> It's also true that humans, generally, hold some innate concept of fairness which leads to us generally respecting each others property. The use of violence w

> It's also true that humans, generally, hold some innate concept of fairness which leads to us generally respecting each others property. The use of violence was only ever to handle the edge cases as a last resort. You have the argument backwards. Even in the old times one would not go and occupy house in a village or milk others' cows not because of some innate concept of fairness, but rather because of genuine fear of backlash resulting in violence of other villagers banding together. You can see the same thing in animal kingdom. Territorial animals do not cross into rival territories not because of innate concept of fairness (new leaders happily massacre offspring of previous leader), but rather threat of violence and resulting negative expected value of hunting in rival grounds. Property rights exist primarily because of force. To some extent states exist in order to apply force on ownership rights