Suppose a farmer uses water from an aquifer (stretching for 10 kms) for many years for his crop. Then comes a company which drains the entire aquifer (using a series of deep weels 10 kms away from the farm), leaving the farmer without water source at all. Do you think the company should have the right to drain the water from the aquifer or not? Did the farmer homestead the entire aquifer or perhaps he homesteaded a particular supply of water per month?
I feel like this has been discussed and answered a hundred times on here.
No, I think that a bureau in Washington should be able to decide who gets water and who does not. Furthermore they should allow any lobbying to take place. That way these folks can get rich and participate in lavish parties complete with professional escorts and lots of illegal drugs that no law enforcement would get near for fear of losing their water. And yes this is not without precedent.
Now what do you think is the more liberty oriented way to distribute resources: Homesteading or My idea? I prefer mine except for the drugs and the escorts.
Bogart you didn’t read the post. That was not my question.
" I think that a bureau in Washington Brussells should be able to decide who gets water and who does not. "
Fixed that for ya. Gotta think global, man.
Clayton -
Not Brussels, the lizards live in underground caves.
Obviously government is not the answer. There are 3 options in free society to define property rights in aquifers:
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Everyone can use the aquifer without limitation
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You can own the entire aquifer
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You own a specific supply of water from the aquifer
My question is which definition is more to your liking.
@Eugene: I’ve been over this with you like 100x. No one on these boards AFAIK are specialists in aquifer-property-rights law. It is really for the affected parties to hammer out what are reasonable rights. Over time, many such disputes and agreements will result in case law that reflects what sorts of solutions are generally workable or not - reflecting both the technical and the legal aspects of the problem.
While non-experts in aquifer law can do little more than speculate and build castles in the air on this topic, as a matter of social theory we can outline the consequences of monopolized, centralized law systems versus free market arbitration on the nature of aquifer-property-rights law or any other kind of law. The former will be rigid, will not serve the interests of the parties involved, will be corrupt and will be skewed toward the rights and interests of the politically connected over those who are not politically connected. The latter will reflect the actual interests of the parties involved.
If you’re really curious, I’m sure there is case law on this matter and I’m sure there are law journal articles that cover it. It’s a relatively obscure area of law so, apart from whatever environmental rights statutes might be affecting it, it’s probably actually a fairly good case-study in how law really works (people working out their disagreements and finding reasonable middle-ground). While monopoly law is still distorted, in the case of two non-State entities engaging in legal dispute in a relatively apolitical area of law, it’s much less distorted than most of the rest of the law is.
Go thou and study and find out!
Clayton -
I don’t think the company would have the right to drain the entire aquifer. But I think the farmer homesteaded only a certain rate of flow from the aquifer.
Autolykos, I agree. I think that’s the most reasonable solution.
Clayton, currently many states resolve these issues through war, economic sanctions, or threats. The “free market” of ideas and conflict resolution mechanisms has brought us the almighty state and constant wars. Non monopolistic conflict resolutions between gangs in the mafia or between people in Somalia also many times ends in violence.
I really have no interest in learning from what exists today. People today don’t understand or believe in property rights.
“I really have no interest in learning from what exists today. People today don’t understand or believe in property rights.”
Well, there’s your problem. If what exists today means nothing to you, then you are no student of human nature and you can, thus, have little to teach others about peace which, after all, is a human state of affairs.
And of course people believe in property rights. They have always and everywhere believed in property rights. There is no civilization in darkest Africa or remotest island that has not had property rights. There were property rights in the Soviet Union and there are property rights in North Korea. It is a mistake to look at the insane and contradictory rhetoric of anti-human statists and imagine that this is somehow indicative of a real suspension of human nature. It is not.
So, you need to ask yourself, why are property rights so weak in a world filled with human beings that intuitively grasp the basics of property rights?? How can such a state of affairs have been brought about?
Clayton -
And what is your answer for that?
Eugene, watch the documentary called Flow, and that may help you.
I don’t believe you can homestead matter that you have never touched and that is beyond you control. Therefore you can’t homestead a “flow rate”. So water rights always go to he who first controls each individual particle of water.
So to you BP didn’t really do any wrong when they took away the livelihood of thousands of fishermen and others? Do you believe that a river could be rerouted and everybody who was downstream should have no reason/right to complain?
I don’t know what happens in a “free society”, but in a real world society the aquifer will be used by anyone able to mobilize enough resources in order to secure his claim to use the aquifer.
In some societies, these resources can be a bunch of goons.
In others, a bunch of lawyers, and contracts that are recognized by courts, who can in turn mobilize other means to enforce the right of the claimant, insofar as these means seem necessary.
Elric - Yes, I believe BP did harm. And yes, everyone always has the right to complain.
If I use up the water that you ‘need’, that is not my problem. That is your problem. Your recourse is to obtain water through trade or to go above me and divert the water for your own use.
If a water works building war threatens to become expensive, we should setup a contract that defines our water rights with regard to each other.
I don’t think homesteading “flow” is a viable option. What happens if you ‘homestead’ all of a creek’s flow. Then if I build upstream of you, I have no right to ANY water from the creek and I must purchase water from you downstream. Now, what sense does that make?
I guess I’m not sure what you mean by “make sense”, Dude6935, because it makes perfect sense to me.
In that scenario, I don’t even have a right to the water that rains on my roof since that flow is already owned by someone down stream. It does not make sense to me that one can homestead a right to the rain water that falls on another man’s property or to water that could be hundreds of miles away in a part of a creek that the claimant has never laid eyes on.
Homesteading is a process of gaining ownership of property. A flow rate is not property. You can’t homestead water that hasn’t even been created yet.
Funny you should say that…
Man Arrested For Collecting Rainwater On His Property
If that’s not ridiculous, I don’t know what is. It’s about as stupid as the man charged with violating interstate commerce laws for raising and using his own chicken feed.
Yeah. Homesteading right now as a theory needs work. There are some areas where it’s problematic. Like what if you wanted to homestead a natural area and preserve its natural character. Also, water-flow rights will be more and more important, because of seasteading. The question of what rights do you have to, for instance, yearly fish travels through your property?
Personally I think the solution is ad hoc organization. Take all the people who live alongside the river and form an ‘adhocorg’ for all river owners, all the way up and down, and we would say that each owner has a corporate share in the water, and perhaps in the moving fish stocks too, and it can be managed thereby as a group, there’s an organization to go to in case of pollution, in which case the entire group would sue the polluter all the way downstream. And either everyone could agree to take X amount, or some could pay the rest to take more water if it’s not returned, etc.
Ultimately it’s ad-hoc-orgs + arbitration that will replace the action of government in a free society!