States cannot own property
The state can’t have a property right in anything, because none of the ways that it comes to control land are actually valid ways for an individual or other group to legitimately take ownership of property.
1. By buying the land from previous owners. Since usually States must be financed by taxes (stolen money), any acquisitions made by States are illegitimate. Even in the States of old that did not tax, they were still coercive monopolies on protection (that is, they violently prevent anyone from competing with them in the rendering of protection). Thus, we cannot claim that the money they obtained was legitimate — they wouldn’t have obtained that much if not for violently preventing competitition.
2. By decree. Unoccupied land is “declared” to belong to the State. This is not a legitimate way to come into ownership of land. To obtain a property right over something, you must first homestead it. Simply pointing around yourself in a 360-degree circle and saying “mine” doesn’t constitute homesteading. Actually working the land does.
3. By conquest. This is outright robbery.
4. By emminent domain. Again, outright robbery, except of the States’ own citizens.
5. By actually “working” the land. Still, this does not give a property right. Working land is one requirement for coming into ownership of it. The other requirement is that the tools you use to work it were rightfully yours in the first place. If I steal your plow to work a plot of land, that plot of land isn’t legitimately mine. If I enslave you to plow a plot of land, that land isn’t legitimately mine. In short, it is impossible for States to homestead land.
Entirely true, in fact this is the argument I use to justify the end of work hierarchies and the worker takeover of all corporations.
[...] evicting him from the land because they claim to own it. Of course this is ridiculous, because as others have pointed out before, the State cannot legitimately own property! For a thorough primer on this [...]