I was addressing AndrewH’s assertion that one has not been deprived of any rights if the river from which he’s homesteaded a certain amount of water flow dries up due to his upstream neighbors taking the entire flow.
Yes, and I was saying that you haven’t refuted it to my satisfaction.
Yes it does- and you highlight the absurdity of prior appropriation water rights. If the drop could potentially find it’s way downstream into a river, I no longer have the right to do with it as I wish, while it is still on my property. This article (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123794222413232887.html) covers the appropriation or Colorado doctrine at work.
Well, do you own the actual land underneath the river? If so, yes you own any amount of water that enters your property and can do anything with it. If you do not own the land under the river, no you cannot use any water that has not crossed your property line. If each man owns land to the center of the river, both people can do with the water as they like, assuming it continues to flow on their land in the future.
A landowner must abstain from using water that is flowing across his property, beccause people downstream claim the right to use it- downstreamers force upstreamers to provide them with water. How is that not communal ownership, and enforcement of positive rights?
If a hunter appropriates some land, and a neighbor decides to build a strip mall and ends up killing all the wild game, the builder is not liable to the hunter. The hunter still has his land, and he has no right to force his neighbors to maintain habitat as to provide him with a steady supply of deer. The same is true for fisherman and farmers using water flowing off of a neighbor’s property.
What would satisfy you here?
An apt analogy would be someone sucking all the air out of their own property in such a way as to cause other property owners to lose their atmosphere… it’s not very realistic though.
No it doesn’t. I still don’t know on what property or properties outside of the river you think the water in the river resides on over a given length of time.
Here you’re attacking a strawman, as my position is not identical with the government’s view of prior-appropriation water rights.
Implicit in my hypothetical scenario was that I don’t own any part of the riverbed. However, I find it strange that you don’t think I’m allowed to use any water in the river in that case. By your position here, homesteading of anything isn’t allowed, because it must first be on someone’s property, and at that point it’s already owned by the person who’s property it’s on.
Let me also ask you this: do you think it’s permissible (let alone possible) to have use-rights over something without actually owning it?
If he doesn’t own any part of the riverbed, then no water in the river is flowing across his property. But how do you define “communal ownership” and “positive rights”?
In that situation, I don’t think the hunter appropriated land per se - I think he appropriated hunting rights over an area of land. If all the wild game gets killed off because someone else comes along and builds a strip mall, then yes, I’d consider the building of the strip mall to be an infringement on the hunter’s rights. It’s obvious to me that the hunter’s rights extend over a larger area of land than you think they do.
I think every property on earth would actually be the correct answer, but more realistically any property which encompasses any part of a watershed. Anyone who owns the smallest tributary is unable to use the water on their own land for the benefit of some distant, downstream, “original user”, parasite.
If your position is that of Rothbard’s (which I assumed it was), then there is no strawman. If it differs from the one that Rothbard presents ro if I have misinterpreted, please elaborate.
I thought homesteading defined how private property in land can legitimately arise. Land is the vessel for all natural resources, not the other way around. The first man to pump an aquifer does not own the entire aquifer, just a piece that he personally makes use of. The first man to use a hunting ground does not claim every inch of land the deer around him may migrate upon, just a piece of land that he personally makes use of. The first man to use a river does not own the entire river. A man does not homestead an entire resource, he homesteads a piece of land containing a resource. If the resource dries up, tough luck- that is a risk every landowner takes.
I have no idea what you are talking about.
Absolutely, but the rights must come from a voluntary agreement with a person who actually owns said resource. You seem to be implying that a first user of a riverbed should be allowed to “own” the flow of the entire waterway. That is, any upstream landowner cannot use their water in any way that will reduce the flow of the first user (parasite).
Now, Rothbard is absolutely right when he calls for the elimination of all requirements for “beneficial” use and for water to be be absolute property, not at the sufferance of the State. Rothbard errors by rejecting outright private property and favoring prior appropriation water rights, thus encouraging collective ownership and monopolization of potentially thousands of miles of river by the first user)
Complete privatization of rivers is preferable to Rothbard’s appropriation theory if a person favors capitalism and liberty.
During privatization, one option would be to extend all riverbed property lines to the center of the flow- much like Walter Block mentions property ownership extending to the center of a road when privatizing that arena.