Water in Objectivist Society

[Greebo]

Those are good questions I've never seen directly addressed here either. I have no idea how you could own a resource that migrates like water within, say, the several drainage basins of the United States. But at the same time, in a true Objectivist world, everything is owned by someone, so it would have to be worked out somehow.

Seems pretty straight forward to me:

- Water on your land - yours

- Water not on your land - not yours

Regarding putting a dam on your property - no dam can completely stop the water flow. To completely stop water flow you'ld need an ever growing dam. Any dam so large as to seriously impede water flow would create a huge body of water. If your man-made dam caused this huge body of water to expand onto my property, destroying my home, my crops, etc., we're going to have issues. You have no right to deliberately cause water to flow onto my property.

The main reasons for building dams are flood control, power generation, and water flow regulation (ie: supply). If you want to build a dam you'll have to own or lease the land the water backup will cover. Such a project could be paid for, then, by providing clean water, electricity, or even in terms of annual service fees for preventing floods from ruining the house you built on a flood plain.

[softwareNerd]

If one wanted to work out the details, the best starting point would be to look at existing rights and older rights related to water, under a few different legal systems. That should give one a starting point. In "Mill on the Floss", a pretty old book, millers were suing farmers and farmers were suing each other about water. So, the law did codify some rights. I remember mention in some novels set a few hundred years ago, of rules where farmers who settled an area could not claim more than a certain amount of river frontage (and related rules). If one asks a lawyer, one will probably find that there are lots of rights related to use of water, access to water, damming of streams, and so on in current law.

One would need to understand what we have today, and what was codified under those British and other laws, understand the motivation that gave rise to the various rights, the types of fuzziness, the issues that became endemic under each of systems, etc. Then one would work out a new system using those concretes, an updated knowledge about rights, and an updated knowledge of the modern world.

[KevinDW78]

I agree that this question is absurd. I was waiting to hear the magic words, "fantastic hypothetical"

[Michael McGuire]

Seems pretty straight forward to me:

- Water on your land - yours

- Water not on your land - not yours

For a small lake or pond maybe. I don't think its so straightforward when it comes to groundwater or tributaries, hence the complex water laws in this country. I have read that securing water supplies will be the biggest instigator of armed conflict in the world in the coming decades. Someone on another forum posted this in response to a similar query:

Water law in the western U.S. is very libertarian in its basic approach; people have rights to take X quantity from a river, may then sell it etc. But the river often has less in it than people have rights to; much litigation results. Eastern water law is "riparian", not market-oriented. Usually there is plenty to go around but the quality varies significantly. The bottom line is that water flows where, when, and in the quantities and qualities that it will; laws assigning rights of use try to cope with an inherently unruly physics. Property rights to water are impossible to regard as anything but human contrivances.

I'm assuming the western principle of treating water as a resource that can be sold would be the closest thing to what an Objectivist water rights concept would be. But, as noted above, isn't this exceedingly difficult/impossible to implement?

[Greebo]

For a small lake or pond maybe. I don't think its so straightforward when it comes to groundwater or tributaries, hence the complex water laws in this country. I have read that securing water supplies will be the biggest instigator of armed conflict in the world in the coming decades. Someone on another forum posted this in response to a similar query:

The world is 70% water. It isn't hard to find. Yes, treating a lot of that water is expensive, but so is growing food, making cars, and everything else. I am familiar with what you're talking about though, to a degree - such as in Egypt where the nile flooding is being interfered with by dams up river.

Ask yourself this question: Am I entitled to the coal I haven't mined that isn't on my land? Am I entitled to the grain I didn't grow that isn't on my land?

Am I entitled to the water I didn't collect that isn't on my land?

Right to live - not right to sustenance being provided. Water is part of your daily intake need - part of your sustenance.

Just because the egyptians got the water every year for thousands of years in a river bed that doesn't originate in their country doesn't mean they are ENTITLED to that water - it means they now need to either trade for it, or change.

[Michael McGuire]

I did find this thread from last year on this forum using Google (which must be the best way to find old posts on this forum, not the in house search feature). In it, mrocktor had some pretty good insights into how water rights should work. Some other posters disagreed with him though, but I think he had it right.

Ask yourself this question: Am I entitled to the coal I haven't mined that isn't on my land? Am I entitled to the grain I didn't grow that isn't on my land?

Coal and grain are more or less commodities that don't migrate from one property to another, so probably not a good comparison.

Am I entitled to the water I didn't collect that isn't on my land?

