Suppose a farmer uses water from an aquifer (stretching for 10 kms) for many years for his crop. Then comes a company which drains the entire aquifer (using a series of deep weels 10 kms away from the farm), leaving the farmer without water source at all. Do you think the company should have the right to drain the water from the aquifer or not? Did the farmer homestead the entire aquifer or perhaps he homesteaded a particular supply of water per month?
I feel like this has been discussed and answered a hundred times on here.
No, I think that a bureau in Washington should be able to decide who gets water and who does not. Furthermore they should allow any lobbying to take place. That way these folks can get rich and participate in lavish parties complete with professional escorts and lots of illegal drugs that no law enforcement would get near for fear of losing their water. And yes this is not without precedent.
Now what do you think is the more liberty oriented way to distribute resources: Homesteading or My idea? I prefer mine except for the drugs and the escorts.
Bogart you didn't read the post. That was not my question.
" I think that a bureau in Washington Brussells should be able to decide who gets water and who does not. "
Fixed that for ya. Gotta think global, man.
Clayton -
Not Brussels, the lizards live in underground caves.
Obviously government is not the answer. There are 3 options in free society to define property rights in aquifers:
1. Everyone can use the aquifer without limitation
2. You can own the entire aquifer
3. You own a specific supply of water from the aquifer
My question is which definition is more to your liking.
@Eugene: I've been over this with you like 100x. No one on these boards AFAIK are specialists in aquifer-property-rights law. It is really for the affected parties to hammer out what are reasonable rights. Over time, many such disputes and agreements will result in case law that reflects what sorts of solutions are generally workable or not - reflecting both the technical and the legal aspects of the problem.
While non-experts in aquifer law can do little more than speculate and build castles in the air on this topic, as a matter of social theory we can outline the consequences of monopolized, centralized law systems versus free market arbitration on the nature of aquifer-property-rights law or any other kind of law. The former will be rigid, will not serve the interests of the parties involved, will be corrupt and will be skewed toward the rights and interests of the politically connected over those who are not politically connected. The latter will reflect the actual interests of the parties involved.
If you're really curious, I'm sure there is case law on this matter and I'm sure there are law journal articles that cover it. It's a relatively obscure area of law so, apart from whatever environmental rights statutes might be affecting it, it's probably actually a fairly good case-study in how law really works (people working out their disagreements and finding reasonable middle-ground). While monopoly law is still distorted, in the case of two non-State entities engaging in legal dispute in a relatively apolitical area of law, it's much less distorted than most of the rest of the law is.
Go thou and study and find out!
Eugene:Suppose a farmer uses water from an aquifer (stretching for 10 kms) for many years for his crop. Then comes a company which drains the entire aquifer (using a series of deep weels 10 kms away from the farm), leaving the farmer without water source at all. Do you think the company should have the right to drain the water from the aquifer or not? Did the farmer homestead the entire aquifer or perhaps he homesteaded a particular supply of water per month?
I don't think the company would have the right to drain the entire aquifer. But I think the farmer homesteaded only a certain rate of flow from the aquifer.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
Autolykos, I agree. I think that's the most reasonable solution.
Clayton, currently many states resolve these issues through war, economic sanctions, or threats. The "free market" of ideas and conflict resolution mechanisms has brought us the almighty state and constant wars. Non monopolistic conflict resolutions between gangs in the mafia or between people in Somalia also many times ends in violence.
I really have no interest in learning from what exists today. People today don't understand or believe in property rights.
"I really have no interest in learning from what exists today. People today don't understand or believe in property rights."
Well, there's your problem. If what exists today means nothing to you, then you are no student of human nature and you can, thus, have little to teach others about peace which, after all, is a human state of affairs.
And of course people believe in property rights. They have always and everywhere believed in property rights. There is no civilization in darkest Africa or remotest island that has not had property rights. There were property rights in the Soviet Union and there are property rights in North Korea. It is a mistake to look at the insane and contradictory rhetoric of anti-human statists and imagine that this is somehow indicative of a real suspension of human nature. It is not.
