No Right to Water
Well, the drought here in North Carolina continues, as do the increasing municipal water restrictions and calls by the emotion-driven masses for a halt to new development. Water systems in cities and towns are considered 'public' resources and are owned by the local governments. The problem is that, when the government owns and controls a resource, the allocation of that resource is based on politics, power, influence, and bureaucracy--not justice and efficiency. Most people would not disagree with that. However, many people will then go on to assert that there's something special about water than necessitates its being owned and distributed by the government.
Their reasoning often follows one or both of the following themes (not necessarily in this order):
1) They will say that water is necessary for life, so the government MUST control it and make sure it's delivered at artificially low prices. There's usually some appeal to sympathy for the extremely poor thrown in there, too. I see a problem with that line of reasoning right off the bat. Food is also essential for life, but we don't go around demanding that the government take over all the farm land and distribute food at artificially low prices. Shelter is considered essential, too (especially during inclement weather)--but we don't demand that the government confiscate all housing and sell it or rent it out in order to make sure everyone has a place to live. A corollary of this "water is necessary for life" argument is the assertion by these people that everyone has a right to water. No, you don't. Nor do you have a right to health care, a certain wage, certain working conditions, certain living conditions, etc (but those are subjects for future posts). Very simply, it's not possible to have a right to something that requires forcibly taking from someone else. A positive right to water for you means the use of force to take water from someone else. That is why a system of positive rights is internally inconsistent. You do, of course, have the negative right not to be prevented from using water that you own or acquiring unowned water by homesteading it. But you don't have the natural right to have water provided to you at the expense of someone else.
2) In the second line of reasoning, they will say that water, because it tends to flow freely across property boundaries, must be kept out of the private property sphere and owned by the government. This is also the reason many people (even economists and others who should know better) believe the government should use coercion to enforce water pollution laws. I don't buy this argument, either. There's no inherent reason something that crosses property lines can't be privately owned. Do we know exactly how water rights would evolve if freely allowed? No, we don't. But that's no reason not to do it. Assuming everyone has property rights in their land, wouldn't it stand to reason that they would come up with ways to assign rights to water running through or adjacent to their land so that the value of their land is maintained? I could envision a system in which those living along a river each have rights to a certain volume, level, and quality of water in the part of the river running through their property. Markets would evolve to effectively and efficiently determine if an upstream neighbor had done something to change any of those characteristics for the worse (as opposed to acts of nature), and a downstream neighbor that was negatively affected could seek damages. Insurance companies would be great at this sort of investigatory and claims process. That's just one possibility. Similar arrangements might evolve with regard to other bodies of water like lakes and oceans.
To sum up, I don't think we'd have nearly the water shortage we're experiencing right now if water was all privately owned and traded. Market prices for water would rise as supply declined and fall as supply rose. Higher prices would result in people using water much more efficiently and thus conserving it in times of drought. And the People's Republic of Durham wouldn't be threatening me with violence should I decide to water my lawn beyond what their restrictions allow.
Well, those are my thoughts on water, dear readers. I'd be interested in hearing yours!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
October 4th, 2007 - 17:07
The next logical step is private ownership of the air. Anyone driving a car would have to pay the local air owners for destroying the quality of the air. Thats fine with me. The next step is private ownership of more abstract things like sunlight(especially in cities with tall buildings), safety(you cannot carry a gun in this private town), scenery, access(most places would be off limits except to members), music, ideas, culture, and so forth.
I am all for private ownership of certain things, but I am also for the right to steal less tangible things like ideas when I find good ones. Music is an interesting piece of property. Until recently music was considered a success if it was copied, improvised, and used again in different places. All those old hymns are just copies of older popular songs. Should government step in to enforce property rights on things like music, patents, or copyright? How much power would we give the government to enforce property rights to water and air?
October 5th, 2007 - 14:43
Great question, Ben. Intellectual property (patents, copyrights, trademarks, etc) is not true property but rather an artifact of the state. Ideas should not be considered property since they are not subject to scarcity. I can’t use up the supply of a song by listening to it or use up a new drug by knowing it’s formula. Government-protected patents and copyrights, despite their surface appearance of creating incentives to innovate in certain instances, cannot be logically defended by anyone who supports freedom. And it’s worth noting that in MANY cases, intellectual property rights have actually hindered innovation and made the world less well off.
Regarding the ownership of air, you’re right–it would indeed by morally right and economically more efficient to allow private individuals and entities to homestead (claim ownership of) certain spaces of air. Rothbard wrote an excellent piece years ago about how this would benefit the economy and general air quality: http://www.mises.org/story/2120.
As for those other things you mentioned, yes many of those things are subject to scarcity and private property rights to them should be permitted. I would point out that in a true stateless society (anarchy), you almost certainly wouldn’t end up with a bunch of super-private establishments open to members only–that would be bad business since you’re cutting yourself off from a lot of potential customers and probably bringing bad PR on yourself (especially if you’re the owner of something like a local freeway). There would probably be a good mix of members-only areas, completely open areas, and others somewhere in between.
