Yes, with qualification. There was no prior existing ownership claim on the land. But more important, the American oil companies recognized it as the legitimate owner, and made a voluntary contract with it to pay said revenues. I believe one must accept some particular situation and time as a legitimate starting point, ignoring the history prior to then. If you don't, it usually leads to an infinite regress such as: Well, X is not a legitimate owner because X did this, or X is not a legitimate owner because X acquired it from Y, who was not a legitimate owner, and so on.

It is the proper task of the government to protect individual rights and, as part of it, to formulate the laws by which these rights are to be implemented and adjudicated. It is the government's responsibility to define the application of individual rights to a given sphere of activity -- to define (i.e., to identify), not to create, invent, donate or expropriate. The question of defining the application of property rights has arisen frequently, in the wake of major scientific discoveries or inventions, such as the question of oil rights, vertical space rights, etc. In most cases, the American government was guided by the proper principle: it sought to protect all the individual rights involved, not to abrogate them.

A notable example of the proper method of establishing private ownership from scratch, in a previously ownerless area, is the Homestead Act of 1862, by which the government opened the Western frontier for settlement and turned "public land" over to private owners. The government offered a 160-acres farm to any adult citizen who would settle on it and cultivate it for five years, after which it would become his property. Although that land was originally regarded, in law, as "public property," the method of its allocation, in fact, followed the proper principle (in fact, but not in explicit ideological intention). The citizens did not have to pay the government as if it were an owner; ownership began with them, and they earned it by the method which is the source and root of the concept of "property"; by working on unused material resources, by turning a wilderness into a civilized settlement. Thus, the government, in this case, was acting not as the owner but as the custodian of ownerless resources who defines objectively impartial rules by which potential owners may acquire them. (Ayn Rand, "The Property Status of Airwaves," The Objectivist Newsletter, April, 1964)

Why is it bogus and why only individuals? Business corporations own property.

Did you really think that I was excluding business corporations from the category of "individuals"? If so, do you also believe that individual rights don't apply to corporations? For a refutation of the view that corporations are not voluntary associations of individuals, see Robert Hessen's In Defense of the Corporation.

Are you saying that a government is not even entitled to own the land where it operates, such as a courthouse or military base?

And imagine a collection of people, all utilizing "communal property", decide to form a local government and turn the "communal property" into government property. Would that be illegitimate?

John A. wrote:

No illegitimate government can lay claim to unclaimed land.

Don't you mean "should" instead of "can"? As written the sentence is clearly false, for the fact is that the Saudi government did so.

By no means can we consider the Native Americans prior to the establishment of the United States as having a legitimate government.

I have not claimed they had a legitimate government. It was you who introduced "legitimate", and I only probed to see what you meant by it. But since you seem to want to divert the discussion -- like to the govt of the Soviet Union and Cuba -- I can, too. Don't you think there are big differences between recognized and legitimate? Suppose you were to travel to a country with a government you probably regard as illegitimate, say, China. Would you refuse to recognize its rule about getting a visa or the commands of a Chinese policeman? :-)

I can't recall having read the term "legitimate government" in Ayn Rand's writing. In the excerpts in the Lexicon, subject Government, that term is not used. She did use proper government, but I doubt you'd say that any of the examples of governments you consider "legitimate" are "proper" in the strong sense she conveyed.

you used "legitimate" in a sense of protecting rights to an appreciable degree. In contrast the first time I used it was in post 14

Said companies regarded the Saudi government having some rights to any oil, else why would they have agreed to pay it?

As far as paying attention to a Chinese policeman, makes no difference whether that Chinese policeman is working for a legitimate government or not.

In other words, you would recognize the government, which is what the American oil companies did.

I am observing an enormous difficulty with applying the Law of Identity on this thread.

Saying that a totalitarian government is not a legitimate government, then claiming property rights for breach of contract as if it were a good government based on individual rights is nothing more than trying to impose wishful thinking on the world. Bad governments will not stop existing because someone wishes them to or doesn't think they are "legitimate" (which, as used here, is nothing more than a magic word like a magic spell that is supposed to miraculously change the reality of foreign governments). If oil companies decided to make a deal with a totalitarian government, they were not stupid. They knew what it was going in. If such a country is not legitimate, what the hell were the oil companies signing contracts for? They did so voluntarily. Were the oil companies somehow breaking the law? Which law?

Existence exists, folks. A is A and all that.

There is a Rand quote somewhere talking about this very point (Law of Identity and refusing to recognize the existence of totalitarian governments). In so far as it is possible for a government to be an entity, it is one (if I remember correctly, Rand called it an artificial entity or something like that). There are good entities and bad entities. I remember this point also being discussed in the same passage. I suppose I could find that quote later.

I have no problem with war when needed, although I hate it. I do have a big problem with going to war using property rights as justification for a case where voluntary business was transacted between a private company and a foreign government and jurisdiction was granted by the parties-to-contract to the foreign government. This breaches the Law of Identity at the root.

There is only one case where this would be admissible: if there were a contractual clause signed by the foreign government granting jurisdiction over the agreement to the USA government and the USA government formally agreed.

Michael

The principle in regard to the Saudis (and other Middle Eastern countries by the way...lets not only talk about the Saudis) is that they were not at all acting as proper custodians of the rights of others who came and created or mined or uncovered or developed wealth but were in effect -nationalizing- the assets for their own governmental profit.

John A.,

Your set-up with me as a farmer living in the Arabian penninsula ignores and deviates from the facts considerably. (Substituting the American oil companies for me would be trivial.)