Even if you rebut the state’s basis of ownership, however, it’s not clear how to deal with that fact: while you can return a stolen watch to its rightful owner, you can’t exactly “return” the sidewalk, with its rightful owners being so diffuse. Converting state-owned property to private ownership would seem to require major systemic changes, which, in my view, should precede abrogating the state’s (supposed) property rights all at once.

@Zeb: No I don’t think ownership gives the state ipso facto power to criminalize anything it wishes, but the responsibility of ownership (even illegitimate ownership, given the difficulties of making it legitimate) justifies exercising more state control over something than I would tolerate with regard to private property.

So, for example, suppose you are an artist who specializes in arrows, and you want to have an exhibit for your famous “Study in Arrows.” It’s your First Amendment right to put on such an exhibit at an art museum. But suppose you decide you can reach the common people by painting your arrows all over the highway, allowing them to enjoy the arrows on their morning commute. I think it would be right for the police to say, “no, you can’t paint your strange arrows on the highway.”

Your contention regarding the owner of the sidewalk having the right to decide terms of access and use begs the question. Libertarianism, if it is going to be a functional (small-p) political theory at all, has to come to grips with a legitimate theory of property ownership. It is *not sufficient,* as I think many unsophisticated libertarians do, to waive your hands at every existing State-recognized property claim and assume de facto justification.

Now, you might find Lockean or radical-Rothbardian homesteading to be the most persuasive; or you may tend more towards the (Benjamin) Tucker(ite) view of the purpose of property. But in any case (and there are other options available), you have to justify a property claims in terms of some theory of property rights.

And to be frank, I don’t see how the two principle doctrines of natural rights libertarianism: the Non-Aggression Principle and a consistent theory of libertarian property rights — can possibly be squared with State Ownership of anything. All State action is coercive, and all State action rests, at its core, on the use or threat of violence.

All consistent and principles libertarians are necessarily anarchists, and the State doesn’t own the sidewalks.

Moreover, part of the criminal justice system rests on the idea that it is the people handing out penalties for conduct they will not tolerate or disapprove of, and it requires a certain amount of inherent authority that I think can only come from government. Plus at least with the government there is the -ever fleeting - possibility that the citizens will not like what they see and fix it.