Hi @aggroed - sorry for the delay in responding to this - it's a really interesting post, but my week's been a bit of a storm of deadlines.
I think it's great that you acknowledge and promote this principle. I certainly think that indigenous Australians would be inclined to agree, seeing as European colonisation was certainly not undertaken with anything resembling consent from those people who were most certainly here first (by quite a margin).
I'd be interested to hear where you stand on notions of the rectification of injustice. I don't know if you've read much Robert Nozick, but his idea of justice seems pretty similar/compatible with a lot of what you're taking about.
Basically, Nozick says:
- A person who acquires something fairly is entitled to it
- A person who has something transferred to them fairly is entitled to it.
- No one is entitled to anything except through repeated applications of (1) and (2).
This relies on three principles:
A principle of justice in acquisition - You are entitled to something, e.g.: natural resources, if no one has ever owned it before. This includes being first on the land as per the Homesteading Principle, but also the more general idea of mixing your labour with un-owned natural materials.
A principle of justice in transfer - you are entitled to something transferred to you by another person if and only if they transferred it to you fully voluntarily. (Thus Nozick was not a big fan of taxation).
A principle of rectification of injustice - People who have had their stuff/holdings/property etc. taken away from them in violation of the previous principles (e.g.: murder, mugging, looting, coercive tax regimes, illicit coercion in general, fraud, enslavement, theft etc.) have a claim against the beneficiaries of these injustices.
This principle of rectification is tricky to work out in historical cases, and Nozick himself never fully fleshed out the idea (to my satisfaction at least), perhaps this is why it's so often overlooked by people who claim to be in favour of the minimal state. Either way, it's a pretty sound idea - if you steal something, you aren't entitled to it, and the person you stole it from is entitled to get something (if not the original thing) back.
Wow, that was a little longer than I intended to write - maybe I should have just put it in a post! Anyway, I hope you make it far enough down the comments to at least see it.