Editing Homestead principle (section)

=== Ayn Rand ===
[[Ayn Rand]] did not elaborate on the characteristics of homesteading, but she expressed support for compatible laws such as favourably citing the ''[[Homestead Act]]'' (1862):
: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&nbsp;acre farm to any adult citizen who would settle on it and cultivate it for five years, after which it would become his property.<ref name=Rand-1964/>

: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.<ref name=Rand-1964/>