It makes sense to homestead airspace for air tarffic, for example, but what about the air itself ? The tragedy of the commons is a very real problem when it comes to air pollution. Is there a point at which fresh air (the actual molecules and not just the space) ceases to be a general condition and becomes a scarce good? Can it be owned? How would the owner of fresh air over a large city, for example, homestead/control such property? Is this feasible?
This seems kind of pointless, but I will take a stab anyhow. First you say airspace, then ask about actual molecules. So, it seems you mean really the oxygen, hydrogen, and whatever trace elements flowing through the space of the atmosphere. If the latter is the case, then it seems you could hypothetically homestead the air more permanently, similarly to how water is owned. When you breathe in you own shortly some air. You have a right to stand where you are and breathe, but not to be supplied with oxygen when you do so. When you exhale, you relinquish ownership of this air. Should a hypothetical "atmosphere sucker" come to exist, I can't see where its use would violate others' rights. It would nonetheless be a grave threat to humanity, and people would be forced to deal with its operator in the same way as those who control weapons of mass destruction.
Pollution is a separate issue entirely. You own yourself and your home or land. More specifically, your property rights entail that the property's physical integrity be maintained. Leaving filth in your lungs or on your sidewalk (without prior easement) is violating your property rights and you could seek damages.
Another problem with states' stances on pollution is that they forbid the ancient practice in common law of being able to transfer your right to sue. So, what may be a minor encroachment to one person will be too small to be worth suing over. If a group of people could transfer their rights to seek restitution, it may make shutting down polluters more practical. (I think I explained this last part right.)
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E. R. Olovetto:This seems kind of pointless, but I will take a stab anyhow.
It might be hypothetical, but I don't think it's pointless. The purpose of me asking was to see if it would be practical.
E. R. Olovetto:First you say airspace, then ask about actual molecules
Yes. I think the two go hand in hand to a certain extent.
E. R. Olovetto:You have a right to stand where you are and breathe, but not to be supplied with oxygen when you do so.
Do you? Do you have a right to stand on private property and be supplied with food, or venture onto a private reservoir and be supplied with water? Assume airspace and air is privately owned. Would you have a right to penetrate private airspace and be supplied with air?
E. R. Olovetto:Pollution is a separate issue entirely. You own yourself and your home or land. More specifically, your property rights entail that the property's physical integrity be maintained. Leaving filth in your lungs or on your sidewalk (without prior easement) is violating your property rights and you could seek damages.
If you own real estate and the airspace above it, and the air in it , and somebody pollutes any of what you own, that's a violation of your property. If you're on somebody else's real estate, or in their privately owned airspace, and have a contract to breathe what they claim is fresh air, and it pollutes your lungs, that's a violation of the contract and your property. However, if you have no contract, i.e. if you're trespassing, or you're a guest, and agree to enter at your own risk, then it's not a violation of the property (in your person) even if it harms you.
leonidia: It makes sense to homestead airspace for air tarffic, for example, but what about the air itself ? The tragedy of the commons is a very real problem when it comes to air pollution. Is there a point at which fresh air (the actual molecules and not just the space) ceases to be a general condition and becomes a scarce good? Can it be owned? How would the owner of fresh air over a large city, for example, homestead/control such property? Is this feasible?
How would one define such a claim? You can't very well point to this molecule, and also this one and that one over there, and claim them for yourself. Some method of containment is needed. If I fill up my scuba tanks with air, it's certainly mine until I'm done with it. Same for, say, a colony on Mars where I created air for people to breathe. As for air that's floating around freely, I don't see how a claim could me made. Pollution issues should be dealt with via self ownership. I may not own the air but I certainly own my lungs, and you can't pollute one without polluting the other.
Prelude To Ruin:How would one define such a claim?
I don't know. That's my question.
One of the big problems with traditional english property laws is that it tends to define property as something volumetric, and one of the consequences is that it creates all sorts of unintended neighborhood problems.
When thinking about such a topic, it helps to look at it from the process of justice. What does it mean to own air? It means that an activity that you have engaged in in the past without interfering with anyone is now being interfered with by someone else, and you want to protect your right to continue. You bring this up with the judge and he says that since you were there first, you have the right to own whatever resource you were using, and the new guy does not.
This problem doesn't arise with breathable air as for all purposes it is superabundant. Should someone suddenly make it scarce by consuming it in excess, then this person could be stopped by a court. Air would then become a property right, and you would have to buy breathable air from others as not to lower the total supply of the resource available.
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation - On the nature of power
"It might be hypothetical, but I don't think it's pointless."
>> I said "kind of pointless" =) Actually homesteading air molecules doesn't seem to be in use besides breathing, distilling oxygen for medical use, SCUBA like PTR said, or whatever you can think of. It is a "scarce" (I forget the better word to use) and basically homogenous good. My point was that an oxygen crisis is not foreseeable. I think your problem is trying to own the actual air molecules versus your real property that polluted air comes in contact with. Only the latter approach is correct.
"The purpose of me asking was to see if it would be practical. Yes. I think the two go hand in hand to a certain extent."
>> Actual 3-dimensional "airspace", like the volume of my living room or a lane for airplanes to come in to land are much more practical. Air flows freely through your property like water. You might own it momentarily as you breath or more permanently if you capture it. It is important to keep in mind what you truly own and how you come to own it. The vast majority of the Earth's gases are unowned.
"Do you [have a right to stand where you are and breathe]?
