| | Brandon,
The first part of your post got cut off. (You should edit again.)
I get the general gist of what you are asking, so I will merely point you in a general direction, rather than talk about ownership of oceans and stuff like that at this stage.
Try to buy a copy of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. It is not very expensive and it is full of information on the moral bases of ownership, production and distribution. I would suggest you start with two essays at the end, "Man's Rights" and "The Nature of Government," that were added as Appendices (originally from The Virtue of Selfishness).
At this stage of your understanding, you probably will not understand them completely, but after you read the rest of the book, then reread them. They will mean much more.
I would wager that many, many, many of your doubts of this nature will then be cleared up. But then if you have more doubts, you will be able to specify them within a framework.
One comment, though. The primitive idea of ownership comes from staking out something like a piece of land, proclaiming ownership and backing it up with force against encroachers. Some call it starting with a crime, but that is nonsense since you must have a government to have a crime.
Once you get into capitalism (as understood by Objectivism), an ethical base has already been established so that this type of ownership is not enough.
Anyway, that should be an excellent start for you.
Michael
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