If we define scarcity as the existence of not enough of a good to satisfy everyone's uses of said good, then why is air not scarce? Especially with the advent of large-scale air pollution, fresh air is becoming more scarce.
My problem with privatizing air is that it is inherently difficult to contain and hence to label as being owned by someone. If you put it in a bottle, sure, you can own it. But how do you say "This amorphous blob of air is mine?"
It does make sense, though, to say air is scarce. Maybe instead of outright property rights we'd then have easements?
Can you elaborate?
It appears to me that air is scarce, there is only so much that exists in the atmosphere. It also seems you'd be able to own the 3 dimensional space which air is contained in, much like national air space.
Scarce is a category of human action, when used in the economic context. Having a finite quantity is insufficient to result in scarcity. We cannot say stars are scarce in the Milky Way Galaxy, because in order to say scarce, it means someone doesn't have enough to use as means to some end.
Rothbard has an audio lecture he gave on this topic that I recall, it's available in Mises U on iTunes. I forget which one it was, but the bottomline is that back when factories started polluting, civil courts were handling these issues and making factories pay heavy penalties for their environmental impact, to water and/or air. Until the legislatures started exempting them. Then the criminal courts backed them up.
It seems that if we say that fresh air is scarce due to pollution, then while it's difficult to own air, it's not difficult to own places where you have access to fresh air -- e.g., a plot of land in the mountains or countryside.
As an aside: what would a libertarian answer to someone who said that air is a public good and therefore needs to be protected (e.g., from pollution) by the "public"?
Before government decided to go all mercantilist people sued companies successfully.
This is no different than owning a bit of a stream or river, and a company up stream is dumping toxins into the water (or run off) and it polluting your section. You don't own the water, just the locale, and now what's running through is polluted (as it may pollute your land) so you can sue over damages to property.
You don't own the air, just the air space, and what's entering your air space that you physically breath in is polluted, so you sue the source of the pollution. Thing is, we all pollute, so it would have to be on a basis of the largest concentrated polluter (a company, of course).
FlyingAxe:It seems that if we say that fresh air is scarce due to pollution, then while it's difficult to own air, it's not difficult to own places where you have access to fresh air -- e.g., a plot of land in the mountains or countryside. As an aside: what would a libertarian answer to someone who said that air is a public good and therefore needs to be protected (e.g., from pollution) by the "public"?
The key seems to me to be about the causal link between a man's behavior and the side effects he creates in reality. If the side effects created are confined to his own property, then there's nothing anyone can say. However if the side effects of your behavior interfere with someone else's property in anyway then the question is whether or not it interferes with the other property owner's means and ends. For example, if I holler to my son while we are playing in our yard, I would generate sound that travels into the neighbors property and vibrates into the air and other matter. One would not reasonably expect my neighbor to have any objection to my behavior. If on the other hand, I am running a jet engine in my driveway in the middle of the night, vibrating my neighbor's home and breaking windows, and shaking the fillings out of his teeth, etc. Then there's obviously some side effect that I'm generating which my neighbor would reasonably object to.
Possible side effects that I can think of :
The question is how do you resolve disputes over side effects. For example, with the air quality issue, it's not that the particles are in the air that generates the property issue, the air is not realistically ownable. Put it in a jar if you want to own it. However, if I breathe in and suffer damage due to the side effects of those particles, then I would reasonably have a tort claim.
So, to repeat your question :
"what would a libertarian answer to someone who said that air is a public good and therefore needs to be protected...?"
Tort law does this. There are property right violations in the pollution, we don't need to have someone own the air. We need people held responsible for the side effects they create in other's property. Government created the pollution problem, because private/civil law was prevented from dealing with the problem in a direct fashion. So, now you have a large problem that again "requires" government intervention to solve it.
This represents the cycle of government intervention:
In modern democratic societies, we're dumped private tort courts. They're now government owned and we call them civil courts. It's a travesty. We go straight from problem to legislation and government interference, always guaranteed to generate new problems for the government to solve. Crisis and Leviathan is the book that explains this cycle now.