So, you need to ask yourself, why are property rights so weak in a world filled with human beings that intuitively grasp the basics of property rights?? How can such a state of affairs have been brought about?
And what is your answer for that?
Eugene, watch the documentary called Flow, and that may help you.
So to you BP didn't really do any wrong when they took away the livelihood of thousands of fishermen and others? Do you believe that a river could be rerouted and everybody who was downstream should have no reason/right to complain?
I don't know what happens in a "free society", but in a real world society the aquifer will be used by anyone able to mobilize enough resources in order to secure his claim to use the aquifer.
In some societies, these resources can be a bunch of goons.
In others, a bunch of lawyers, and contracts that are recognized by courts, who can in turn mobilize other means to enforce the right of the claimant, insofar as these means seem necessary.
Elric - Yes, I believe BP did harm. And yes, everyone always has the right to complain. If I use up the water that you 'need', that is not my problem. That is your problem. Your recourse is to obtain water through trade or to go above me and divert the water for your own use. If a water works building war threatens to become expensive, we should setup a contract that defines our water rights with regard to each other. I don't think homesteading "flow" is a viable option. What happens if you 'homestead' all of a creek's flow. Then if I build upstream of you, I have no right to ANY water from the creek and I must purchase water from you downstream. Now, what sense does that make?
I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "make sense", Dude6935, because it makes perfect sense to me.
In that scenario, I don't even have a right to the water that rains on my roof since that flow is already owned by someone down stream. It does not make sense to me that one can homestead a right to the rain water that falls on another man's property or to water that could be hundreds of miles away in a part of a creek that the claimant has never laid eyes on.
Homesteading is a process of gaining ownership of property. A flow rate is not property. You can't homestead water that hasn't even been created yet.
dude6935: In that scenario, I don't even have a right to the water that rains on my roof since that flow is already owned by someone down stream.
In that scenario, I don't even have a right to the water that rains on my roof since that flow is already owned by someone down stream.
Funny you should say that...
If that's not ridiculous, I don't know what is. It's about as stupid as the man charged with violating interstate commerce laws for raising and using his own chicken feed.
dude6935:It does not make sense to me that one can homestead a right to the rain water that falls on another man's property or to water that could be hundreds of miles away in a part of a creek that the claimant has never laid eyes on. Homesteading is a process of gaining ownership of property. A flow rate is not property. You can't homestead water that hasn't even been created yet.
Yeah. Homesteading right now as a theory needs work. There are some areas where it's problematic. Like what if you wanted to homestead a natural area and preserve its natural character. Also, water-flow rights will be more and more important, because of seasteading. The question of what rights do you have to, for instance, yearly fish travels through your property?
Personally I think the solution is ad hoc organization. Take all the people who live alongside the river and form an 'adhocorg' for all river owners, all the way up and down, and we would say that each owner has a corporate share in the water, and perhaps in the moving fish stocks too, and it can be managed thereby as a group, there's an organization to go to in case of pollution, in which case the entire group would sue the polluter all the way downstream. And either everyone could agree to take X amount, or some could pay the rest to take more water if it's not returned, etc.
Ultimately it's ad-hoc-orgs + arbitration that will replace the action of government in a free society!
dude6935:In that scenario, I don't even have a right to the water that rains on my roof since that flow is already owned by someone down stream.
I don't see how that follows, sorry.
dude6935:It does not make sense to me that one can homestead a right to the rain water that falls on another man's property or to water that could be hundreds of miles away in a part of a creek that the claimant has never laid eyes on.
Maybe I'm not sure what you mean by "homestead all of a creek's flow". Can you elaborate on that?
dude6935:Homesteading is a process of gaining ownership of property. A flow rate is not property. You can't homestead water that hasn't even been created yet.
By that reasoning, animals can't be owned, because they're constantly exchanging atoms with the surrounding environment.
