Water Privatization

Economics Political Theory
1

I live near a river inside the city. Its not downtown or next to any industrial sectors so I can hardly say its by any factories or anything of that sort. The river is mostly passing through residential areas before it comes by my house, and only then goes through the downtown area.

Ive lived near this river my entire life and I love it. Its summer now so I’ll be able to walk down and sit in my favourite spot and smoke some of the special stuff for a few hours every day (hey, I’m an anarchist aren’t I?) While this river is not nearly as dirty as most inner-city rivers its still quite messy and it makes me sad to see such a valuable economic resource go to waste under government ownership.

A river could be fabulous for powering nearby homes if it were allowed, as a source of water if it were not so polluted, a location for fish farming, a place to swim, and many other things that we don’t think of simply because of the present legal, economic, and environmental state of rivers these days.

My question is this: How would you go about privatizing inner-city rivers/lakes, and rivers/lakes that have large amounts of people living along their coasts in general? I have read Blocks paper, but he really doesn’t get into it much detail.

Would people who have waterfront properties and have demonstrate frequent use of that water property have the right to a certain square area, and any polluters or tresspassers on that water area would be punished? This seems reasonable but a drawback I see to this is a tragedy of the commons. Since water flows freely, no one would have an incentive to conserve water and there might be cases of shortages.

Would people in municipalities who have tax records of paying for cleaning of the river and other things to do with it, as well as people who have somehow mixed their labor with it, be given some kind of ‘shares’ in a company that would run the river? This sounds complicated and undetailed but I have heard it mentioned before.

Im sure you all have other ideas and I would love to hear them, not only so I can feel more hopeful the next time im puffing a doobie or walking across the bridge that passes over the water, but also so I can explain the same ideas and solutions to my friends who feel just as much concern about the polluted river as I, and hopefully you, all do about polluted rivers in your areas.

2

I would try to tackle that case using the homesteading and non-aggression principle.

Basically homesteading means that the first one to use a natural resource has a right to not be aggressed in any way against his use of it.

Ok, supposing that no part of the river from source to its estuary mouth is homesteaded, than the first one to homestead a part (it seems not possible to homestead the whole river though) of it is using it the way he likes. In principle this would allow for polluting as well unless it would harm someone down the river that was homesteading earlier.

If down the river homesteaders exist that have been here earlier, than soemone up the river aggresses against their property by polluting, as they found it unpolluted and where the earlier in the settlement than the one upriver.

You already show a great way to stop polluting a river by proposing that homesteaders down the river form a voluntary contract by which they agree to a certain usage of the river. But that only works if at least one of the homesteaders has been taken property before the polluter upriver took his.

This is a very quick and not exhaustive answer and rather meant to be an idea for starting to think about the topic.

Another ingredient for that thought to develop is, that homesteading means to put something to use. That means for example that a state can not base its right to own a territory on the homesteading principle. Well, they did it anyway [:)] like Columbus setting his foot on the shores of America declaring it property of spain. Because he had not made any use of the whole continent all he could claim was the piece he was standing on -which would have become the property of spain, given no tribe would have used it in any way before.

What follows is, that states have no proper title on the land they claim to be public, or at least on most of it, because they did not homestead it. If the state has no rightful claim than every privileg the state give to a third party, like selling part of the land to the railroad companies or even donate it to them, is simply invalid. That means either the railroad companies paid for something they could have used anyway, if the land was in the natural state, or they paid for something they could not get a rightful title to, hence they where betrayed by the state.

3

Water is a tricky thing. I’ve tried to figure it out but have never come to a good solution. Hopefully someone will.

The issue I have is with homesteading since water would be very difficult to do. I live in a city whose growth and econonmy are a direct result of our lake. Now, the lake is something that EVERYONE uses at one point in time. How could someone claim ownership of any part of the lake if everyone is running their ski boats and fishing boats all over the place? People who live on rivers and lakes to stict to some specfic part of the water way they normally travel to different parts of it.

Another problem is “staking out” your claim. With land you can farm it, put up fences, etc., to show others that you have a claim to that land but you really can’t do that with water. I suppose everyone could put out markers in the water claiming this part or that but then we still have a problem in that fishermen, skiers and recreational boaters never stay in one stop and that has always been nor is it resonable to expect someone to do so on water.

Perhaps the answer is that there are just certain things that cannot be owned by anyone. Perhaps there are common areas that simply cannot be adequately homesteaded that simply cannot be owned. Rivers, lakes, the ocean and even air space are hard to homestead. Perhaps they just remain unowned and common areas. I certainly wouldn’t see a problem with that and I doubt others would either.

I don’t really know. Hopefully someone will present a logical answer to this question. I’m just talking out of my ass.

4

The answer, and I have made this point many times to many recalcitrants, is that public property cannot be homesteaded. Because, as you point out, public property is in use by many different people concurrently, there is no way to resolve the claims to ownership by the principle of homesteading.

If we take the example of the lake, it was, before it became the center of a city, a piece of spatially-delimited free land. If someone were to start using this lake without bothering anyone, then he would have homesteaded it. Then, as more people came to use the lake, they would have to obtain authorization before unleashing their jet skis upon it. All the owner would have to do to “stake his claim” is demonstrate in court that he was using it first.

5

That’s all fine and good for a lake no one has ever used but we aren’t really talking about unused lakes and rivers but rather those that have become common ground within communities. For instance, the lake is the center of my town which everyone uses. I myself fish all over the lake. Others use it for their jet skis and others for just boating. How do we solve the ownership issue if EVERYONE, including the people who live on the lake is using it?

6

If someone wants to build a house in the middle of the water, then no one should be able to enter that home without permission. Otherwise, I’ll apply my same (unpopular) view of land property: property should’t be used to unreasonably limit the movement of others.

7

There’s no clean solution, and this is not a new problem, or one specific to water. The enclosures of the commons are reputed as marking the begginning of the capitalist revolution, and it was about land.

My solution to the privatization of public property is that it should belong to its liberator, since no one else has acted to protect the property for future use, and no one else therefore has any claim to own it.