25A020 Land Owners by Jim Davies, 5/20/2025

Ownership is "rightful control", and this returns to the theme of owning land. It's so important! Land is the basis for life, even though oceans help. There are only two ways of acquiring true land ownership:

1. Agree to exchange something for it with an existing owner, or
2. If nobody owns (or therefore wants) it, claim and work it yourself.

It follows that all other ways of obtaining de-facto, in-practice control over land do not constitute ownership; that is, the control is not rightful. For example if I wave some guns and drive a farmer off his land by force and treat it as my own, I may have use of the land in practice but it's not truly mine. It's stolen. That's true whether or not the situation is ever rectified by some kind of justice system.

Now, open any map of any part of the world with its pretty colors indicating the countries portrayed, and see which government apparently owns which strips of real estate. How many of those were acquired in either of the two ways named above? There may be a few, but I can't think of any.

This was brought to mind by the frequently-chanted claims that "Palestinians" own the land between the Jordan and the Med. Seldom can so much raw falsehood have been squeezed into so few words. Remember, "ownership" means "rightful control."

Firstly, the name "Palestina" was bestowed by the Roman conquerors of a country occupied and controlled by Jews; so Palestinians are primarily Jewish. Prior to then, it had various names like Judea and Israel but always Jewish; that tribe took control of it about 1500 BC, before which there was just a scattering of Canaanites. Those may have dwelled first in the area, but I've not heard that any survivors are now bidding to re-establish their claim.

For sure, Muslim Arabs have no ownership rights at all; Mohammad was not even born until 2,100 years after the Jewish tribe was in control. They're hardly even "Palestinians."

In any case and over-riding all the above history, neither the Jewish tribe nor the Romans nor the Muslim Arabs nor the Ottomans nor any other collective or government had any ownership rights whatever, because none of them used either of the two ways above so as to establish ownership. None of them reached a sale agreement with an existing owner, and none of them claimed and then worked any land that was currently unwanted (ie, wilderness.) As collectives, without even a contract specifying the relationships among them, they simply moved in; with or without violence. Individuals in the tribe may have claimed and worked lots of land without reference to the collective (I don't know), but not the collective as a whole.

Collectives, or tribes or governments claiming to represent, control or lead a set of people are in any case literally incapable of executing a valid contract, because all signers of any contract agree to submit to some higher authority for judgment if any dispute should arise; yet every government claims to be the highest authority in the land, subject to nobody. Yes, that does mean that anyone making agreement with a government is taking the risk that if a later dispute arises, the judge settling it will be an employee of his adversary. Caveat emptor, indeed.

So all those pretty colors on the map are fraudulent. The "French government" does not validly own France, nor does the FedGov own a slice of North America, nor does any other non-contractual set of "representatives" own the land shown on the map. It's a picture of fabrication.

Awesome implications follow. For instance the US States claim ownership over their 50 domains, and to have delegated certain powers and rights to use their land to the FedGov; but all those claims (and delegations!) are bogus. They are derived from the stroke of the King's quill pen, when he claimed North America - but he never "worked" it. How then can they validly "grant" limited powers of ownership to individuals and companies within their domains? - they can't. Therefore, nobody owns any land.

One of the fun jobs of the first year or so after government has evaporated will be to sort out all this mess. Meanwhile reflect on it, while next mowing your lawn. Or paying your mortgage.