Anenome:Personally I think the solution is ad hoc organization. Take all the people who live alongside the river and form an 'adhocorg' for all river owners, all the way up and down, and we would say that each owner has a corporate share in the water, and perhaps in the moving fish stocks too, and it can be managed thereby as a group, there's an organization to go to in case of pollution, in which case the entire group would sue the polluter all the way downstream. And either everyone could agree to take X amount, or some could pay the rest to take more water if it's not returned, etc.
And what if not all of the people who live alongside the river don't want to be a part of this "adhocorg"? What then?
Autolykos: Anenome:Personally I think the solution is ad hoc organization. Take all the people who live alongside the river and form an 'adhocorg' for all river owners, all the way up and down, and we would say that each owner has a corporate share in the water, and perhaps in the moving fish stocks too, and it can be managed thereby as a group, there's an organization to go to in case of pollution, in which case the entire group would sue the polluter all the way downstream. And either everyone could agree to take X amount, or some could pay the rest to take more water if it's not returned, etc. And what if not all of the people who live alongside the river don't want to be a part of this "adhocorg"? What then?
Then they've de facto formed an ad hoc organization of one member and can deal with the other ad hocs via arbitration or agreement rather than participating in talks and agreements up-front. In practice I'd expect there to be local ad hocs and larger regional ad hoc all cooperating together, so it changes nothing. Should people feel for instance that a larger ad hoc wasn't serving them they'd be free to form a competing ad hoc and draw members. What's impossible is gaining monopoly control via ad hoc--which is the one thing governement always tries to do in such situations, and what results in government-failure.
Just as the old question of what would happen if the streets were all privately owned, what if one member decided to have people drive on the left instead, and make red-go and green-stop? Well, it simply wouldn't happen. In such cases, such as when the railroads were all privately owned, the various companies got together, ad hoc fasion, and worked out standards.
Thus, with the river example, the various owners would organize via ad hocs and work out standards of use so that everyone's rights are protected and the resource itself is maintained. And the resulting organization would likley be far more effective than something like the EPA could ever be.
If A homesteads a flow of 1 million gallons of water from creek C a year, If the total flow rate of creek C is 1 million gallons of water a year, If I build on the drainage basin (or whatever it is called) that previously feed the creek with rain runoff, Then after I build my house, if I collect the rain water from my own roof, I will reduce the flow rate of the creek to a level that is below A's water claim. Therefore, I have caused A harm. So now I must pay damages to A in order to collect rainwater that falls on MY ROOF! And this situation is pretty much unavoidable since virtually the entire earth drains rainwater into streams and rivers, and it is impossible to know if people downstream have a prior claim on flow. The oppose is not true. It is readily apparent that people upstream are using flow, because the water they are using will never come downstream. And no, by my reasoning you can own an animal, but you cannot own the breath of air that it has not yet taken. You can only own the breath that is currently inside its body. You can only homestead matter, atom by atom. You can't lay claim to X number of free atoms in the atmosphere without identifying them. That is nonsense. The same goes for laying claim to indeterminate molecules of water in a river. How can you claim something that you can't even identify?
Rainwater that falls on your roof isn't part of the creek yet. It could be considered A homesteaded water in the creek in relative terms (100% of the creek) rather than in absolute terms (1 million gallons) and then you two wouldn't be in conflict. In fact homesteading the flow of a river in absolute terms seems silly, because when there is going to be a dry year what is the miller going to do? Sue God for providing 20% less water than in a normal year?
"Rainwater that falls on your roof isn't part of the creek yet." It would be a tributary. "It could be considered A homesteaded water in the creek in relative terms (100% of the creek) rather than in absolute terms (1 million gallons) and then you two wouldn't be in conflict." That is certainly less problematic. Then I could go upstream and divert water from tributaries before it enters the creek.