>> I was ignoring the possibility of trespassing, and the "standing" wherever isn't what is at issue. You own your lungs and can expand/contract them. There is no guarantee that air will be available to you.
"Do you have a right to stand on private property and be supplied with food, or venture onto a private reservoir and be supplied with water? Assume airspace and air is privately owned. Would you have a right to penetrate private airspace and be supplied with air?"
>> I never said any of that, and no you do not have those (positive) rights.
"If you own real estate and the airspace above it, and the air in it , and somebody pollutes any of what you own, that's a violation of your property."
>> Let's clear all of this up now. Again, you don't own all of the air flowing through your house just because you own the volume of space it occupies. You also don't own airspace above it or ground below it for the most part. The last part of your statement is correct though, just remember what you own. I will say more about the "volume thing" and ad coelum rights in a bit.
"If you're on somebody else's real estate, or in their privately owned airspace, and have a contract to breathe what they claim is fresh air, and it pollutes your lungs, that's a violation of the contract and your property. However, if you have no contract, i.e. if you're trespassing, or you're a guest, and agree to enter at your own risk, then it's not a violation of the property (in your person) even if it harms you."
>> It seems unlikely that a landlord would ever agree to provide whatever would be defined as 'fresh air' while you occupy their real estate. Should that somehow happen, I suppose that may be a contract violation. In most cases, I think no such guarantee would be made in most situations as none should be expected when you are trespassing.
"One of the big problems with traditional english property laws is that it tends to define property as something volumetric, and one of the consequences is that it creates all sorts of unintended neighborhood problems."
>> I don't quite get what you mean by volumetric here. There is a lot of silliness we can debate like how long do we wait until a homeowner has abandoned the corner of grass just inside his fence; or has a man only acquired an easement above his roof to his own height of 5' 10" and should his son grow to 6', he has no right to the full airspace required to stand upright while resurfacing the roof. There will always be some situations that need arbitration.
I think you mean the phrase coming from English law, "Cuius est solum eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos", or "for whoever owns the soil, it is theirs up to heaven and down to hell". I agree that this is outmoded and causes problems similar to collectivist environmental radicals' proposed policies. A slightly refined common law will always handle these situations better than state systems with their legislative uncertainty and practices like eminent domain.
In keeping with the theme of property rights meaning that they should maintain their physical integrity, there is the example of someone trying to build a dome (occupying the dome builder's own or previously unowned property of course) over someone else's home. This would be a violation of the homepwner's property rights, not because he owns everything "to the heavens" above his land, but because it interferes with his "sun easement". Likewise, creating a vacuum inside the dome would violate an "air easement". Also had the soil below a home been previously unused, anyone can lay pipes or build a bomb shelter below the homeowner's land without their permission. They can't trespass above ground, or cause a collapse of the home, or install pipes that rattle the home without permission though. You own the ground insomuch as is required to keep the home standing, or to continue to bring clean water into a well.
"When thinking about such a topic, it helps to look at it from the process of justice. What does it mean to own air? It means that an activity that you have engaged in in the past without interfering with anyone is now being interfered with by someone else, and you want to protect your right to continue. You bring this up with the judge and he says that since you were there first, you have the right to own whatever resource you were using, and the new guy does not.
This problem doesn't arise with breathable air as for all purposes it is superabundant. Should someone suddenly make it scarce by consuming it in excess, then this person could be stopped by a court. Air would then become a property right, and you would have to buy breathable air from others as not to lower the total supply of the resource available."
>> The first paragraph is basically correct in explaining easement rights except that these are 'air easements' not actual ownership of air as property. I don't agree with the second paragraph of what you wrote. That approach leads to disastrous situations like ours with global warming policy. The use of the word 'superabundant' only means that worrying about running out of oxygen and CO2 or spending as much time writing about it as I have is kind of ridiculous based on our current reality. It is still 'scarce' for our purposes in that it is truly finite. Our sun will someday stop producing light too. Considering air's scarcity is not absurd like the artificial scarcity of "intellectual property".
Last, keep in mind that sorting out all of these property rights conflicts is more difficult since property rights are not truly respected by states. Should we abolish the state, there will be disputes about preexisting claims. Rothbard gave a good example about 'pollution easements' that I will try to relate. Say there is an airport that outputs 50 dB of noise pollution over various parts of some radius as planes are rising up to cruising altitudes. If the path of those planes crosses homes that were occupied before the airport was built, the airport owner would need to purchase easement rights from these homeowners before letting planes fly overhead legally. If homes were to be built later on in range of the noise, those homeowners would need to necessarily accept the airport owner's right to output 50 dB of noise overhead. Should those homes be built anyway and the airport owner later want to increase traffic and noise to 70 dB, he would need to purchase that additional 20 dB worth of easement rights.
I believe patterns can be homesteaded in accordance with an identifiable use. It seems as though everyone has a non-conflicting usage claim to all air over the places they regularly traverse. Everyone uses air to breathe.
Thus, if some entity changed the air over a 3-d area you first used, making it unbreathable, you would have a property claim against this entity. The same goes if they put soot into it...or even noise. Of course, reparations must be based upon demonstrable damages. For most cases (mild noise or odors), damages would be smaller than the transaction costs necessary to prove one's damages in a court.
I should add, most people could not claim they have a property right to peace-and-quiet for areas they use for travel. This usage claim could likely only be enforced on one's home/land, where identifiable efforts were made to enjoy peace-and-quiet.
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