I know that the reason fish stocks have been abused is because of a lack of property rights. However, how could you prevent overfishing. Surely, people can only own areas of water, because it would be impossible to monitor individual schools of fish.
Does this mean that the depletion of fish stocks is just one of those things without a solution under a free market system?
How does the state prevent overfishing?
They don’t to any major extent - although they have in some rare cases helped preserve certain species - but I was more wondering whether the free market could, rather than saying that the state did.
Okay. What I was getting at with my question is that there’s no way to prevent overfishing in the sense of guaranteeing that it’ll never be done. The future is always uncertain.
in new zealand its a quota system.you can buy a quota for a type of fish then fish it.most of the fishing industry investment is owning quota.if a stock goes down the the owners of the quota ask for reductions.as far as i know its been better the fish are the object of property.no fish stock crashes in 30 years.sealords is the biggest fishing company in the world now under this system.i really cant see how owning part of the ocean could work unless it was a massive area. talking thousands of km in which Many fish travel.but if that were so it could work well.
What about tagging with tracking devices?
“Surely, people can only own areas of water, because it would be impossible to monitor individual schools of fish.”
On the one hand, that may be just life - similarly to a hunting preserve, you can’t avoid the fact that the animals move elsewhere. And if you overfish, there may not be a migration next year so you’ll lose out. That still runs into the tragedy of the commons issue, so perhaps the market can do better.
One way would be contracting with other owners about how much they can fish while the schools of fish are on their “land”. While tracking individual fish may be pointless, schools might be trackable via satellite or similar means, which would make sure somebody doesn’t abuse the system.
Finally, perhaps you could actually keep the fish in one place - either via rewarding them by feeding, or fencing them in with actual fences (air bubbles might be enough to deter the fish). As a more exotic solution, smart creatures like dolphins could be trained to shepherd the schools and make sure they don’t get out of of their ‘pastures’. Think of all the ways sheep could be kept even if no fences are built - up to breeding (or genetically modifying…) them so they trust their owners more.
I think aquaculture is quite popular these days. Might be more so if it were easier to own pieces of coastal ocean.
Yeah, we have a quota system in Ireland too. But this wouldn’t really be practical in a free society. Plus, it’s a terrible system. Fishermen often catch over the quota on a good day (not purposefully), and are then forced to dump the dead fish into the sea. Every year tons of perfectly good fish are dumped into back into the sea after they have died.
I think your right on the trajedy of the commons issue.
On the other hand, all of your solutions are way to costly.
is that not a crime in iceland.if you catch a fish your paying here.any at risk fish here orange roughy for exp cost more to catch than sell.but its easy not to catch fish .i do think if oceans could be owned in large areas it would be ideal for a free country.my question would be how do you home stead the ocean.