A few weeks ago I discussed the “Three Gorges Dam” in China with a friend of mine and he asked me how an ancap society would deal with the problems such a project brings. Besides the fact, that I doubt these projects would be feasible without eminent domain, I wasn’t too confident answering this question.
So what do you think? If I own riverside property downstream and I own a small stretch of the water running in the riverbed, does a person violate my property rights if he builds a dam and blocks the water from running down to me?
I found this FAQ on property rights on rivers, but to be honest I don’t think it’s especially compelling.
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe if you could solve this example to your satisfaction there could arise other grey areas in property rights. This is because property rights theories such as homesteading and first-use don’t have an utilitarian considerations.
I think if you want to address utilitarians with this issue, then you can say that while property rights certainly are mushy, an alternative of voluntary cooperation exists over this conflict of interests. It is this win-win scenario we should strive for, rather than the win-lose situation in which he gets a dam but you lose water.
But how would you overcome the huge transaction costs to get to the win-win situation? Rivers can be thousands of km long with millions of people that have an interest in the water.
Then you better come up with a damn good project upstream [;)] Government’s M&M domain also has transaction costs. BANG POW DAKKADAKKADAKKA. But as long as the taxpayer is footing the bill it goes ahead.
Just because government can do something, like build a dam where the free market can’t, doesn’t mean its actually profitable (and it is never moral).
But seriously, in the event that you can’t build a dam on your property, you haven’t lost anything. Your property is still in tact and no one is infringing on your rights. So the alternative of not building the dam is not a “win-lose” situation. There are a lot of alternatives available here, like getting electricity from a steam engine, moving downstream, etc.
No, I don’t think it would be profitable if you had to get everybody downstream to agree to your dam project. And that’s why I don’t think it’s possible to create a win-win situation, which makes it really hard to make the utilitarian case here.
That leaves me with the point nirgrahamUK made, which is technically correct but probably not that convincing to people I normally talk to. I mean, you guys are just “batshit insane”, to quote my favorite economist.[:P]
I would say it depends. Were you doing something with the water in the riverbed, before the dam was built?
If you owned an airport surrounded by unowned land and then someone moved onto that unowned land and proceeded to build something on it that would interfere with your airport operations (like a huge tower?) then he would be in the wrong. (Because you being first you own not just the airport, but also all the easments on surrounding land required for its operation.)
So if you own a river shellfish farm and somebody builds a huge dam upstream that interferes with your operation of the said shellfish farm then he is again in the wrong.
But if you were not doing anything with the water then the only thing the dam cost you is the subjective valuation of your property, so it is not a violation.
All landowners whose property is adjacent to a body of water have the right to make reasonable use of it.
Riparian rights seem reactionary to me. It’s nice from a discovery-based, common-law POV. But I think it’s somewhat lacking. Like, “Oh, sh*t. All these people have really poorly-defined and competing uses for this limited water in-common. What do we do about it now?”
In parts of the U.S. where water was generally more scarce, a different principle prevailed, known as Prior Appropriation:
The first person to use a quantity of water from a water source for a beneficial use has the right to continue to use that quantity of water for that purpose. Subsequent users can use the remaining water for their own beneficial purposes provided that they do not impinge on the rights of previous users
I am kind of partial to the doctrine of prior appropriation, if only because I think that Riparian Rights follow (more-or-less) naturally from it.
There’s probably a synthesis that could be reached here.
Ok, but I guess in real life we have to concede that there is no river in the world that nobody uses for anything. Hence, no more dams in a libertarian society, right?
Interesting, I got to read up on Prior Appropriation. That sounds like a reasonable answer to give to “normal” people not familiar with natural rights and so forth. Thanks for the reference!
Well, but a dam is a big and pressumably very profitable project. It can afford to haggle with the fishing clubs and rowing associations for the water. I think it would be all the folks living upstream and about to get flooded that would take much more convincing.
In any case probably the best way to extract maximum value from a river is if a single entity owns its whole length (even if just for reasons of fishing) so it is very possible that in a system fully based on property rights you would see a gradual consolidation where ownership of rivers is concerned.
I agree. It is not a rights violation. One owns the land the water flows over, not the water itself. If you collect the water, in say barrels, then you would own the water collected.
You do not own the sky above your land either, but it is stil illegal for someone to build a roof over your land that would block out the sun and kill all your plants.
The situation is so far fetched. It’s not like a man can just build a dam and steal all the water up the river. If the river was of such size that it’d greatly affect the lives of others down river, then it’d have to be an immense river and the dam would be an enormous investment, one that not even a small group of individuals with bad intentions could handle. Given that he even possesses the know-how and technology to construct a dam that wouldn’t collapse and give way, what’s going to happen to all that water? He’ll have to let it through or else it’ll spill over and flood the area. And who’s going to do business with someone like this? Unless he’s damming it to benefit others; perhaps to purify it and divert some of it to others not so close to the river, then I can see that. But no one can just stop the flow of the water.
We’re getting lost in the scenario when it really boils down to general principles. Even if this situation can be resolved there are others which are going to be grey so lets stop trying to resolve THIS problem and discuss how we handle situations in which property rights conflict with other’s/general utility.
OK. There are going to be people who want the dam. And there will be others who don’t. Let Coase sort it out
Occupation and use (according to both principles of property I mentioned above).
Really, aside from water’s dynamic nature it’s not different from a road. Assume that the road is privately owned by a single party/company. Let’s say one day the owner decides that he’s tired of being in the road business, and wants to convert a good portion of his road to a park or a swimming pool, or something else ridiculous that destroys its utility qua road. If the adjacent landowners want to maintain the road, they should buy it from him. This might be costly depending on how irrational the roadowner is.
So in this case we have “property” (the body of water) which is “owned” collectively rather than individually. If some of them desire to build a dam, they ought to compensate those who don’t want a dam, or vice-versa.
This is an opportunity for a type of “auction” or dominant assurance contracts, perhaps.
… I got tired trying to work out an example of how this would operate. Maybe I’ll try again later.
We would assume that given enough time, there would be some sort of common-law solution to the “holdout” problem. Perhaps independent arbitrators, in the name of equity and common sense, would simply refuse to adjudicate outlandish claims like “I’ll only give up my riparian rights for one billion dollars!”
