[pvn]

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If "everyone owns everything" then you've already got a concept of property.

[/ QUOTE ]Nope, you have a negation of property.

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Wrong. You can't have it both ways. If nobody owns resource X, then nobody has any legitimate reason to complain when resource X is consumed. If someone does have a right to resource X, than that person has an ownership interest in that resource.

[/ QUOTE ] You are engaging in sophistry.

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ZOMGWTFLOLBBQ.

Yes, pointing out your sophistry is itself sophistry. Geez.

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Resource Air is a common resource, meaning it belongs to everybody and nobody owns it.

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Make up your mind. Which is it?

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If someone claims that he owns the Air (whether the whole planet's air or the wind passing over his farm), then that person is stealing from everybody else -- even though nobody else has laid claim to the air!

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No, because simple decree doesn't equal ownership.

I OWN YANKEE STADIUM, because I say so.

Have I stolen Yankee Stadium?

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Classical anarchists simply expand this notion of common ownership to almost everything. So, according to them, an individual stating that he "owns the forest outside Paris" is an individual who is a thief. Even if nobody else has claimed to be the forest's owner. Their reasoning is mostly archetypally Christian, radically libertine and anthropo-centric.

Wait, I thought all this was mere rhetoric for you. I see now that you're ready to engage in some meaty arguments. Goody.

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This IS rhetoric. :|

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The people who claim property is theft are just generating slogans.

[/ QUOTE ] "Generating slogans" could just as easily be said of your lot too, the ACists.

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My lot? Other people do it, so you want to accuse me of doing it?

[/ QUOTE ] Yes, ACists do it too, in my opinion.

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"too"? Where have *I* done it?

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This is what I believe, i.e. that ACists discuss things with generalities, respond to questions with more questions and use a lot of sloganeering.

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Generalities? Your entire paragraph there complaining about generalities IS NOTHING BUT GENERALITIES. NOT ONE SINGLE SPECIFIC ITEM. But *I* am the one engaging in sophistry. Right.

Sloganeering? Like "property is theft"???

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The important thing is that the classics were not merely "sloganeering". They had built up quite a case. One needs to go the gist of their arguments and try to refute them. Not dismiss the slogans.

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I think these arguments have been quite roundly refuted, by myself and others, in this forum a number of times. Noting the lack of recognition of scarcity in these arguments is IMO more than enough to show they are useless.

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If exposing inconsistent but slickly-phrased arguments is condescending and trollish, then guilty as charged.

[/ QUOTE ] So far you have done nothing of the sort. I briefly reported what the classics of anarchism believed. You dismissed them all as mere producers of slogans. You exposed nothing but contempt.

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I suppose the burden of proof is upon the party making a claim. If you want to claim property is theft, you're going to have to back that claim up. You haven't done so, so until you have, I'll just stick with the position that it's empty rhetoric (e.g. slogans).

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Oh and you asked one question, something like "who's the owner of all that public property". (Only it was rhetorical - right.)

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So what's the answer?