Bill is a billionaire.
Bill buys a small tropical island off the coast of a city.
Bill was planning to build his retirement home on the island, but hasn’t gotten around to it.
It’s been over a year, and Bill hasn’t even set foot on the island.
Some travelers canoe to the island and discover it’s uninhabited.
At first they were just going to stay for a little while, but the island has some naturally growing fruit trees on it and lots and lots of fish around it, so they built some settlements, and decide to stay for a while.
It’s also close by the city, which they occasionally travel to, to sell fish and stock up on supplies.
A year has passed, and Bill decides to finally journey to, and check up on his island, and discovers the settlers.
Bill is furious when he finds out there are people living on the island.
He tells them to leave, but they refuse.
They say they’ve managed to build quite a nice life for themselves there.
Bill storms off in a huff and immediately notifies the authorities.
A few days pass, and some coastguards confront the settlers and ask them to leave.
The settlers still refuse, and the coastguards threaten them, telling them if they don’t leave, an armed squadron will come in a few weeks and exercise whatever force they deem necessary to remove them.
What right does Bill or the state have to kick them off the island?
The settlers physically set foot on the island long before Bill, and have been living on it for a year.
Isn’t what Bill and the state are doing theft?
Bill is taking something someone physically has, when he himself never physically even had it in any way, shape or form in the first place.
He is paying the state to reserve it for him, but what right does the state have to reserve it for him, they never physically even had it in any, way shape or form either.
And arguably the state had no right to force Bill to purchase the island and pay taxes on it before he built his retirement home there to begin with, but let’s put that aside for now, let’s say the state was privatized, and we’re living in a make believe anarcho-capitalist world.
Still, what right does Bill have to this island, how is it his, and how can it be taken from him?