crack is hell of a drug, E...
Ok, if you expect a serious legal answer how things SHOULD work, then you are still in a statist mindset. No anarcho-libertarian knows how something will look like or work in a free society and I pity those who will fall for yet another trollish topic.
Actually I see no point in this thread other than speculating how many angels can be put on a tip of a needle. The most important thing is knowing basic principle. It is NAP.
"In a libertarian society supposedly no one should care how you want to use property, so it follows any ridiculous reason for the use of land can be sufficient to make a claim."
you're being silly. Your intelligent reason can be mine version of ridiculous and vice versa. Who cares? It's like being jealous of people who have more money than you do. Who cares about reasons? Most important thing is action. Are you using land, or just "claiming" to use it in an ambiguous future?
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
MaikU,
How big is the needle? I need more information.
I'll ignore your usual sarcasm and insults and point you to the following issue. The state can disappear tomorrow. It really can happen, it already happened in Somalia and in other places. In such scenario, we as libertarians will have to give practical solutions to homesteading conflicts.. I personally can't phantom a solution that supports freedom and non-aggression principle that will not include a fair distribution of sorts.
Regarding the use of land, as I said "use" can be considered anything, from using the land to draw huge circles of sand on it, to watching stars in total silence. What if I tell you that I use the land for a religious ritual that requires me to run undisturbed 16 hours a day until I die but never visiting twice the same area. This will require thousands of kilometers of land.
You are confusing use and claim. Use is established by activity ... whatever you are actively using something for is its use. Claiming that you intend to use something in such and such a way is not use, it is just a claim based on planned or intended use.
The particulars of homesteading are unimportant and will vary widely depending on the type of resource and its location on the globe. What is important is the principle that not all claims are created equal. Planting a flag and asserting that all dirt continguous to the flag pole is now your sovereign domain is a much less substantial claim than actually living on the land your whole life and engaging in trade and other productive efforts with your neighbors.
This is so obvious that it's kind of embarrassing that it even needs to be said but the long influence of the State order on human history and human thought has perverted people's ability to think clearly even about such elementary issues. The King's rights-claims are mostly based on dual law (one law for the King, another law for everyone else). But in order for these rights-claims to be plausible, people must generally accept distorted ideas about what constitues a valid property claim. In particular, your birth must be taken into account. Those who are born into royalty or nobility are entitled to make property claims which those who are born common are not entitled to make.
Of course, the whole damn thing is completely silly and childish and is based on magical thinking. But it survives intact in our supposedly modern institutions of representative government, and so on. We've just tweaked the labels and rearranged things a little bit but the essential features are all there.
Hence, the solution to your problem regarding "how do people in a newly free society establishing homesteading rules?" is to inform people about the true nature of their rights as human beings. Government rights-claims are one-and-all illegitimate because they are not universalizable, that is, they are based on privileges that depends on who you are. There is a word for this: hypocrisy. So, simply pointing out the hypocrisy of the State order is to solve it. When people see that who you are is not a valid argument in making a rights-claim, the customary law that emerges regarding homesteading will be more fair than what we have today.
Clayton -
My point is this:
In a free market society no one cares how you use your property. But with regards to homesteading soddenly this becomes an issue, because an unhomesteaded property is like public property, it is limited and has potentially many claimants. That's why there is a sort of socialism when it comes to the allocated of unhomesteaded resource.
Eugene, How big is the needle? I need more information.