So aggression would be applied toward owners which have been judged by “independent arbitrators” to be asking “outlandish” prices in a free market? Sure beats voting for/against the dam in a local referendum, or for/against the political party that proposed the dam in an election – under a state, that is.
Z.
Prior appropriation brought up by David sounds like a perfect solution. Plus even on the utilitarian side far from being an obstacle to dam building it is, when you think about it, a requirement. If there is no respect for rights on water, then what is to prevent a different investor from building a second giant dam further upstream and taking up so much water that it lowers the capacity of the power plant on the first one? (Or even just build a chanell to divert the water to bypass your dam?) Who is ever going to build a dam in a situation like this, where the competition can actually partialy drain your artificial lake?
Another example why it is ethical would be this, let us assume this river can be navigated. Then all the companies which transport goods using riverboats have an easement on the river to continue to do so. Exactly the same way a farmer can have a right of passage across the land of his neighbour inherited from the time when the land was originaly homesteaded. Therefore if the dam would make it impossible for the riverboat companies to navigate the same length of the river they could navigate before, the dam builders would have to buy out the riverboat companies first. Exactly the same way the farmer in our other example first has to be bought out by the neighbour if the neighbour wishes to build something that would fully deny the farmer his right of passage. So if the riverboat companies have to be compensated first, so do all other businesses affected.
It is trully not a far fetched situation, Iraq has been affected in a mayor way by all the dams built on the Tigris and Euphrates in Turkey and Syria. You do not need to block the river completely to decrease its volume further downstream.
Building a dam and flooding a populated area sounds as uneconomic as what it would cost to buy out all the property owners. It’s likely more valuable as a populated area than a water reservoir.
Building a dam and flooding a ranch, well that sounds like a good idea. You have only one or a few ranchers to deal with.
Everything is about context.
I suppose you could put it that way…
Another alternative is that the person who wants to build the dam just goes ahead and builds a dam without soliciting input from anyone. Of course, he would have to deal with the consequences, probably something like a class-action lawsuit against him.Which is why I say he’ll probably try and appease people ex ante. If he doesn’t think he can do this, then he doesn’t build the dam.
(Another consideration is, if he wants to buy the property for the purpose of building a dam, he ought to keep these things in mind before he signs the purchase agreement!)
Of course, if he does solicit input from those likely to be impacted by the dam, he mitigates a lot of this risk. So the “holdouts” file a claim against him, and they arbitrate however it is they do such things in Libertopia. Perhaps they win an injunction against him and he’s forced to remove the dam. IMO that’s not terribly likely. What’s more likely is that the independent arbitrator(s) finds in favor of the complainant, and assesses monetary damages. The other end of the spectrum is that the complainants’ claims might be found to be de minimis and therefore not worthy of any consideration.
So the possible outcomes can be plotted on a spectrum like so:
Injunction ← Massive lawsuit – arbitration w/reasonable & minor damages → No consideration owed
Again, it is the dam builders responsibility to weigh the risks involved. He’s ultimately responsible for whatever happens. The more people he pisses off, the more likely he is to end up junking the dam and losing a sh*tload of money. The more people he appeases, the more likely he is to wind up in the favorable position at the other extreme.
Easements are a wonderful thing.
For those in the gallery who may not be familiar with such things:
Although it is probably best to formalize a right of easement, it’s not necessary. Easements can be established through adverse possession, which means (in a nutshell) that they attach via uncontested “open, notorious and continuous” use of the property or land in question.
Right, it cannot be built over my land, because it is my land.
Agreed that you don’t “own” the water that passes through the river on your property, or the water in the lakebed at your summer home. But that’s where the riparian rights come in to say: “Look, any idiot with a pile of logs and mud can’t justifiably deprive you of the water, either!”
The problem arises precisely because, by damming the river, from that point forward one purports to “own” all of the water, and if he does not purport to “own” it, he certainly is now depriving many of their common-law rights.
It’s quid pro quo, kind of. Arguably anyone is allowed to use the water within reason, but no one is allowed to deprive others the use thereof.
