Harland,
You wrote: "If you take the stolen watch away from a thief, you should give
it back to the owner. You don't get to keep it. It is not yours. Keeping
it would not be just, nor legal. Giving it to a fourth person would not be
justice, either."
I agree.
However, if the owner never claims it, you can keep it. With
Govt-expropriated property It's a different animal. Everyone owns it.
Since everyone claiming it is meaningless, homesteading is the libertarian
way to address this situation.
Warm regards, Michael
Homesteading government property is the socialist solution, not the libertarian solution. Hopefully, we can just wind the government down, legally and justly. Bring all the soldiers home, let all victim-less crime convicts go free, sell all the excess government property, divide up the Social Security Trust Fund among everybody who paid the tax, repeal a few thousand laws, and count on the resulting economic boom to gradually pay off the bonds and abolish the taxes.
If that plan does not work, our situation can only get worse. Eventually, the odds really will be 99 to 1. And then the mob will indeed homestead the park -- and the streets, city hall, the banks, the high rises, the corporations, the "mom and pop" companies, and then the whole country. They will redistribute the wealth, for sure, and not everybody will like it. The revolution will be bloody, as always, like in France, Haiti, Russia, and China. I prefer the first plan.
Harland