Libertarians believe in self-ownership. But what about the ownership of external resources? Can individuals legitimately acquire permanent bequeathable property rights in land by “mixing their labor” with it? Or does putting a fence around a piece of land and calling it one’s own amount to an act of theft – stealing for oneself what properly belongs to mankind in common?

Next week, April 23-27, the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog will provide the answers to all these questions, and more!

Well, maybe not. But we’ll give it a shot! And we’ll have a lot of help from some terrific, exciting thinkers. Because next week is BHL’s first-ever symposium on the topic of “Libertarianism and Land!”

The five day event will explore different libertarian perspectives on questions pertaining to the moral justification of and limits on property rights in land. Each day will feature a keynote post from one of our main participants. The other main participants will have the opportunity to respond with posts of their own. We encourage our readers to participate in their own blogs, or in the comments thread here.

We have a terrific lineup for this event. Our main participants will be:

• Eric Mack – Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University
• Hillel Steiner – Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Manchster
• Fred Foldvary – Lecturer in Economics at Santa Clara University (with comments from Zachary Gochenour, graduate student in economics at George Mason University and Research Assistant at the Mercatus Center)
• Kevin Carson – Blogger and author
• David Schmidtz – Professor of Philosophy and Economics at the University of Arizona

Join us next Monday for the lead-off essay from Eric Mack. This is going to be a terrific conversation on a immensely important topic!

UPDATE: See here for an introduction to the symposium, author bios, and links to the papers as they appear.