Right off the bat, I do not ascribe to NAP as a general system of governance/philosophy. I think it's way shittier than other types of government for most things. But the land claims homesteading principle is one thing it gets right. Not for any high faluting philosophical reasons, but simply because in practical terms, it's the only land claim system that doesn't lead to absurdly unintuitive or ridiculous conclusions.

As far as I can tell, there are five major principles people refer to on this server with regard to land claims. I will address each in turn:

1) Might is Right - claim whatever the hell you want, and you are justified as long as you can stab people well enough to keep them off your lawn.

The problem with this land claim principle is that it directly leads to conclusions that almost nobody would find acceptable. By this principle, if 10 HCF were to waltz into a small town like, let's say Saraliana, claim it, and then murder anybody who logs on and start grabbing and using all the stuff and remodeling the buildings, etc., then this should not be considered a crime by third parties. Because if you believe that one's ability to physically defend a claim makes it a just claim, then they would have JUSTLY claimed the area by being stabby enough to kill all the locals. There should be no reason for any third party to come seek retribution or justice, because they didn't do anything wrong under this principle.

2) Might is just a Fact - same as above, but making no claim that force makes it "right" or "just" but rather serving as a factual warning of violence to scare people off. In other words, the equivalent of a rattlesnake's tail.

This land claim principle does not suffer from the problem of condoning somebody like HCF reking your shit. But it does suffer from the opposite problem: by making no claim of justice or rightness, it means that whenever the state kills a "trespasser" they can be and should be still guilty of murder in the eyes of third party individuals. This means that if you claim land on this basis, and I walk in and build a town anyway, and you kill me, I should be able to rightly post an international bounty against you for murder. Which pretty obviously undermines the whole point of a land claim. If you don't think I should be justified in doing so, then that means you're saying you actually ascribe to principle #1 above, instead, which then carries its own problems (back to HCF being A-okay again.) You're stuck with absurd conclusions either way.

3) First Verbal Claim ("Dibs") - There is something special or justifiable about simply being the first to label an area as yours in and of itself.

The problem with this principle is that several people throughout the history of the server have claimed all unclaimed land, as early as a year ago. Therefore, if you ascribe to this principle, then you are obligated to support the absurd conclusion that multiple large, recent nations, for example Chanos, are completely illegitimate due to being built on purely already claimed land. Possibly even all nations' claims are illegitimate if some guy claimed the whole server a few minutes after launch, which they likely did. If you try to say that such all-world claims are silly or ridiculous, then you are admitting that verbal-only claims on empty land are illegitimate and unreasonable. And if you do recognize them, then you should be willing to support claims of vandalism and trespassing against places like Chanos by people like Ribagi.

4) Protection of Chat Radius - Claims of some amount of empty land are justified by protection from chat spam

First of all, this whole concept is pretty thin and bullshitty at face value simply due to the existence of "/ignore." Either you're the laziest, thinnest skinned person ever if you truly believe this to be a major imposition, or you're just using it as an excuse.

Second of all, this begs the question "1,000m around... what?" If it's 1,000m around empty land then see the associated problems above with that core land in the first place.

If it's "1,000m around developed builds" then that is potentially reasonable, however this brings us to the third problem: Violent defense of a claim based on protection of chat radius inherently implies that annoyance via chat is a reasonable murderable offense. If you are going to use it as a basis of murdering people for trespassing/building within 1,000 meters of your build, then you are implicitly saying that their chat spam was by itself sufficient reason to kill them. If so, then this implies you should ALSO be allowed to just casually kill any visitor somewhere that you want by default if they say ANYTHING, because chat in and of itself is murderably annoying on principle. It also implies that passing some guy on the road in the wildnerness, if he says "hi" on chat, you can murder him. Does anybody actually believe this? I'm guessing no.

And a FOURTH problem is that this ignores the possibility of somebody moving into chat radius of you but then never saying anything on chat (using private civchat instead). In which case your reason for prohibiting them evaporates. So how can you use it as a preemptive or universal claim? At best, it is only a claim against people who use chat.

5) Homesteading / Land Development -- your builds are your land (out to something like view distance since background is part of the aesthetics of a build)

This principle suffers from no absurd conclusions or internal inconsistencies. It can be consistently applied with little ambiguity. It is superior not because the heavens opened up and proclaimed it to be morally best, but simply because from a logistical / pragmatic point of view, it uniquely works all around. Without inevitable hypocrisy or any obviously ridiculous results unlike the other options.