The fact that no voluntary stock purchase occurred is irrelevant. The common areas are jointly-owned and that’s the state’s fault. It’s a fait accompli, as I believe the term goes. To begin to enjoy the benefits of ownership, control of the asset has to be established.

Voting on what someone can do with their own property, by people who are not the owners of the property in question, is an act of aggression if that vote is backed by force. Among co-owners of a jointly-held parcel of property, though, it’s an entirely different matter. If the majority getting their way with the property they co-own with the minority is supposedly wrong, then the minority getting their way with the property they co-own with the majority would be JUST AS WRONG (not more wrong since rights aren’t additive).

The reality of a revolutionary situation likely will be such that people will either reconcile themselves to cooperating with their neighbors, figure out terms for an amicable property “divorce” or prepare for life to get really interesting and potentially very short. I imagine things will look a lot like a full employment program for excess lawyers — lots of talks, bargaining, disputes and arbitration.

Just as it would be an aggression for one person to eject people of his choice off of a common road, it is aggression for a group of people to eject people of their choice off of a common road, whether that group comprises a minority or majority. Likewise, it is aggression for a faction who is merely the highest bidder to eject people off its choice off of a common road. And, remember that the drug dealers are also equal owners of the common areas. By not allowing them to use the common area, you’re violating their ownership rights. There was no prior agreement or condition to allow majority rule or highest bidder rule.

You’re making a statist leap when you say that because these are common areas, that the MAJORITY, ought to be able to dictate who is allowed in these common areas. Again, that would be forced democracy. Precisely because they’re common areas, universal consent would be required. The only exception would be a prior contract accepted universally by all common owners to allow the majority or the highest bidders to rule the common area. Anything else is no different than statism.

“If someone has to travel a public road to get to a private home…”

…please refer to comment number eight by me.

My own comment directly above this is a reply to a missing comment by Devon. I’ll repost it here below:

That’s a false analogy. When you buy a stock share you are entering into a collective arrangement. When someone buys a house they’re not buying a share of collective ownership of everyone else’s property. To say that it is legitimate for some, or even a majority, of homeowners in your neighborhood to pay to have roaming policemen forcibly preventing the pizza delivery guy from coming to your house is forced collectivism. That’s exactly that individualist anarchism is against.

What has *actually* been going on, as described in the article, is that drug dealers have been using the common areas of the neighborhood as if those were their own place of business. I’m asserting that the common areas of the neighborhood are rightfully the joint property of the residents (in ethical terms, regardless of the State calling them “public property”) and that nascent associations with (in aggregate) just claims can assert those claims, to include evicting itinerant recreational pharmaceutical peddlers, with a simple majority of the joint owners.