Editing Homestead principle (section)

{{Short description|Legal principle regarding unclaimed natural resources}}
{{Other uses|Homestead (disambiguation)}}
{{use dmy dates|date=August 2021}}
{{use American English|date=April 2019}}
[[File:Kerbau Jawa.jpg|thumb|Under the homestead principle a [[farmer]] putting unowned [[Land (economics)|land]] to use gains [[ownership]] over it]]
{{liberalism sidebar}}

The '''homestead principle''' is the principle by which one gains ownership of an unowned [[natural resource]] by performing an act of [[original appropriation]]. Appropriation could be enacted by putting an unowned resource to active use (as with using it to [[Production (economics)|produce]] some [[product (business)|product]]{{efn|
The property-creating [[Production (economics)|"production"]] is almost always expected to be [[dirt farmer|dirt farming]]. Some forms of farming, e.g. [[ranching]] or [[pastoral farming|cattle grazing]], may be explicitly included or explicitly excluded by statute, or merely expected or not recognized by social or legal convention. Non-agricultural uses of land that ''may'' or ''may not'' confer ownership – depending on statute, or convention, or philosopher – include extraction of 'wild' or natural resources such as [[venison]], [[mast (botany)|mast]], [[timber]], or [[ore]], including mundane mining, such as [[gravel]] extraction.
}}),
joining it with previously acquired property, or by marking it as owned (as with [[livestock branding]]).

Homesteading is one of the foundations of [[Rothbardian]] [[anarcho-capitalism]] and [[right-libertarianism]].