I don't think you are correct in the way you said, can any owner legally build a dam. I think if they tried to build a dam they would generate a lot of conflict from the people affected by the building of the dam. The question in my opinion is whether the current system, with a state, is more effective in giving people affected by dam building the ability to prevent the dam from being built.
So what you're getting at is that there will be conflict between the builder and the owners downstream, and that the private courts, etc. are a better means of resolving the conflicts than compulsory statist courts? Now that I think about it, I suppose I fell into the Nirvana Fallacy with that question. Still, the other part of the question remains: is the builder violating the rights of their fellow owners to the river in question?
Friedrich: Now that I think about it, I suppose I fell into the Nirvana Fallacy with that question.
Now that I think about it, I suppose I fell into the Nirvana Fallacy with that question.
I can't even tell you how important it is that you can realize that. Most people can't seem to overcome that obstacle.
Friedrich: Still, the other part of the question remains: is the builder violating the rights of their fellow owners to the river in question?
Still, the other part of the question remains: is the builder violating the rights of their fellow owners to the river in question?
In order to know if rights are being violated - in other words, would the builder being acting rightfully or wrongfully if he were to build a dam - we need to know what the rights of the owners are. I don't know if you have read these, but I very strongly recommend reading the following links if you haven't already:
What Law Is
A Praxeological Account of Law
Crusoe, Morality, and Axiomatic Libertarianism
Depending upon how the owners come to own the various parts of the river, there may be no one size fits all rule for all rivers and free societies.
I think when you own a section of river you own the properties of that river. This includes its natural flow of water, whatever fish stocks may be present which you'd become a temporal owner of with others much as you're part owner of the water as it passes your owned section.
Thus if someone upstream pollutes the water you have grounds for a tort. Or if they net all the fish thus reducing the capital value of your section as well, or if they should damn it, yes, violation of your property rights as it materially and unnaturally changes the condition of your owned section.
Water rights like this I think are important, as they form the basis of ocean-property rights we'll have to apply in seasteading actualities.
Ex: If you own a section of the ocean, you're affected if someone 20 miles away pollutes the water.
Anenome: or if they should damn it
or if they should damn it
I see what you did there.
Anenome: I think when you own a section of river you own the properties of that river. This includes its natural flow of water, whatever fish stocks may be present which you'd become a temporal owner of with others much as you're part owner of the water as it passes your owned section.
I don't think it's clear that you necessarily own all these properties. Consider light and noise polution. It's not so cut and dry that you necessarily have a right to have the water in your river be there. After all, by claiming this, you are imposing upon someone upstream from you. I don't think that's necessarily right or wrong. I'm just saying that I think it depends upon how the arrangements came to be when people claimed ownership of various parts of the river.
Anenome: Thus if someone upstream pollutes the water you have grounds for a tort. Or if they net all the fish thus reducing the capital value of your section as well, or if they should damn it, yes, violation of your property rights as it materially and unnaturally changes the condition of your owned section.
I see a big difference between having a right to not have your water poluted versus having a right to having fish in your section.
It is not legally build, but build a dam where the damage/changes to the property of others would not provoke them to take an action to stop building or make a claim for restitution that truely matters.
Your question leaves out several pieces of information that are critical to answering this:
1. Do the people upstream or downstream want the dam? If all 8 parties want the dam then it is a non-issue.
2. Will the dam actually damage the property of the people involved? Will it damage views of the river delta for example, or ruin the natural fertilization of the flood prone areas?
3. Can the dam builder and involved parties come to some sort of agreement?
4. Are there even more parties who could be damages like fisherman that depend on the spawing for their income?
If the 8 owners have acquired their property legitimately, through purchase and/or homesteading, and do not have restrictions against building the dam then the dam builder will have to satisfy the wishes of the 8 owners prior to building. If these folks homesteaded the property with the river then they rightfully could expect restitution from any losses if the flow of the river or its contents would change because of the construction of or existence of the dam. If these owners acquired the property through purchase then there may be existing agreements that govern the construction of the dam and if not then the owners would need to be restituted for any damages.
At times dams have been built that have caused many people's lives to be disrupted and they are even forced to move as they relied on the river for their living and so on. This is with a government in place which is meant to be able to solve this problem to some extent. If the people owned the land including the river, they would have more legal basis to prevent the dam from being built. At the moment even with ownership of land you don't technically own a river and then if someone dams your river you have to go through the government courts which in some cases is impossible to prevent the dam. In some rare cases the government itself decides to build a dam, then there realy is no recourse. But in some cases the building of a dam actually benefits a region in some ways so there is also that aspect. At the least the people affected would simply demand compensation, which I think would definitely more likely with out the state.
The land upstream would possibly have more value as it comes with the ability to receive the river before people down river.
There is also the possibility that it would be risky to just build a dam that affects millions of people and think you can get away with it. Without the the state people would not have the government available to make the building of the dam legal or similar.
I think that property rights can be established in rivers with regard to water flow (volume over time). So in this case, the eight owners along the river have already homesteaded water-flow rights with it. For any of them to build a dam would then infringe on the water-flow rights of those downstream from him. It could also violate the land-use rights of those upstream from him (because building a dam often floods the area upstream from it).
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
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Voluntaryism Forum
I suspect that this problem will only arise in newly homesteaded river owners.
If you take the example of surface land rights being sold apart from mining and mineral rights. A farmer might only be interested in running cattle on the surface of the land, so he might be perfectly willing to sell the underground rights to a diamond miner for a profit. He will be sure to include clauses to specify that the diamond miner may not do anything to damage his cattle farm or he will lose his mining rights or there will be some predetermined fine.
So in an established private ownership society the original owners will long time ago have determined which "rights' they bought and which rights are excluded from their ownership of one eighth of the river. The previous owners may have specified that we will only buy this stretch of river for this X amount of dollars if it includes protection against damming upstream and protection of some upstream owner stripping out all the fish, or polluting the water. This agreement would obviously have to go back all the way to all the owners of the river up to its origin.
Or a previous owner can admit that he was negligent in not specifying these rights when he bought his stretch of river and therefore he cannot sell you any rights to the water or its content, and therefore he can only demand a tiny fee for the land around the river and nothing else. And the downstream owners will have to get together and buy back or rent back these ownership rights from the upstream owners.
If someone in the middle jumps the line and says you were negligent in the past by not specifying that I am not allowed to dam the water, so I am doing it, he is consequently also giving that argument to the guy upstream from him and the guy upstream from him. So he runs the risk of spending millions on a dam that somebody else has the right to keep dry. He cant do it without negotiation.
And the guys downstream can go to the owner above him and buy the rights to bypass his dam with canals or to drill underneath and siphon off the water to their own stretch of river bypassing the dam owner.
Somehow the free market will force an amicable solution.