So theft is ok? Jacques what if I saw your camper was unused for a few weeks and wanted to take it?

Land does not have to be owned by someone, much like we have no landlord or bank who rents out chunks of the air, or the sky (though we could just as easily have systems to assign "ownership" to those). OTOH when someone builds physical property like a camper van or house, that's slightly different.

Actually air is bought / sold. In cities like NYC the real estate above land is just as valuable as real estate connected to land. What ends up happening is someone can own the air above your building preventing you from building up.

If it's legal, it's probably not theft.

The great thing about supply and demand for land, is that when there is high demand for land, we can just make more of it.

... So, yes, that's how land differs from a camper.

You don't own land in Canada so much as purchase the right to use it for specific purposes under certain conditions; the land is owned by the Crown, which is our head of state.

I think your question gets at the salient point: I often think of the concept of "ownership" as black and white, I either own something or I don't. But in practice it's a gradient.

At one end of the spectrum, I pretty much own the clothes on my back and the items in my pockets. Sure, they're stolen occasionally in muggings (hasn't happened personally, knock on wood), but on the whole I spend no time in court or with police arguing over an ownership dispute about my underwear.

Any why is that? After all, my clothing is relatively nice and well looked-after, and the items in my pockets and on my person, including smartphone, wallet/cash, and watch are worth north of $1,000. If I were to leave the clothes and items in a bag on the sidewalk with nobody to look after them, the likelihood of their theft within the hour would skyrocket. So why am I not mugged every hour? Well, I think it boils down to the fact that I'm physically "there" wherever I go. Mugging me requires a certain level of brute force to make sure I don't fight back. Which is, relatively speaking, harder to come by than the effort required to pick up a bag of items when nobody is looking.

At the other end of the spectrum, let's say I own multiple properties in multiple locations. These real estate holdings can't be "stolen" in the traditional sense, but they can be occupied and used by people against my wishes. So how do I stop that? After all, I can only be physically present at any one property at a time. And even then, if it's a big property, I can only "guard" a portion of it. So how is it that I'm able to own all of these properties? It's the system of police and courts that makes this possible, and consequently I do spend a lot of time in court or with police arguing over contracts, tenant disputes, etc.

This "ownership" is only possible because of the system of laws and courts and police, paid for by the taxes of everyone. And so the voters that pay the taxes that allow these systems to work are naturally going to want a say in the matter. If I own a piece of land downtown, adjacent to a school and houses and office buildings, and decide to start pouring toxic waste onto it, the police and courts will not come to protect me while I'm doing so. They'll come to stop me. Even though I "own" the property.

And that's what's happening in Vancouver. These absentee property owners are not suddenly being deprived of their ownership. The change is actually happening right at the margin: the voters have decided they'd like to tweak the laws a bit so that the police and court resources they support aren't being spent to protect empty properties.

Now, is it right? Certainly I can see why the property owners are mad. They bought in expecting a certain set of laws to be enforced, and instead a new set is imposed. Which can also impact overall business and regulatory confidence. Delaware's popularity for incorporation is built upon its long history of changing its regulatory environment as little as possible, and trying to be as predictable as possible. But the situation in Vancouver is showing that there may be more latent unpredictability in regulatory and legal systems than is commonly thought.

He didn't say theft is okay. He said it deterred empty homes. However, I wonder if the home will be filled with security guards instead of real owners.

I guess it is slightly better that the foreign owner pay security guards American Dollars to protect his property than for it to sit empty.

Sure. House police officers and their families which frees up the normal properties those folks would be renting...

Yes. We had like 1000 squaters and 20.000 anti-squat people living in Amsterdam. Which proved the system worked :). Anti-squat: cheap living but with very little guarantees (can be kicked out on short notice). It was (and still is) quite popular.

Oh, and besides, cars (even affordable ones) aren't scarce here, affordable housing is so your comparison simply doesn't work.

Funny you should mention that, someone did indeed take it and it was only unused for a couple of hours. Oh well...

What gives you the right to own land that you didn't create and you didn't make valuable?

Property law. Good luck "sharing the land" peacefully with 8 billion people. Have you ever been a country without zoning laws (let alone property ownership)? It is chaos. Very little sharing to speak of. More like problems are settled with guns instead of contracts.

Property law in Canada is a little more subtle than "You bought it, you own it"; land is provided under grant by the Crown for specific uses under certain conditions, and that grant can be transferred by sale of ownership.

You don't own the land so much as you own the right to use it under strict provisions.

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/en/article/property-l...

And, even in the US, you still typically have to pay property taxes to maintain ownership, have to obey zoning laws, may need to maintain the property within certain conditions based on HOAs etc., probably don't own mineral rights, and certainly not airspace at least above a certain I'll-defined distance.

Counterpoint: Houston has very strong property ownership laws, but zero zoning, and it's doing just fine.

Adverse possession is part of that property law.

> Have you ever been a country without zoning laws

Harris County, Texas is a fair example of a "country" (1,777 sq miles, population 4.7 million) that has no zoning laws. They don't shoot each other any more than any other US city and it's a place where verbal contracts are still binding.

>Property law

Rights do not derive from law. Owning slaves used to be legal, but that didn't give slaveholders the right to own humans.

>Good luck "sharing the land" peacefully with 8 billion people.

It's straightforward enough. Tax the value of the unimproved land at 100%. Use the proceeds to build roads, treat the sick, dole out welfare, pay pensions, etc. and all the other stuff our governments already do that they apparently don't have enough money for.

All that is required is a tweak to property law that wrests control over a natural resource.

This would eliminate hoarding and share this huge wealth which is not created, but is captured by the ultrawealthy.

It is hardly theft, as it functions on a very different set of mechanics.

Look up adverse possession:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession

Why did the law change in 2010?