I noted previously that I’d like to write more about Allodium, in response to Orville Seymer left a comment on Why You Can’t Buy Allodial Title.  He suggests a book by John Cobin, Ph.D. and I was able to locate a PDF version of the book for $5.95.

Most states in the Union which have or had a clause in their constitution pertaining to Allodium (e.g., New York) have rescinded that section in whole or in part, because they determined that Allodial title is an antiquated notion.  It must be nice to make the laws, and determine that certain impediments to increasing one’s own arbitrary dominion, are “frivolous” or “antiquated.”

Much like the “frivolous” arguments against paying one’s taxes (PDF), (determined to be frivolous, of couse, by the same entity that levies and collects those taxes!) any constitutional provision quickly becomes “antiquated” when the governnment unilaterally decides to stop respecting it. Allodial title is “antiquated” becaues the government stopped respecting it.

According to the wikipedia entry on Allodial title,

[I]n the United States most lands are not allodial, as evidenced by the existence of property taxes

Fee simple is the highest form of ownership that any individual may generally attain in the United States. In the United States individuals cannot acquire Allodial title, because under what is essentially martial law, the Federal Government has declared itself owner of all lands, through the issuance of a Land Patent drafted and deemed sufficient by its own agents. The same Government which declares itself the rightful owner of all lands, is the arbiter who ultimately determines that you or I can’t own those lands.

There are some websites suggesting that an individual can assume the original land patent from the time when the Federal Government held land in trust for future conveyance. This looks to me very much like the spurious claims that one can record an affidavit renouncing the IRS at the local register of deeds. I doubt the applicability of these propositions with regards to one’s right to claim full Allodial title through secession (especially because they suggest that property taxes are a “contract” entered into between a landowern/tenant and the governing municpality), although the section explaining the difference between “real estate” and “land” is interesting.

Some people say that you can’t transfer or convey Allodial title to real property without it losing its Allodial status. This argument appears to be facially absurd: if you own the property as an outright freehold, you can do whatever you want with it. There is no other status to which it ought logically revert upon sale.  Then again, I’m not a legal scholar.

Some people say that Allodial title fell out of favor because it can’t be mortgaged for improvements since land held Allodially can’t be encumbered. That possibility, by itself, is only an explanation for why few properties are held in Allodium, it is not an explanation for the legal disregard of a centuries-old principle.

The current system of title and encumbrance and the governing jurisprudence is heavily influenced by the State’s laws. Any contest pertaining to this system also must be fought in one of the State’s courts. Accordingly, the State could refuse to recognize as valid, certain mortgage contracts, to the final effect of creating a disincentive to lend to Allodial titleholders.  I have no idea whether this is historical fact, or not, but I see no reason why an owner of Allodium couldn’t put up his property as collateral for a loan.

There are probably about a dozen ways that you could work around this detail through contracts and joint ownership in a free society, as long as you expunge the patently retarded notion that Allodial title can’t be conveyed; there is no reason a proper conveyance couldn’t occur if both the grantor and grantee wished it to remain a freehold, and there’s little reason to believe they wouldn’t.

If Allodial title can’t be conveyed, it’s because the State refuses to accept such conveyance as legitimate.  If the State can exercise this sort of overarching ownership interest, title is not really held in Allodium to begin with. The State cannot permit Allodium; doing so would invalidate its fraudulent claim of monopolistic ownership pertaining to all land within its arbitrarily defined, violently created and maintained borders.