In reply to Prof. Salerno:

1.  Essentially, two positions have been put forward regarding the
correct libertarian attitude toward public property.

a.  There is the view put forward by Salerno, Hoppe, and others that
so long as public property exists, the de facto controller of the
property (I can't tell who this is -- the state, the majority, the
most local unit of government have all been suggested) can and
may prescribe rules for the use of that property just as if the de facto
owner were the legitimate owner.

b.  The view I have put forward, which is that public property should
be treated as unowned property in a state of nature.  Hence, the only
rules that apply are the same rules that apply in a state of nature:
people may not aggress against other people; may not take their
legitimate property; and may not stop them from homesteading unowned
property.

The argument against my view, so far as I can tell, is simply that
it would lead to chaos.  People would quit wearing clothes, try
to sell soccer balls on the NJ Turnpike, etc.  I answer that...
   i.  For standard coordination game reasons, most such bizarre uses
of public property are highly unlikely.  No one will set up tents on
the Turnpike because they would get run over.  Most people won't run
around nude because they would be embarassed.  (The latter is subject
to empirical proof -- in Berkeley the failure of the city to arrest
the Naked Guy did not lead to a breakdown in the wearing of clothes,
even among drugged-out Berkeley residents.)
   ii.  Moreover, you are merely pointing out the negative effects of
respecting people's right to use unowned property in bizarre ways.
But why should the negative effects have any bearing upon their right
to do so?  It has no more relevence from a rights-based perspective than
the negative effects of promoting illegitimacy. 
   iii.  Finally, strictly adhering to my view would have the effect
of making privatization vastly more attractive.  You, in contrast,
seem to want to do everything possible to make public ownership "work."
I see nothing nihilistic in wanting to see illegitimate methods of
ownership become very unattractive to everyone.  It would only be
nihilism if I wanted to see legitimate methods of ownership become
unattractive, which I do not want to do.


My argument against the "de facto owner can treat public property like
private property" is rather stronger than the worry that nudists will
run amuck.  My argument is that your principle would justify every
and all acts of state intervention which ever occurred and ever will
occur.  In short, your argument is compatible with (although it does
not necessarily imply the advocacy of) the most hellish forms of
totalitarianism which can be imagined.  For example...

   i.  The Nazi Party, the de facto owners of Germany's streets,
declares that Jews may not travel on German streets, nor enter
German airports, nor German ports.  Nor may anyone travelling on
Germany's roads, airports, or ports do so with the intent of supplying
goods to Jews.  Your principle thus gives the Nazi Party a foolproof
means of starving all Jews to death.

   ii.  The government of the U.S., the de facto owners of the streets
of the U.S., declares that no libertarian may use the streets, except
for the purpose of leaving the country.  Your principle thus gives
the U.S. government a foolproof means of enforcing the mass expulsion
of people based upon their political beliefs.

   iii.  The government of the U.S.S.R., the de facto owner of
everything in the Soviet Union, declares that no member of the 
bourgeoisie may use ANYTHING in the country.  Your principle thus
gives the CCP a foolproof method of exterminating undesired social
classes.

I will leave aside the tenuousness of the "de facto ownership" concept.
Suffice to say that if de facto ownership justifies whatever rules
the de facto ownership chooses to enforce, then there is every
reason to acquire de facto ownership by any means necessary.  Thus,
if the South asserts de facto ownership of public property in the South,
the North can acquire the "right" to rule the public property of the
South merely by successfully crushing the de facto Southern owners.

In short, while my view of public property justifies some minor
inconveniences, your view justifies ANY status quo whatever.  Of
course, you need not favor the aforementioned murderous uses of
public property by de facto owners.  But as I am sure you know,
advocating an action and advocating a person's right to perform an
action are two conceptually distinct advocacies. 
--------------------------------------------------------
Secondly, I wish to answer this charge of "nihilism" and "seventies-
style libertarianism."

I cannot directly comment upon what libertarians were like in the
1970's because my youth precludes it.  I have however intensely
studied many of the libertarian periodicals of the period, from
the Journal of Libertarian Studies to Reason to Libertarian Forum,
and I judge it to have been a time of great progress for libertarian
scholarship along a number of dimensions.  If it was a period of
drug-induced stupor and hatred of the good for being good, I can only
assume that this was not reflected in much libertarian writing.
(Incidentally, a large fraction of the sympathy for the left-wing
counter-culture came out of Rothbard's Libertarian Forum.)   

Finally, I come to the charge of "nihilism."  If someone says that
X is good and I say it is bad, you can hardly accuse me of nihilism.
Even if I am wrong, I do not want to destroy the valuable qua valuable.
What you actually mean, I think, is that I disagree with you about
what is valuable.  For example, if I want to see public property
abolished, it is not nihilism unless I simultaneously hold that
public property is good.  And I don't.

Incidentally, the same goes, a fortiori, if I declare that religion,
nationalism, and deference to tradition are evil.  It is not nihilism
because I attack them in the name of other positive values in which
I do believe.