A Tale of Two Farms

I am often asked how a stateless society would look and operate. If there was no government, how would law operate? How would people dispute claims without violence? Here is one such example given to me, so that I may discuss such points.

"You and I own two farms. There's a spring that begins in my land and then flows to yours. You and I have a standing agreement that I won't do anything to the water, since your farm depends on it. We both pass the farms on to our sons. Your son decides to continue farming, while my son never learned how. Instead, he blocks up the spring and starts bottling the water to sell. Without this spring, your son's farm is unsustainable as there are no other natural or nearby water sources or means of pumping in more. 

In this example, my son's rights have come into conflict with yours. The spring is on my son's land, and he is rejecting an contract he never agreed to. However, by doing so he has limited what your son can do with his property, thereby passively deciding for him he can no longer farm his own land. Neither son has done anything outside of their rightful property, but by exercising his right to do whatever he wants on his property, he has taken the right for your son to do the same."

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Let me begin by stating that there has always been difficulty for political philosophers, though especially libertarians, in determining rights to water and air because of their unique characteristics. But here is my understanding of the solution, as I’ve learned from reading the works of Murray Rothbard. When it comes to land disputes, we need to understand the dispute from a perspective of appropriation, also called “first-ownership-to-first-user”. So in this hypothetical, the son who dams up the river is indeed in the right. His father owned it and passed it along to him, thereby making it his. But this doesn’t actually result in a conflict of rights. The son who was merely using the river did not own it; he was allowed to use the river by the owner. Such a revoking of privilege can happen, especially if there are no precise contracts to prevent its use from being at-will. Thus the son who owns the river wouldn’t be encroaching upon the rights of the farming son; the latter technically does not own the land and only may farm out of the kindness of the river owner (as there is no contract).

Your three options of resolutions amount to: sale of water, communal shame, and violence. Options 1 and 2 are viable in a voluntary society. This is essentially what happens in most of the United States nowadays, where people pay companies to use water. A private owner or companies would change prices arbitrarily but then they would likely suffer loss of a customer base due to failure to compete. Shame is also an important force in a land with minimal laws. If a person does something immoral or is generally an unsavory person, other members of the community can boycott him and pressure him to change his ways or cut him off from goods and services. He would have less people to sell the water to. Option 3, on the other hand, would be unacceptable. Even if they successfully stole the water source, there’s no saying that the son wouldn’t get it back through private law enforcement. 

With that in mind, what options do the sons have in a voluntary society? There are other options that you have yet to consider. Option 4 would be an exchange of goods and services. The son who is using the water to sell could still need produce, as he does not farm. In that case he could pipe in water to the farmer in exchange for crops. Option 5 would be purchasing the water source. The farmer could form a corporation with other farmers and buy the water source from the son who owns it. Option 6 would be that the farmer finds a new supply of water. This could be another water owner or it could be that the farmer surveys the region to find a nearby source to irrigate. So you see, there are other options aside from a monopoly of force. A free market society, by its nature, would favor cooperation and business rather than naked force. There’s no need for obtuse social contracts when you have legitimate, explicit contracts between mutually benefiting individuals.

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An important principle, one that I have touched upon, is that of homesteading. This is the "first-ownership-to-first-user" idea I mentioned previously. To discuss homesteading further, I’ve chosen a quote that summaries it very well:

“For remember always the basic principle: that all resources, all goods, in a state of no-ownership belong properly to the first person who finds and transforms them into a useful good (the “homestead” principle).”

In cases involving private land disputes, it’s quite easy to apply. The question isn’t who is currently using the land but who used the land first. The public property disputes are harder because public property, being a quagmire itself, muddles everything up. Private land disputes are easier because we just have to look at who first appropriated the land. Once we found out who appropriated the land first, we would know its rightful owner. Enforcement would fall upon private entities, either companies or individuals. 

So let’s build upon the farm example to illustrate this. There are the two families as before, with their farming disputes. Your son makes part of his land into a golf course and my son uses his land for grazing. The homestead principle is clear on what would happen if my son destroyed the other son’s property through the grazing of cattle: the cattle grazing son would be liable for property damage. You could argue that the golf course was being used for anything and therefore the son owning it would lose title to the land, but I cannot agree with such an argument. It doesn’t matter if the golf course is being used or not; the land was still appropriated first by the family of the golf course owner.

The idleness of the land is irrelevant and doesn’t void the title to the land. Active use of the land, in some form or another, is what produces the ownership in the first place but it doesn’t need to be present continually to keep that land. Consider the alternatives. If active use is what dictates continued land ownership, then you couldn’t leave your land for long out of fear of having it taken by another. If your family had an ancestral home in another city, it could be easily snatched up if no one was attending to that land. You also would have a hard time owning plots of land as a landlord, if you’re waiting for the right moment to develop it into an apartment complex or something like that.

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In the situation outlined above, cooperation and profit-seeking would solve the problems. If the rancher wants more land for grazing, he could buy up sections of property from the other son. Or he could strike up a bargain where his cattle have free access to both plots of land, in exchange for a percentage of meat. He could also go in the entirely different direction for his grazing, either buying or appropriating land in those areas as is required. There is no need for destruction or violence in those scenarios, which is more than can be said for the modern state and its monopoly of force.