Perhaps we could say that you homestead roughly the supply of water you need to operate something that you built? Eg a water mill, irrigation cannals, or a hydroelectric power plant. Intuitively it seems highly unfair for A to build a mill and for B to then re-route the river leaving the water mill out of function. Shouldn't B at least leave sufficient water in the old river route to continue to power A's mill? On the other hand if it's just people throwing tubes into the river and pumping water out with portable petrol pumps for some ad hoc irrigation, then perhaps a different rule should apply? It seems kind of bitchy of such people downstream to begin to complain when the folks upstream save up for pumps and start doing the same leaving less water than they had been used to for those bellow. It'd be kinda like if you had migratory animals, which were hunted only at their winter destination, and then when the folks in their summer destination started hunting them as well, and the people from their winter destinations would be all like you can't do that, these are just our animals, when actually they ain't in their hunting grounds.
Anenome:Homesteading right now as a theory needs work.
That's a hell of an understatement.
A more realistic assessment would be that the homestead principle of law cannot be made into an abstract objective theory for everything.
The absurdity of the discussion here and in similar topics should make it clear enough.
Sorry guys.
That doesn't mean it's a "wrong principle", though. It's a very useful rule of thumb in occasions that are somewhat familiar.
It's just not as powerful as you guys want it to be.
When things aren't clearly and objectively defined and such definitions commonly accepted ex ante, who arrived first isn't a very good criterion for lawful decision. Something else needs to be invoked, or new criteria need to be created.
And things are not always objectively defined ex ante.
For instance, the "rights to use a water stream" in your problem.
"A more realistic assessment would be that the homestead principle of law cannot be made into an abstract objective theory for everything." I don't agree. Homesteading is THE method for gaining ownership of unowned things. Some above comments are trying to use homesteding to claim ownership of far away, uncontrolled matter. That is not a flaw in homesteading, that is a flaw in the user's application of homesteading. You have no right to free stuff. You have no right to water falling into your lap. Peroid. Your can only homestead the right to manipulate water AFTER it comes under your control. If you have a factory that needs water, by all means build it next to a stream. But if the stream runs dry due to an act or God or man, you are just out of luck. You have not homesteaded a right to the oxygen in the air and the hydrogen in my gas tank that will one-day combine to form water and rain onto land you have never used, controlled, or improved.
In practice, homesteading was augmented with the claim. People respected other's claims so that their claim would also be respected. Because it takes time to actually clear and seed 5,000 acres, and you wouldn't want someone to clear the other half of your land before you got to it. It's a recipe for conflict.
The claim bridges the time gap between intention and actuality, and thus is a necessary part of homesteading in practice.
To effect the claim, people would register a claim at central areas, like a post-office, so that others would know where their claim began and ended.
Homesteading is THE method for gaining ownership of unowned things.
so if you and I are passengers on a cruise ship, and it sinks, and we both end up on the same deserted island and find one single bottle of water. I beat you to the water and homestead it by drinking some. According to homestead principles, you have no right to any of my water. Does this sound like a good system to you?
You might be able to construct an example that would show the absurdity of the universal application of the homesteading principle, but that isn't it. Yes that sounds like a fine system. And I am pretty sure that is what would happen anyway. You pick up a rock, it is yours. You pick up a bottle of water, it is yours. Pretty simple.
Say you find a large abandoned water tower on this island. Can you drink from it and claim the whole tower? No, you don't control it. It is not placed in it's current location because you willed it. You cannot move it. Therefore it is unowned. Only the water you drink becomes your property once you exert your control over it. Might you be able to rightfully claim a pipe or spigot or some minor hardware, sure. But you cannot own the greater tower itself or the main water volume that rests on its inner surface because they are beyond your ability to control.
On the other hand, if you are able to exert your control over rainwater and guide it into the water tower for storage, then you have demonstrated your ability to control both the full volume of water and the full operation of the tower itself (the ability to both empty and fill the reservoir with a degree of will). The tower is, for all intents and purposes, land. As others have written, you mix your labor with it, you improve it, you homestead it. But more precisely, you control it.
