State enforced property rights
Discussion
GA 🔍 🇧🇷
This an example of how truly fecked the #UK 🇬🇧 is right now. They're on a crash course of total and utter disaster.
I actually thought this 'squatters rights' law had long been abolished. Was pretty much under the impression that squatting residential buildings was an imprisonable offence(?)
I have some sympathy for squatting rights. If that "shameless squatter" moved into a run-down, abandoned house 20 years ago and wasn't noticed by the owner for another 10 years ... yeah, maybe it's ok that he should have some rights to the house.
This is a deeply subjective argument and this cannot ever have a law or set of rules around it that aren’t horrifically abused. And the idea that just because someone isn’t currently using it, then it suddenly belongs to anyone who decides they want it, is simply unworkable and in no way can ever have a sensible or moral
foundation.
If the squatter genuinely tries to contact the owner and fails then it's safe to assume the property is abandoned. It's owned by nobody, so homesteading applies.
The other extreme is owner moving to a different country, dying without hiers and the property is left unusable forever.
First case, and why does the onus fall on the owner to disprove that they tried to contact them or didn’t give them permission, and then they have to fight for how long in court when they want to use that property that they paid for? As soon as the owner returns and notifies the squatter, they should have to leave. They’ve been informed that it belongs to someone, and because they never in any way earned, traded for, built, or acquired the resources for it, therefore they lose any rights over it. Their free rent for however long they were there is just the luck of someone else not paying attention.
But the idea that the legitimate owner now has to fight someone in a court system that will cost literally 10s of thousands maybe 100s in money and cost years of their life while they pay taxes and continued costs of the property while someone who simply
took it will live in it for free is, frankly, ridiculous.
Your second case isn’t a property rights issue because nobody owns it. The govt is simply failing to account for a dead owner - that’s a clerical issue easily sorted when every bill ceases to get paid. If the govt wants to donate it to a squatter, then by all means. The govt had no legitimate right to it either, squatters rights win.
In shorter words,
Neither of case above is about property rights.
In the first you assume it’s abandoned, if that’s true then fine, if there IS an owner who wants them to leave then they have to leave.
While your second case is something no one owns.
It is about natural law, not the government.
Yes, if the owner wants them to leave they have to leave. But if the owner was not present for 20 years, made no protective measures and cannot be contacted, why should we assume the owner still wants the property? Especially in this age when you can have it connected to the Internet.
The conditions should be reasonably strict to avoid unjust property transfer, of course.
Then I will go to the bank of England and clam ownership on all these gold bar there are not using for so many years.
You can hire counter-squatters now. They use the same laws as the squatters to move in along side them, then act as obnoxious as possible.
This is literally insane. How is that not theft
Shameless judge.
State-enforced property rights is basically social usefulness.