Hear, hear. Go back far enough and it's stolen land, insofar as any land can be owned. Entitled folks ranting about "their" property is kinda gross. You were granted that right by society, through ancestral collective agreements and cooperation wrt currency, labour, etc - not some divine right, privilege, or "hard work". Many times, killing or threatening people was how it was acquired not too long ago - and it's not too late for that to happen again (see Ukraine).

There are other ways to organize land-property rights. i.e. leased for some lifetime period, to be returned to the commons thereafter. There is only so much on this planet, and the richest individuals/corporations will gobble it up before too long; then what?

Society is just a set of mutually agreed to rules. There’s no natural law for language, currency, culture, etc.

So saying property rights are bogus, but body autonomy rights are ok seems like an arbitrary line to draw that makes society worse.

We need some civil method of organizing and managing scarce resources, I think.

Property rights doesn’t have to be bogus for the right to roam to exist.

Can you develop random land under the right to roam? No, that remain the exclusive right of the owner. Same goes for logging, farming, and depending on legislature a whole heap of other benefits to owning land.

That doesn’t mean your country has to acknowledge a right to roam, it’s ultimately up to all legislatures to decide where to draw its lines.

None of those lines are self-evident, though it doesn’t matter which rights the land owner cares to acknowledge, as that is the prerogative of the legislator.

I am not saying property rights are bogus, but they are also not a god-given principle. This is why I reacted.

There are lots of ways to draw the line. Allowing people to walk in a forest you "own" is one of them.

> So saying property rights are bogus, but body autonomy rights are ok seems like an arbitrary line to draw that makes society worse.

That seems obviously wrong to me. I can imagine a world without private land ownership that still grants people rights to privacy and autonomy in their home, even grants the privilege of open space around some of their homes (but since this is my imaginary world, ugly monocultured lawns aren't allowed).

The benefits of such a world are that wealth is less arbitrarily concentrated, that municipalities can own the land they govern, that cities and states have the ability to adapt to changing populations without running into private land barriers at every turn. Like in all things, it would be a balance, just as today we have a balance (albeit an extremely lopsided one) between individual rights and governments rights. Eminent domain exists, so the right of an individual person to permanently own a slice of the Earth and keep or grow or ruin it for future generations is already not absolute.

> I can imagine a world without private land ownership that still grants people rights to privacy and autonomy in their home

I dare say that you don't have to imagine, and there are past and current examples of societies that are closer to your vision than what modern developed nations allow for in terms of private land ownership. I think the median person is better off in systems that allow for private land ownership than not.

Look at China: they don't have to deal with private property rights, so they're able to build tons of infrastructure to benefit the people (good!). But the same powers that let government do that are also used to horribly oppress minority groups like the Uyghurs (bad!).

Of course, things owned by the people can be run for the benefit of the people if the people are composed of angels in perpetuity; but that, I'm afraid, will have to remain in the realm of imagination. ;-)

> But the same powers that let government do that are also used to horribly oppress minority groups like the Uyghurs (bad!).

And this kind of thing doesn't happen outside of Chinese pseudo-Communism? That would be an unreasonable assertion.

Look at Vienna instead, where the municipal government owns a large share of quality housing. I've heard it works relatively well; for example, living in low-income housing doesn't mean that you get kicked out if your income rises. You get to stay in your community indefinitely even as you advance in your career. This is an example of how it's possible for good things to exist without some rando middleman getting rich off of it. (I mean, maybe some rando is getting rich here, I'm sure there's still a nonzero level of corruption; but it's not a system designed to enrich private individuals.)

Things owned by anyone will be run to the detriment of the people without wise and careful systems built. Build good systems and iterate on them and you can have good systems. Build nothing, and you can have bad systems run by private individuals. The idea that private owners of land/capital are somehow immune to the corruption that makes government so scary is complete nonsense. It's just that nothing works without putting in work.

> The idea that private owners of land/capital are somehow immune to the corruption that makes government so scary is complete nonsense.

Neither private nor public owners are immune to corruption, but private owners don't operate with the legal monopoly on violence that the government does, so the consequences are a lot worse in the latter case.

I believe what Vienna gets right that complements subsidized public housing is that it doesn't have US-style dysfunctional zoning and regulatory processes ("environmental" review, etc.) for construction, so the free market is actually able to produce enough supply to meet demand.

In addition, there aren't bizarre "tenant-friendly" laws such as those that prevent eviction even in the case of nonpayment of rent; it is my understanding that this applies to public housing, as well. And I would bet that the public housing of Vienna is not subject to the same level of social degradation as those in the US, making them altogether more pleasant places to live in.