Is it right to regulation fish to prevent over fish?
What’s the capitalist view on this?
Naturally, there would be private property rights in oceans, rivers, lakes, and all such waterways in a capitalist society. Producers plan the use of their resource over a long period of time, thus averting the tragedy of the commons, where lack of clearly defined private property rights brings about uneconomic exhaustion of the resource, making over-fishing regulations unnecessary. Since no consumers have a right to a certain amount of fish, over-fishing regulations wouldn’t be ethically compatible either.
Only if doing so is necessary to keep the Earth able to support human life, which I think is extremely unlikely to ever occur. However, within the context of the oceans being “public property”, I suppose you could justify having such regulations as a check against the tragedy of the commons.
Also, I seem to remember Peikoff saying perople shouldn’t own oceans in a podcast because (something to the effect of) “people can’t live there” which I find to be a silly argument.
Also, I seem to remember Peikoff saying perople shouldn’t own oceans in a podcast because (something to the effect of) “people can’t live there” which I find to be a silly argument.
Without citation (full quote in proper context), this statement is equally silly.
I think he said people can’t own the sun because you can’t live there. Obviously, you can make use of the ocean for human ends, so that’s kind of the point of that statement, that ownership of something you can’t appropriate for any human ends would be meaningless.
Because the water would have to be dived into privet property it would be the discretion of the owners on what the regulations are, it would of course be in their best interest to have some to stop their land from becoming useless.
I don’t think it’s so much a matter of claiming a right to certain geographical ranges of the ocean, so much as it is claiming rights to the specific groups of fish that are used for fishing.
I recall hearing someone ( I believe it was Alex Epstein) talk about how in the early days of oil wells if someone discovered a deposit of oil, people would buy up the land around where they discovered the oil, then tap the same oil deposit and quickly drain all the oil without the consent of the original discoverer.
The example was meant to illustrate how property rights must be instituted in different ways depending on the specific sort of property.
I would imagine that a similarly unique institution could be put in place for fish populations.