First, I want to share with you a rather interesting piece of material regarding the topic of violence and private property titled “The Political Concept of Freedom“. The author argues that property rights always have a violent origin, as violence must be applied to maintain them.
Before providing my commentary, I will note in advance that we are considering both the private property rights of individuals and companies (supported by the right-libertarians) as well as collective property rights formed within voluntary associations (supported by the left-libertarians). However, we dismiss the situation in which property rights do not exist at all, because in such a state of affairs, it would be impossible to organize any effective redistribution of resources to solve various tasks, since then absolutely anyone could take any resource from anyone else at any moment regardless of the circumstances.
If the matter concerns the protection of immediate property, which you use frequently or are holding in your hands right now, there is no problem in maintaining it—you would have to be attacked with physical harm (or at least with a non-zero probability of such harm) for it to be taken. If violence as a phenomenon has not yet been eradicated from society, then you can quite reasonably use means of self-defense. By the way, they do not even have to be lethal; they could be pepper sprays, stun guns, ultra/infrasound. It will be sufficient to inflict only very unpleasant sensations on the aggressor, without long-term physical consequences, to force them to let go of your bag or leave the house. If violence has been eradicated, then simply no one will attack you.
Regarding the protection of remote property—this too can be organized without violence, for example, by applying the following methods described by Bitarch in his material “Protection of Property in a Society that has Eradicated Violence“:
1) A contract within a contractual jurisdiction (CJ), under which the CJ will make certain efforts to prevent the violation of your property rights. The most obvious option for real estate is a contract between the CJ and utility providers (electricity, gas, water) regarding their disconnection in case of squatting or non-payment of rent.
2) Physical fencing of property with a fence and an access control system: a barrier, a door with an electronic lock.
3) For situational protection, when the owner wants to prevent anyone from entering their territory (for example, angry workers who want to seize a factory), a guard at the entrance or a human chain.
4) For any items containing electronic components (from planes, yachts, and cars to household appliances, phones, and headphones), blocking use without entering an access code, retina scan, fingerprint, or RFID tag.
5) Network-based reputation systems (available globally via the internet), where violators of private property can be listed, which would lead to denial of service, boycott, or ostracism.
6) A system of options. This is already widespread in Silicon Valley IT companies. The hired employee is financially interested in the success of the enterprise; they will profit from the growth of the company’s capitalization and are not interested in stealing the employer’s property, as under the terms of the contract, these options will be forfeited in the event of illegal actions by the employee.
As we can see, the protection of property does not necessarily require violence, except perhaps in the case of the immediate seizure of property that you are using at that moment; however, this is already an aggressive attack on you, in which case self-defense is permissible. Property rights and violence are not necessarily one and the same.
