Ancapistan was rocked by controversy recently when one of its leading citizens, comic Dave Smith, suggested homeless people living in public parks designed for children should be removed by the police. His argument is based on the homeless people using drugs and engaging in lewd behavior in the presence of children, a situation virtually everyone agrees is undesirable. It’s what to do about it that is at issue.

The dilemma proceeds from the unfortunate reality that the ancap population is not living in its home country, but rather held captive, Babylonian Exile-style, in what purports to be a democratic republic – with the “democratic” part increasingly in the ascendant. That raises the question of how to try to apply libertarian principles in a decidedly unlibertarian world.

The argument against calling the cops goes like this: The parent taking his children to the park doesn’t own the park; it is “public property.” And in public spaces, the inalienable right to liberty trumps any individual’s preferences for rules of conduct. After all, the parent doesn’t own the park and one’s rights are limited to what one owns. So, he has no right to eject anyone from land he doesn’t own. The homeless person has as much right to be in the park as the parent, the children, or anyone else.

Not to mention it is decidedly unlibertarian to call the police, the domestic occupying force of the empire, for any reason.

Here is the problem with the argument against ejecting the homeless people. It is not true that the parent doesn’t own the park. He does. Like the public roads, he hasn’t consented to own it, but rather has been dragooned into ownership by the state. Depending upon how the park is funded – from property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, etc. – he may or may not have contributed to the creation and maintenance of the park.

But contributing to the associated costs is not a condition of ownership of the park, which is just one of the reasons “public” anything doesn’t work. Public property is owned by every citizen of the polity in question (the town, the city, the state, or the nation) equally. Therefore, the homeless person is also an equal part owner in the park, no more voluntarily so than the parent, but an owner all the same.

So, doesn’t he have as much right to be there and do what he pleases in the park as the parent bringing his children to play on the swing set, even if statist rules against “loitering” or “vagrancy” might be employed by the state to remove him?

Of course not. He doesn’t have that right here in Democratica and he wouldn’t have it in Ancapistan, either. In an anarchist society, all property would be privately owned. While it is true that some property may be jointly owned by multiple parties, those cases would be governed in precisely the same way jointly owned private property is governed here in Democratica – by an agreement between all parties as to how the property would be used, what each partner was entitled or not entitled to do with the property, etc.

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