Beach towels on sun loungers

Regarding this week's Fun Online Poll, I've had a few comments claiming that land can be owned in the absence of a state, but what they boil down to is just replacing the existing structure of government with a different one, i.e. by using a private army etc.

The point that other goods and services can be traded, i.e. owned, in the complete absence of 'a state' (and even where ownership of those goods or those activities are 'illegal') is a red herring. This does not support the argument that land ownership can exist in the absence of the state, it illustrates exactly the opposite. In olden times when countries used to fight wars over provinces, if the enemy army was coming (and likely to win), you could flee and take yourself, your skills and physical possessions with you. But the land that you owned under the protection of 'your' government is forfeit; 'your' government is replaced by the other army's government and they are then in charge of saying who owns the land.

Just for clarification, the 'state' has nothing to do with 'Big Government', 'the state' is just large numbers of people in a geographically defined area agreeing to abide by common rules and accepting that there will be some coercion at the very margins to enforce these broadly accepted rules.

At one extreme, the council will send bulldozers to demolish a house built without the correct planning permission, or the police will physically remove squatters; but coercion can be as little as suffering 'the mild disapproval of those around you', for example, I'm not aware that there is a written law anywhere saying whoever gets up at the crack of dawn to put their towels on the sun loungers in the best position can then go back to bed, have breakfast etc. and return to the pool and sit down where the towels were, it's just the way it is.

Very few people have the nerve to take those towels, chuck them in the swimming pool and plonk themselves down, it's just not the done thing (as tempting as it might be). Fair do's, but with sun loungers it is 'occupation' rather than 'ownership', and whoever wants the best ones has to pay a price every day (i.e. getting up a lot earlier) and those who are prepared to make do with the ones in not such good positions have the benefit of a nice lie in.

Having a 'freehold', to continue the analogy, would be like allowing the first guest who puts a beach towel down on a particular sun lounger when the hotel first opens, to claim rights to that sun lounger in perpetuity, regardless of whether that guest is still actually paying his daily room rent to the hotel, and for the 'owner' of that sun lounger to be allowed to rent his sun lounger to future hotel guests (who will still have to pay the room rent to the hotel owner, of course), or even to sell his 'freehold' on the sun lounger to other people ('investors') and to pocket the whole proceeds without the hotel, who built the swimming pool etc, getting any share of the proceeds.

Just sayin', is all.