Can you live on your wage, or is the employer paying you only what the market bears? Have you heard of the strikes and battles for fair wage/ living wage, and do you know why they were and are fought?
This is a common thread in Canadian labour law. There is an imbalance of bargaining power between the employer and a (non-unionized) worker, so the employer has a “duty of care” to be fair with the worker.
But really - any physical thing where you say “this is mine” is the same as fencing off an area of land and saying “keep off”. Whether you acquired the object or land by force, by purchase, or by law, you are asserting that something anyone could use is now exclusively yours. This is an extreme starting position for a philosophical argument, but it is legitimate to ask: why should you be able to tell someone else they cannot have what is right in front of them? What right do we have to possessions? Why cannot someone else use them when they feel like it?
(Of course, that’s ideal communism, which oddly enough, does not work well).
“Property is theft” is a fatuous slogan that just doesn’t bear close scrutiny. If a person really thought that it was true, he would have no possible objection if someone bigger or better-armed came along and took his stuff, even the clothes on his back, because after all he would have no more persuasive legal or moral claim to it than the thug who relieved him of it.
The concept of property, like the entire structure of ordered liberty that we call law (and, for that matter, practically all aspects of civilization), is a creation of human beings. In a democracy, it can be changed as needed, through due process of law, to reflect what people find most conducive to their happiness, peace and public order.
As I said - if you want to see this acted out, watch the first few minutes of “The Gods Must Be Crazy”. The moment someone puts down the magically useful but imposible-to-duplicate Coke bottle, someone else picks it up; eventually they start fighting over it.
This “property is theft” is just a way to ask “why can we say something is ours and not let someone use it - even if we are not using it?”. Basically it statrs from the theory that everything is communal.
Once you get past pointy sticks and hunter-gatherer, this falls apart because making something takes work, and some people are lazy.
I met a man that said he was a socialist.
I asked him what that meant.
He said, “It means I believe in sharing everything equally.”
So I asked him if that meant if he had two houses and I didn’t have a house, would he give me one of his.
“Absolutely” he said.
So I asked him if that meant if he had two cars and I didn’t have a car, would he give me one of his.
“Of course” he replied.
So I asked him if that meant if he had two shirts and I didn’t have a shirt, would he give me one of his.
“No” he said.
So I asked him why.
“I have two shirts” he said.
That’s not true. Recordation is merely to give the public notice of your ownership, claim, lien, etc. It is the same as possession. (“Possession is nine points of the law” which is often misquoted as 9/10ths of the law. Under common law, possession was nine points of the law of ownership.) If the record shows one ownership but somebody else is on the property, that somebody else either has a lease, a life estate, or is in adverse possession. Usually adverse possession arises concerning vacant property, or a piece of adjoining property wherein the neighbor builds a fence on your property due to error in platting or otherwise.
Every state has its own requirement concerning how long the property must be adversely possssed in order to confer title against the “rightful” owner, usually 20 years. Plus, it must be open and adverse; i.e., not under some grant or lease or other permission from the record owner.
In the beginning, God owned everything. "
But in the US, after the colonists won freedom from Britain and the states formed one government, that government owned every parcel of land in that government. The US issued patents (deeds) to certain parcels to the men who fought in the Revolutionary War. The remainders were granted to the various states, subject to navigation rights (if any) of the federal government. The states sold the land to various individuals or railroad companies, but the rrld companies usually got easements, leaving the underlying title in the state.
The federal government passed the Homestead Act, allowing title to certain acreage (640 IIRC) to those who set up a home and maintained the farming in the territories. The individual state never acquired title to those plots.
One of the problems (other than the objections from the native Americans, who did not take kindly to Uncle Sam appropriating their land) was that many people already acquired title to certain tracts of land from France. Perhaps Spain, too, but I’m familiar with the claims deriving from the French government as that affected lands in Illinois. So, then, you had two competing claims, each claiming title from their own government. That was settled by settlements: compensation and the like.
A venerable urban (or rural, I guess it would be) legend about establishing title to property: The Louisiana Land Title Legend: Here's What We Know | Snopes.com
Actually, the joke was from explaining the Italian Communist Party philosophy:
The politician says - “if a farmer has 2 horses, and you have none, we give you one of his horses.” The farmer says “I understand.”
“and if he has 2 cows, and you have none, we give you one of his cows”.
“I understand.”
“If he has two chickens and you have none, we give you one.”
“That, I don’t understand.”
“Why don’t you understand?”
“I *have *two chickens.”
And the alternative definitions of political systems:
Socialism - the government take one of your two cows and gives it to a poorer farmer.
Communism - the government takes all your cows and gives you milk.
Capitalism - you have two cows, you sell one and buy a bull.
That would be funny except that it is possible for somebody to claim title under a grant given him from France prior to 1803. In fact, in central Illinois, near La Salle, both France and Britain claimed title to the same land in the 18th century (refer to the French and Indian War). People claimed title to some of the same lands, one side deriving the title from France and the other from Britain.
I am currently reading a fascinating book called The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes about the rise of science around 1800, before and after. His first chapter is about Joseph Banks whose career began with a voyage to Tahiti with a British ship. The Brits thought the natives were immoral because they would “steal” (that is, take) anything that wasn’t nailed down (the nails especially as Tahiti had no metal). The British called this theft and executed (or murdered) a few natives over it. The natives had a sharing culture with no real concept of ownership. But Holmes comments, “Who were the greater thieves, the natives who stole a few objects or the British who stole their island out from under them?”
Similarly:
In a democracy, what is not prohibited is permitted.
In a dictatorship, what is not prohibited is compulsory.