First of all, my thanks to minty green. We now know what happens in the world we have today.
But what would happen in Libertaria? (Until a certain libertarian poster shows up, we may never know…)
As far as not rescuing a person in trouble, remember that a few years ago, a small child was raped and killed in a Nevada casino restroom. A student witnessed the crime and did nothing. (The rapist/murderer was his friend.) The witness was not arrested. However, his life was made miserable by his fellow students when he returned to Berkeley.
Hey, who says an easement of necessity isn’t precisely what would happen in Libertaria, jab? Remember, I stated above that if the parties to the contract that created the donut specified whether or not there was to be a right of access, that provision would certainly be enforced. Freedom of contract, after all, is a central tenet of libertarian thought.
The problem, of course, is that no contract can possibly account for every potential dispute between the parties. (Anybody who’s ever bought a house knows precisely what I’m talking about.) If a contract is silent on an important matter, you really only have two options: cancel the contract or fill in the void by trying to determine what the parties would have agreed on if they had bothered to address the matter.
Voiding contracts for ambiguities is generally a bad idea, since there’s bound to be one in nearly every significant contract, and we need contractual relationships to make the economy work. Filling in the blanks isn’t much better, since it’s forcing a solution on a matter that would have been better addressed by the parties. But where the rules on filling in the blanks are predictable and equitable, as they are with regards to easements of necessity, the inefficiency is minimal, and more than offset by the benefits to the Libertarians of ensuring their contracts are enforceable.
Minty has it mostly right, I think, about how it would work in Libertania. Isolated properties don’t generally just happen – they get carved out that way.
So when the property was first created by subdivision or whatever, one would hope that the purchaser would negotiate a permanent easement as part of the sales contract.
But not always! When we think of property, we think of using it, so why in the world would somebody not demand an easement? Well, let’s suppose that I am the buyer, and I am buying it not to build a house on it or anything, but rather because I live on a hill with a view of the property and simply wish to have some undeveloped land to gaze upon. If I never intend to develop the land, I might get a better price if I tell the seller that I won’t be demanding an easement.
A person who subsequently bought the property from me would have a duty to assure himself of an easement, if he wanted one, by buying it from one of the surrounding property owners. Pretty simple, actually.
As to contract ambiguity, more and more contracts in real-life-tania have provisions for binding arbitration. I see no reason why smart contract-enterers in Libertania would not do the same thing.
Finally, as to shooting down buzzing aircraft, please allow me to introduce you to the World’s Smartest Human, Cecil Adams.