Mondays with Murray: Rothbard on the Bundy Ranch Standoff
This past weekend a standoff - as discussed in an edition of last week's Morning Roar - in Nevada at the ranch of Cliven Bundy between Federal Agents and a large group of Bundy supporters has seemingly been settled without violence, thankfully. The most basic summary of the events leading up to the standoff:Cliven Bundy's ranch has been in his family since 1877, and his cattle regularly graze on the the "public" land in the surrounding area which is "owned" (claimed) by the Federal Government. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been charging grazing fees to local ranchers whose cattle graze in the area. For the past 20 years or so the Bundy family , not recognizing the the Federal Government's claim on the land as legitimate have refused payment (though they have reportedly paid the money to the state of Nevada.) The BLM claims Bundy's cattle are killing an endangered tortoise, despite the fact that the very same BLM culled hundreds of that same species of tortoise recently. In response they have begun rounding up Bundy's cattle which will be auctioned off to pay his fines. Bundy has decided that he's had enough of this Federal overreach , and has turned his story into a rallying point against Federal land tyranny.In last Wednesday's edition of The Morning Roar, I described how the concept of homesteading as it pertains to property ownership applies to this case. But this being Mondays with Murray and all, I'll keep my trap shut and turn it over to Mr. Libertarian himself, as he describes the concept of homesteading in Chapter 2 of For a New Liberty. The implications to the Bundy case will be apparent.
the natural-rights justification for the ownership of ground land is the same as the justification for the original ownership of all other property. For, as we have seen, no producer really "creates" matter; he takes nature-given matter and transforms it by his labor energy in accordance with his ideas and vision. But this is precisely what the pioneer — the "homesteader" — does when he brings previously unused land into his own private ownership. Just as the man who makes steel out of iron ore transforms that ore out of his know-how and with his energy, and just as the man who takes the iron out of the ground does the same, so does the homesteader who clears, fences, cultivates, or builds upon the land. The homesteader, too, has transformed the character of the nature-given soil by his labor and his personality. The homesteader is just as legitimately the owner of the property as the sculptor or the manufacturer; he is just as much a "producer" as the others.Furthermore, if the original land is nature- or God-given then so are the people's talents, health, and beauty. And just as all these attributes are given to specific individuals and not to "society," so then are land and natural resources. All of these resources are given to individuals [p. 35] and not to "society," which is an abstraction that does not actually exist. There is no existing entity called "society"; there are only interacting individuals. To say that "society" should own land or any other property in common, then, must mean that a group of oligarchs — in practice, government bureaucrats — should own the property, and at the expense of expropriating the creator or the homesteader who had originally brought this product into existence.Moreover, no one can produce anything without the cooperation of original land, if only as standing room. No man can produce or create anything by his labor alone; he must have the cooperation of land and other natural raw materials.Man comes into the world with just himself and the world around him — the land and natural resources given him by nature. He takes these resources and transforms them by his labor and mind and energy into goods more useful to man. Therefore, if an individual cannot own original land, neither can he in the full sense own any of the fruits of his labor. The farmer cannot own his wheat crop if he cannot own the land on which the wheat grows. Now that his labor has been inextricably mixed with the land, he cannot be deprived of one without being deprived of the other.
It is clear that under the homestead principle, that Mr. Bundy's ranch is his legitimate property, as his family had acquired it and transformed it into the ranch it is today. That one isn't a difficult case. However, what of the "public" land on which Bundy's cattle have been grazing? Who is the proper owner of that land?The Federal Government has not used the homesteading principle to arrive at the conclusion that it owns the 600,000 acres of "public" land surrounding the Bundy Ranch. It did not purchase the land from anyone else, it has not put the land to productive use. They have simply laid claim to massive areas of land, to use for whatever it deems to be in the best interests of "the public", or the tortoises apparently.If anything, this land should be considered wild land, and until someone homesteads it and claims it as property, anyone's cattle should be able to graze upon it without repercussion. After all, if the land is not owned, who could challenge the right of any man's cattle to graze on it?The situation would be different if Bundy's cattle were grazing on the clearly defined property of another individual. If that individual wanted to protect the tortoises that lived on his land, he would certainly be entitled to damages from the grazing of Bundy's cattle.Check out my interview with Timothy Terrell from the Lions of Liberty Podcast, where we discuss homesteading and how a free society would deal with issues of natural resources.Catch up on Mondays with Murray by checking out the full archive! The Lions of Liberty are on Twitter, Facebook & Google+Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!