You haven`t actually said anything. You should explain precisely why it is illegal for me to buy all of the surrounding land and proceed to build a giant roof over your land through unowned sky that nowhere touches your land, but is supported from pillars on surronding land and was built without stepping on your land and then let us see if the explanation applies to the river example or if it is a totally different scenario.
I think we will see that in reality it is the same scenario. The roof is illegal because the ensuing lack of sun ruins your existing vegetable garden. It is the same scenario where your neighbour builds a giant windshield that blocks out your windmill.
Water in a river is scarce. If you are using a scarce resource then you have homesteded the amount that you are using. And that does not simply mean barrels of water. It applies to the kinetic energy of the river which is also scarce as well.
But you own the rights to the amount of kinetic energy that the watermill you built is using.
The same as you own the rights to the jet unextracted coal in the pit you dug out, or the same as you own the right to emmit a certain level of noise pollution over the land of your neigbours if that which is their land was stil unowned when you built your metalurgy plant.
you dont own your sky going up up to the edge of the atmosphere and or beyond. just because you homestead the ground and the immediate area above. you own what you homesteaded. you havent homesteaded the sky. if the roof builder does it first. thats just. if you want to build ‘hard to construct around’ poles going up from your property to make your property seem an unnatractive place to ‘bridge over’ that would be an avenue open to you.
Oh in this much I agree. But it is only true as long as the roof does not interfere in a direct way with an economic activity that is already taking place. Obviously enough you can not justly build such a roof over an airport.
No, one purports to own all of his or her land. Or do you think a dam stops water from flowing?
Because dams stop water from flowing right?
And dams stop water from flowing how?
No, I do not have to explain this precisely. All I have to explain is that if the court decides it is my property and that the structure is considered built on my property, then it has been built on my property. Would property rights include how high your property extends? Probably. Regardless, I think it is pretty obvious that property includes some space above the actual land owned.
And you think a dam will stop water from flowing?
Like I said, feel free to collect it in barrels. If you don’t collect it, it is not yours.
Nope, it would not, because then you would be interfering with my property rights upstream to do whatever I want with the water flowing over my property. This line of reasoning is just completely ridiculous, and I really hope that you are in the minority in thinking this way.
I never said that one does. Just like I am sure we all agree that one’s property does not extend to the other side of the planet. But I would figure we would be talking about reality, the fact that one does own part of the air above the ground. How far that goes would be of course determined by courts.
I think we’re caught up in semantics here. Dams certainly impede the flow of water. And they can impede the flow significantly enough to be injurious based on prior appropriation.
Thank you for demonstrating exactly what the problem is.
You don’t have rights do do “whatever you want” with the water simply because you happen to be geographically closer to its source than others. The idea behind riparian rights is that nobody has the just power to do “whatever he or she wants” with the water.
It seems to me this is the crucial point. There are some things that will always be grey and this is precisely the reason there is a demand for courts. If every issue was black and white, people could just read the written law and solve any problem themselves.
All that is really needed is a basic agreement on general rules. Prior Appropriation sounds to me like exactly that. Without any legal training, most people should be able to “feel” that this is a fair and just rule of thumb. Courts and judges that are able to settle specific disputes with these rules will get the most customers and win on the market.
Dams only impede the flow of water for a short amount of time. At some point, the water will have to flow out. Just like if you collect water in barrels, it has been stopped from flowing. But eventually those barrels will get full, and if you keep putting more water in, they will overflow.
Again, semantics. Suffice to say that there is a non-trivial, non-zero length of time during which the those downstream the dam will be deprived their riparian rights.
what is the justification for Riparian rights?
it seems incompatible with libertarian homesteading theory which is based on appropriation…
Murray indicated as much in his essay addressed to Leonard Reed on water rights.
i.e. Why not Riparian rights for those living next to ‘forests’ , ‘quarries’ natural resources in general ?
I really don’t know, but it’s a very well-established principle of common law. There is some additional information and specifics, here.
The examples you cite are static in nature, whereas water and air are generally dynamic. Even though we understand that one does not own the sky up to the heavens above his real property, nobody can seriously argue that it would be legitimate per “libertarian homestead” principles to simply build a plexiglass cube around someone’s real property in order to suffocate them, as long as you didn’t interfere with the air they had previously homesteaded.