Property rights in a lake

Economics Political Theory
21

That’s not what property means tho. If you discover a value on your property you didn’t know was there, it’s still yours. That’s why when people discover oil on their property they end up millionaires selling it to others. If a gold vein is discovered under your property, it’s yours, in theory.

Currently we think of property in two dimensions, but we need to come to think of property in three.

You own a defined space, with the right to dispose of values on that space and keep others out. The water flowing through that space is a condition of that property, which you may dispose of as you like while it’s on your property, as long as you’re not materially damaging the property of the person next to you for whom flowing water is also a property contingent on it flowing through yours first. Just as the guy upstream from you shouldn’t pollute water coming into your space.

I think of fish ranging through as a similar quality: a condition of that property, which is diminished is harm to your property.

But suppose we were in space, with asteroids flying through our property continually and we built an asteroid catching facility to mine metals. Asteroids flowing through is why we bought that space, and without that we would never have built our facility. So that, if anyone bought space next to us, “up-asteroid-stream” as it were, and blocked all incoming asteroids, they’ve clearly harmed us materially. Asteroids flowing through are a property of that property.

And suppose we discover some invisible black hole on the property that ends up being fabulously valuable. We’re free to sell it–tho we have no mixed our labor with it.

22

I do find problems with my own argument similar to what you mentioned, but yours is also flawed:

if anyone bought space next to us, “up-asteroid-stream” as it were, and blocked all incoming asteroids

You’re saying you have the right to all asteroids that will ever fly through the space? So if some asteroid is coming from 4x10^10 kilometers away (8 times Pluto’s radius) and I choose to mine it, I am violating your rights?

That’s like saying that if I trap rainwater in Colorado I violate the property of a lake owner in India because the specific water will now not get to him.

I think it might actually be useful to abandon the idea of property in expected use. For example, while I fish in a pond and thus gain an easement to it, I do not gain an entitlement a certain amount of catch from the lake. I simply gain the right to make whatever use I can of the lake.

23

That’s a good point but abandoning property is not the answer. The answer is that the owner of that property must claim a large enough amount of space that there’s effectively no upstream–or claim it all the way to the source of the asteroids.

Once you have a 21st century definition of propety which includes 3D boundaries and moving boundaries, there’s no reason why you can have doughnut-shaped properties. You want to own an entire asteroid belt? No one else disputes the claim? Feel free.

I don’t mean our asteroid belt in our solar system, many would want a piece of that action and make claims as well.

This is an interesting challenge tho, as I’m not sure even that my solution to it is perfectly desireable.

Clearly, if you have a river coming through your land (on earth) and someone dams it upstream from you, they have materially harmed your property which had river access as a condition of that space. I see no reason to not see asteroid flow as exactly analogous to water flow through a property.

I suppose defining asteroid flow more exactly would help. Say we owned a defined section of an asteroid ring around a large planet, and maintained a mining facility on the edge of it. We only need enough space-property to contain our facility and operations, allowing for ship travel and the section of the ring that we intend to actively mine, which is likely transverse to the ring.

We chose this section because asteroids are travelling through it at high density, as they revolve around a planet.

Now, in this situation, would you be harmed if someone else mined an asteroid out of that ring adjacent to you? No. That would be like taking a cup of water out of a stream upstream from you. It wouldn’t be missed.

But if someone redirected the flow of asteroids entirely, thus rendering your entire mining operation moot, you’d be harmed just as surely as if you had a million plant that relied on water-flow to turn the million wheel by the side of a river.

24

there’s no reason why you can have doughnut-shaped properties.

You mean “can’t”?

I don’t like your conclusions. I agree with easements insofar as them giving you the right to fish somewhere, but not the entitlement to the have a good catch.

When I said “it might actually be useful to abandon the idea of property in expected use” I wanted to use grammatical syntax parallel to “property in ideas” to mean “you don’t have property in expectations.” As in when you invest in a businesses, you don’t have an entitlement to a good return. This good return is an expectation. You have no property rights in these expectations, so if they are taken away, all is good.

The answer is that the owner of that property must claim a large enough amount of space that there’s effectively no upstream–or claim it all the way to the source of the asteroids.

If he does indeed do that (and actually homestead it) then it’s fine. But you can’t claim a small part of space and with it any asteroid that might come flying in the next 20 years.

they have materially harmed your property which had river access as a condition of that space

Hm… should they be legally liable? You don’t homestead the entitlement to have water running through the property. If you want water constantly dam your portion and develop some mechanism for running water.

Maybe you don’t agree with that, but consider this:

There is a drought this year and your river is dried up. Next year, however, the rains begin to come (you see them far off into the distance). What if someone decides that his property is dry too and seeds the clouds, forcing them to rain on his hill instead of yours? He does this continuously and your property remains dry. Is he legally at fault?

This is the problem when you homestead not just use of land, but expectations of use​. Things get funky fast. This is why I suggested abandoning property in expectations. I use the word “property” because it can be redefined as an entitlement to use aggression to prevent interference. If you have a property in something, you can use force to protect interference. Hence, “property in expectations.” If you prefer, “a homesteading of the expectations of use”, as I said before.

Again, I do not mean abandoning property. Just abandoning the entitlement to the benefits from factors which come from outside of your property.