Mohammad In Islam, a "dead" land (not previously owned or under use by the public) can be owned by "reviving" it, as per the prophetic saying: "If anyone revives dead land, it belongs to him, and the unjust root has no right." This principle, however, does not deprive the community from some common rights in the land, including the right to pass water through it to the neighbor's land, for example.
John Locke In his 1690 work
Second Treatise of Government,
Enlightenment philosopher
John Locke advocated the
Lockean proviso which allows for homesteading. Locke saw the mixing of labour with land as the source of ownership via homesteading: That ownership is originally acquired both by occupancy of a thing not owned by any one and by labor, or, as is said, by specification, the tradition of all ages as well as the teaching of Our Predecessor Leo clearly testifies. For, whatever some idly say to the contrary, no injury is done to any person when a thing is occupied that is available to all but belongs to no one; however, only that labor which a man performs in his own name and by virtue of which a new form or increase has been given to a thing grants him title to these fruits (Paragraph 52).
Murray Rothbard Libertarian philosopher and
Austrian School economist
Murray Rothbard argued that homesteading includes all the rights needed to engage in the homesteading action, including nuisance and
pollution rights. He writes: Most of us think of homesteading unused resources in the old-fashioned sense of clearing a piece of unowned land and farming the soil. ... Suppose, for example, that an airport is established with a great deal of empty land around it. The airport exudes a noise level of, say, decibels, with the sound waves traveling over the empty land. A housing development then buys land near the airport. Some time later, the homeowners sue the airport for excessive noise interfering with the use and quiet enjoyment of the houses. Excessive noise can be considered a form of aggression but in this case the airport has already homesteaded decibels worth of noise. By its prior claim, the airport now "owns the right" to emit decibels of noise in the surrounding area. In legal terms, we can then say that the airport, through homesteading, has earned an easement right to creating decibels of noise. This homesteaded easement is an example of the ancient legal concept of "
prescription", in which a certain activity earns a prescriptive property right to the person engaging in the action. Rothbard interpreted 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:
Ayn Rand Ayn Rand did not elaborate on the characteristics of homesteading, but she expressed support for compatible laws such as favourably citing the
Homestead Act (1862): A notable example of the proper method of establishing private ownership from scratch, in a previously ownerless area, is the Homestead Act of 1862, by which the government opened the Western frontier for settlement and turned "public land" over to private owners. The government offered a 160-acre farm to any adult citizen who would settle on it and cultivate it for five years, after which it would become his property. Although that land was originally regarded, in law, as "public property", the method of its allocation, in fact, followed the proper principle (
in fact, but not in explicit ideological
intention). The citizens did not have to pay the government as if it were an owner; ownership began with them, and they earned it by the method which is the source and root of the concept of "property": By working on unused material resources, by turning a wilderness into a civilized settlement. Thus, the government, in this case, was acting not as the owner but as the custodian of ownerless resources who defines objectively impartial rules by which potential owners may acquire them.
Linda and Morris Tannehill Linda and Morris Tannehill argued in their 1970 book
The Market for Liberty that physically claiming the land (e.g. by fencing it in or prominently staking it out) should be enough to obtain good title: An old and much-respected theory holds that for a man to come into possession of a previously unowned value it is necessary for to
mix his labor with the land to make it his own. But this theory runs into difficulties when one attempts to explain what is meant by 'mixing labor with land'. Just how much labor is required, and of what sort? If a digs a large hole in his land and then fills it up again, can he be said to have mixed his labor with the land? Or is it necessary to effect a somewhat permanent change in the land? If so, how permanent? ... Or is it necessary to effect some improvement in the economic value of the land? If so, how much and how soon? ... Would a man lose title to his land if he had to wait ten months for a railroad line to be built before he could improve the land? ... And what of the naturalist who wanted to keep his land exactly as it was in its wild state to study its ecology? ... [M]ixing one's labor with the land is too ill-defined a concept and too arbitrary a requirement to serve as a
criterion of ownership. == In law ==