[lisper]

> Your construction is "ownership of a car equals the right to restrict who gets to drive the car."

No. Ownership (IMO) includes the right to restrict. It's necessary, but not sufficient. But the converse is not necessary. It is not necessary that I be able to allow anyone to drive my car in order to say that I own it. I can't, for example, allow an unlicensed driver to drive my car, but that doesn't mean I don't own my car.

> you instead countered with "ownership of a gun equals the right to restrict how it can be used."

No, you got this backwards. Ownership stands even in the face of (some) restrictions on how it can be used.

[dalke]

Consider the statement "the government owns all bottles of vodka, but it allows you to control it within certain limits"?

Is that statement invalid? If so, how?

I believe your thesis, and in my words, is that in Norway "the government owns all land, but it allows people to control parcels of land within certain limits."

I have a hard time coming up with a good definition which says the first is incorrect but the second is correct.

[lisper]

The statement is not invalid, it just doesn't fit my intuition of what ownership means.

[dalke]

One of the conjectures, regarding the freedom to roam in Norway, Sweden, etc., is based on the observation that these lands never had serfdom. It may be that your intuition is based on feudal principles, echoing a feudal lord's objection to the monarch's control.

While an enticing conjecture, I suspect the relative population sparsity of those countries, where property damages of the right to roam are within the capacity of the land to handle, is a greater reason.

Examples involving consumable or personal goods, like a car or bottle of vodka, don't have the same capacity.

As a related example, in Minnesota and likely elsewhere, boaters may use the lake surface even though the lake bottom is jointly owned by all of the landowners surrounding the lake. (See http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/publications/waters/Pardon_Me_M... .)