Right to live - not right to sustenance being provided. Water is part of your daily intake need - part of your sustenance.

Just because the egyptians got the water every year for thousands of years in a river bed that doesn't originate in their country doesn't mean they are ENTITLED to that water - it means they now need to either trade for it, or change.

From mrocktor's posts, I must conclude that you are entitled to the enjoyment of water on your land as it was when you officially bought it. If someone diverts the water supply or affects it in some way that you could no longer get the same use of it that you did when you bought it, then you would have a claim against that person. Otherwise it would be anarchy in my view.

[Greebo]

I did find this thread from last year on this forum using Google (which must be the best way to find old posts on this forum, not the in house search feature). In it, mrocktor had some pretty good insights into how water rights should work. Some other posters disagreed with him though, but I think he had it right.

I'll read it - I'm reading it now, in fact, and already disagree with him.

Coal and grain are more or less commodities that don't migrate from one property to another, so probably not a good comparison.

A commodity is a commodity. Without some prior agreement as to management, if a commodity can move around, and you can't keep it, its not yours. Cattle are a good moving commodity example: they move around, so ranchers brand the cattle to indicate which are theirs. Other ranchers agree that this system works and respect it.

From mrocktor's posts, I must conclude that you are entitled to the enjoyment of water on your land as it was when you officially bought it. If someone diverts the water supply or affects it in some way that you could no longer get the same use of it that you did when you bought it, then you would have a claim against that person. Otherwise it would be anarchy in my view.

In the case of the river, if a pioneer establishes himself midstream and extracts X amount of water for drinking, he has a claim to the extent of that usage. If he fishes as well, he has a claim to that usage. If he also uses a boat to transport his produce downriver to a town, he has a claim to that as well.

By that logic, the pioneer has a claim against nature if the river dries up. Such a claim can not be followed through to completion, you can't make nature put the water back in a drought.

[Ifat Glassman]

So, Ifat, if I were to summarize, you are saying that the following is part of the context or assumption upon which we derive a political system: man can survive independently if he really has to; while it is a great advantage to associate and trade with other men, it is not a requirement for survival.

Yes, sounds about right.

In other words, the example of a man controlling all the water available "blows the original context".

I was not talking about that example anywhere, actually. Two different things - if there is an abundance of water, but someone controlling it all, or if water are scarce. I was talking about the second option;

After re-reading my last 2 posts I saw I was somewhat not focused on the original question. I was actually talking about the second case with scarce resources and not about the original post which I quoted. Sorry for confusing you.

So, the "man buys all the water" is like a life-boat scenario, ...

No, though I can see how you got it from my posts.

But as for some company/ man buying all the water... This scenario ignores the source of ownership (we had a thread where we discussed it actually, sNerd). It is possible that under socially defined set of rules for ownership, some single man would come to "own" all the water (just like some people magically "own" the moon now), but if the water are abundant, then he cannot actually own the water in the true sense of the word.

Owning is a social recognition of some product being a result of a man's action. Which are: a process of creation, either of the product, or some product from the resource. For someone to own all the water in the right sense of the word (not as a social convention), he would have to have a company which is producing something from all the water of the world, producing some value (and not just using to destroy). There are plenty of water in the world... it's not very real that someone would be able to use it all.

It is still interesting to ask "what if" in that case, since the scenario is not impossible (just unlikely).

If the bastard is using all the water and not selling them, people have every right to kick his balls and take hold of the water resources. The concept of ownership is what allows people to live well in a society. If one man uses is to annihilate society, then he violates other people's right to life.

[sanjavalen]

It is still interesting to ask "what if" in that case, since the scenario is not impossible (just unlikely).

No, I would argue that the fundamental form of a free market makes the above idea impossible.

[RationalBiker]

By that logic, the pioneer has a claim against nature if the river dries up. Such a claim can not be followed through to completion, you can't make nature put the water back in a drought.

His application of logic leads to nothing of the sort. It's understood that claims cannot be made against nature whereas claims can be made against men due to their behavior and to the extent within their ability they can correct or compensate for a wrongful act. By throwing nature into the equation, you change the whole concept of 'claim' to something it is not.

Additionally, there is nothing about the concept or definition of 'commodity' that indicates the it cannot placed under some form of ownership or control within a given geographical boundry, assuming a person has the means to exact such control. (i.e. a dam) In the case of cows, fencing can be used to control that moving commodity. Fencing can work quite well without explicit agreement, assuming thieves don't tear it down and the rancher maintains it.