October 12th, 2007 - 14:03
Capitalism is wholly predicated on legal enforcement of rights to life, liberty, and property. Devoid of these protections, people will spend most of their time re-distributing wealth between each other, rather than increasing their own productivity- think of all the land wars that ensue in Feudalism. (Tim Harford’s “Undercover Economist” has a good case study on the effects of unenforced property protections in sub-Saharan Africa.)
The idea of what constitutes “property” can quickly become a metaphysical debate, depending on one’s perception of reality. I would contend that intellectual property comprises the ultimate scarce asset. How many brains capable of producing “Harry Potter” are there on earth? If a book’s contents are really nothing more than paper and ink, then what differentiates Jefferson’s writings from those of Karl Marx? You can point to a good and assign a utility/value to it. I may or may not agree with your assessment, but the market will set a clearing price. Clearly, the fact that the market prices books differently than the paper & ink that comprise them shows that the public DOES assign a value to these intangibles.
Similarly, Coke & Pepsi cans sell at prices well above those of generic colas because the goodwill generated by the advertising has value in the public’s eye. Study after study demonstrates the value of brand names, trademarks, icons, and other “artifiacts of the state” in capital markets. Even with comparable distribution and production facilities (tangible assets), could the sales of a new athletic company match those of Nike within a short time frame? The swoosh has real value, as measured in dollars and cents. Consumers pay for it, and stockholders appraise the company well above the market value of its net tangible assets.
Both capital and consumer markets send an unequivocal signal that intellectual property has real value in their eyes. If the market is the true arbiter of value, then its unequivocal signal is that intellectual property has real value.
October 12th, 2007 - 22:14
“How many brains capable of producing “Harry Potter” are there on earth?”
Good question. The answer, of course, is one–and brains (as part of our bodies) are indeed private property. Brains are scarce. An idea produced by a brain is not.
I certainly agree that there is value in intellectual works, but value is not a sufficient condition of property. And while trademarks do command higher market value, so do the ‘protection’ services of the most ruthless gangs in town. The question should be whether such things are just. I would say that a trademark, patent, or copyright that existed only because of the initiation of force by government is not a just mechanism. However, upon reflection, I can imagine similar mechanisms developing voluntarily in the market place. The enforcement mechanism, while not perfect (neither is the state), would probably be social pressure. For instance, I develop a new shoe and want to boost my market share by putting the Nike swoosh on it. It wouldn’t be hard for someone (probably Nike) to expose me as a fraud. I would find myself with a great deal of very bad PR. I could continue to sell my shoes with the swoosh, but I wouldn’t make nearly what I had hoped, and I would be stigmatized by the community. There’s no need in this case for a formal, state-maintained ‘right’ to the swoosh symbol. Now, if we really drill down into the issue, any property right in a free society is defined, for practical purposes, by the give and take of the market–with no state needed. For example, I believe I own a certain piece of land with certain borders. Someone else comes along and claims they own nearby land and that their claim extends over a portion of the land I claim as mine. In a stateless society, this could be resolved through violence, but societies of that type wouldn’t get very far, especially in the modern Western world. Alternatively, we could take our dispute to the private arbitration organization of my choice (possibly with input from a rights-protection insurance policy I have?) and request a ruling. Maybe the other guy doesn’t like their ruling, so he takes it to his arbitrator. If the ruling goes my way again, he’s bound (again through things like community pressure and perhaps his own insurance policy) to abide by the ruling. If the ruling goes his way, we appeal to a third arbitrator as per pre-determined agreements (again, probably via insurance policy conditions). The appellate arbitrator has the final say, and we both agree to abide by its ruling. Thus, our property rights, for all practical purposes (apologies to Plato and his “forms”), are defined. The arbitrators are in a constant market competition to be seen as the most fair and just, so we can be reasonably satisfied that our rights have been adequately defined (certainly much more so than under our current arbitrary state system).
As for feudal land wars and problems with unenforced property rights in Africa, I don’t know the details, but I’d suspect they had more to do with actions of, or perverse incentives created by, the state (or its monarchical equivalent under feudalism). I’ll have to look into that some more.
As usual, Jimmy, your contributions get me thinking.
October 23rd, 2007 - 16:53
So, just HOW would things like intellectual rights work in a stateless society? Is it assumed that some private organization would take the place of something like the library of congress where one would register works of art (songs, plays, films) where the artist can prove he or she was the first to create a piece of art that may be stolen/copied and sold by a person, publisher, or record company that does not own it or did not create it? Without some way to make works of art safe to create and profit from, I would think very few would engage in it and, consequently, there would be less of it.
October 25th, 2007 - 15:01
“So, just HOW would things like intellectual rights work in a stateless society?”
Well, that’s the thing–we don’t know exactly how various problems would potentially be solved in a stateless society. But we do know that if a problem exists, people tend to come along and provide solutions (for a profit, of course). As for intellectual works being less common in the absence of IP laws, I’m not sure I buy that. There were plenty of masterpieces in art, music, literature, etc, and many scientific breakthroughs that occurred before their creators had the benefit of IP laws. The thing is, if these creations are truly so beneficial for their creators and for society/consumers, then they’ll be created without using the force of government to protect them.