ToxicAssets:A more realistic assessment would be that the homestead principle of law cannot be made into an abstract objective theory for everything.
Indeed. The homestead principle relies on the concept of "use," but the trouble is that "use" has an incredible variety of meanings depending on what's being used. There are as many forms of "use" as there are types of things. This multitude of different concepts cannot, at least as far as I can see, be reduced to a single, formal principle. That is, there's no formal principle whose application will universally yield what we intuitively determine on an ad hoc basis to be the right answer. Homesteading law, within the very loose confines of the "first use" principle, will have to develop organically.
Huh, me?
Anenome:Then they've de facto formed an ad hoc organization of one member and can deal with the other ad hocs via arbitration or agreement rather than participating in talks and agreements up-front.
In other words, we're back to square one, right?
dude6935:If A homesteads a flow of 1 million gallons of water from creek C a year,
How would that be measured?
dude6935:If the total flow rate of creek C is 1 million gallons of water a year,
Again, how would that be measured?
dude6935:If I build on the drainage basin (or whatever it is called) that previously feed the creek with rain runoff, Then after I build my house, if I collect the rain water from my own roof, I will reduce the flow rate of the creek to a level that is below A's water claim. Therefore, I have caused A harm. So now I must pay damages to A in order to collect rainwater that falls on MY ROOF!
Aside from the issue of measurement, which I think is an essential part of your hypothetical context (and which you're ignoring), I think another issue is whether A will notice any difference between the time before you started collecting rainwater and afterward. On the other hand, by your reasoning, you building a house at all could be said to interfere with the 1,000,000 gallons/year flow rate that A has allegedly homesteaded.
dude6935:And this situation is pretty much unavoidable since virtually the entire earth drains rainwater into streams and rivers, and it is impossible to know if people downstream have a prior claim on flow.
How is that impossible to know?
dude6935:The oppose is not true. It is readily apparent that people upstream are using flow, because the water they are using will never come downstream.
Well, those specific water molecules may come downstream eventually, but not at the same points in time that they presumably would've come had they not been diverted.
dude6935:And no, by my reasoning you can own an animal, but you cannot own the breath of air that it has not yet taken. You can only own the breath that is currently inside its body. You can only homestead matter, atom by atom. You can't lay claim to X number of free atoms in the atmosphere without identifying them. That is nonsense. The same goes for laying claim to indeterminate molecules of water in a river. How can you claim something that you can't even identify?
Do you believe that the atoms in an animal never change? If so, then you're mistaken. As I've already pointed out, they do change. Since by your reasoning, owning something means owning the atoms that make it up, that means that any atoms the animal loses are still owned by the person who owns the animal. So by your reasoning, anyone interfering with those atoms is necessarily harming the owner.
I, for one, don't think the concept of ownership necessarily or even usually extends down to specific atoms.
Marko:Perhaps we could say that you homestead roughly the supply of water you need to operate something that you built? Eg a water mill, irrigation cannals, or a hydroelectric power plant. Intuitively it seems highly unfair for A to build a mill and for B to then re-route the river leaving the water mill out of function. Shouldn't B at least leave sufficient water in the old river route to continue to power A's mill?
That's what I subscribe to. Homesteading is bound by initial use.
Marko:On the other hand if it's just people throwing tubes into the river and pumping water out with portable petrol pumps for some ad hoc irrigation, then perhaps a different rule should apply? It seems kind of bitchy of such people downstream to begin to complain when the folks upstream save up for pumps and start doing the same leaving less water than they had been used to for those bellow. It'd be kinda like if you had migratory animals, which were hunted only at their winter destination, and then when the folks in their summer destination started hunting them as well, and the people from their winter destinations would be all like you can't do that, these are just our animals, when actually they ain't in their hunting grounds.
How is pumping water out with a portable pump any different from re-routing (part of) the river? If A's mill isn't able to run anymore because B started pumping water out of the river upstream from A, I'd say that B's interfering with A's previously homesteaded water flow.