if i own a vacant lot free and clear in california and i start digging straight down, how far down do i own? if some guy in siberia is directly under me and does the same thing and we meet in the center of the earth what happens? i know its hot there but who owns what?
also, if all the currently measured wealth in the world was cashed in and valued in american dollars how much would it be?
and finally, why don’t we just give all the poor people in the world $100,000 dollars so they would spend it, creating demand for more products and services, creating more jobs, etc etc???
im serious!
It would deflate the value of the dollar…
Check the fine print on your deed. Alot of snakes put “seller retains all mineral rights”.
So if you hit oil, gold, etc it’s his.
If some guy in Siberia is directly under you, we have seriously miscalculated the shape of the Earth, or the relative placement of the land masses.
I realize the original poster may have been using a rhetorical device, but this bugs me:
Why does the perception of digging through the earth from the US bringing you out in China persist? Where did it start? A moment’s thought will make you realize that the antipodal point has to be in the opposite hemisphere. Specifically, the US is reflected onto the Indian Ocean.
You obtain the point opposite you on the Earth as follows:
Switch N & S on your latitude. Longitude is 180 - your longitude, switching E and W.
To answer your question, the legal precedent would probably depend on the disposition of mineral rights. I believe there have been some legal cases concerning oil wells drilled at a slant into fields not under the land the well sat on.
If every poor family got $100,000 (let’s just say in America), let’s also say that they’re all tired of tenement apartment living and all decide to find houses that cost, say, $80,000 (they’re out there somewhere).
Now, there’s a lot more poor families than $80,000 homes in the USA. The realtors will see that demand is soaring for these bargain-basement homes and up their asking price. Some will go with the price hike and/or get additional financing to pay $100-$150,000 for what was just $80,000. Also, reators can’t just let this type of house’s value go up without upping other types’ as well. (If you’re willing to buy a house at $130,000, would you buy what was $80,000 in Watts or $130,000 in West Covina.)
So now all houses’ prices go up. Yuppie couple who was about to buy a $200,000 house now don’t qualify for it and settle for a $200,000 house that was only $125,000.
Finally, since not everyone could get into a house, they settle back into their tenement with $100,000 that’s now only worth half as much as it was before you passed out the bucks. Those with the cash will turn their eyes to yet another commodity, create excessive demand, and devalue the dollar in that market too.
Who defines how poor people have to be to get the $100,000? What happens to people who make $5 more a year than the cut-off?
Property - it probably depends on the situation and the State’s laws. For example, you would need to obtain permits for any major construction. Another related matter which receives a LOT of attention is groundwater. Does a property owner own the groundwater that passes through? Usually, groundwater is considered a State’s resource even if it is on your property.
Free money - First, where do you get this money? Taxes? That probably wouldn’t fly. Remember that America is not a socialist country (at least not in a big way). Not to mention that the current welfare system (a lot less than $100,000/year!) can barely be afforded. Just mint more money? That would devalue the dollar. AWB makes a good point about the rapid inflation that would result. The sudden influx of money would heat up the economy, but the resulting inflation would crash it…and then things would be worse when the recipients’ $100,000 ran out.
If you dug straight down from a lot in California, strictly speaking the walls of the hole would converge and meet at the center of the Earth. Find a globe with a 6-inch radius and draw the outline of your lot on it. That’s how big your hole would be when it’s 6 inches from the center.
Your hole would meet up with the Siberian’s hole, but there wouldn’t be anything you could do with it. Just running a fiber optic strand would require trespassing on a scale never previously imagined. But at least you wouldn’t have to worry about some moron with a backhoe cutting through the cable.
If I am sitting in my yard and suddenly see the earth is moving I’ll assume it’s a mole and I’ll give him a dose of lead with my 12 gauge. Now, if it turns out it was some Chinese guy who had dug his way here from China, could I be sued for manslaughter? Or would the guy just fall back into the hole all the way to China? Is it OK if I keep his shovel? Would I have to pay him if I wanted to use his tunnel to visit China? Where do I go through customs? How much wine can I bring?
I remember a Cecil column a while ago that was talking about how far UP you own, and he said something about owning all the land below you till the centre of the Earth.
But keep in mind when you dig, some of the sides would fall, and it would be like you’re stealing your neighbours’ land.
I just happened to ask a real estate lawyer of 30 years experience this question and was told:
In theory, you own the space above you to infinity, and the space below you to the center of the earth. That is why air rights and mineral rights can be so valuable. Obviously one cannot charge a “toll” to airplanes flying overhead, but they are not allowed to buzz your property.
Cecil Adams on Can I declare a “no-flight zone” over my house?
Where would you put the dirt? Even if you only went a small portion of the way into the earth, maybe 10% of the radius, the amount of dirt would be phenomonal. You would have to own a huge portion of the continental U.S. to put the dirt on and keep digging.
This is true, subject to whatever property rights you may not own. If you have a relatively recent title report, it’ll cite the exceptions to your ownership of an inverted pyramid of infinite height. In real estate terms, the whole thing is called a “fee simple estate”.
Suppose you dug a hole (with parallel sides) all the way through the earth, coming out the other side (supposing your antipodal point was on land, not water). The physics of what would happen if you fell in:
Hypothetically assuming a vacuum, so no air resistance – gravity would accelerate your fall from the surface as far as center of the earth, and after that, momentum would keep you going to the opposite surface, at which point gravity would accelerate you toward the center again, and you would keep going to the surface, then fall back again, etc., oscillating endlessly.
But in the real world, air resistance would decelerate your fall so that each oscillation would get less and less until you wind up suspended in the center and stay there.
Technically, you own the land all the way to the precise center of the Earth. The only thing is that due to the fact you are on a globe, your land narrows down on the ‘wedge’ or pyramid principal – getting smaller the deeper you go, until at the very center, your property would end in a pinpoint. On the opposite side of the pin point, some other patch of land would begin and continue on to the surface.
Like the focal restriction point in a beam of light through a magnifier.
I can’t believe you people are still discussing this seriously. Has it ocurred to anyone that it starts getting kind of warm as you get closer to the center?
I will also point out thet maybe in some countries like the US you own the subsoil but this is not true everywhere and in some places you own the topsoil and that’s pretty much it. You do not own any rights to the minerals below and the water you can extract is tightly regulated.
Seriously, though, how much wine could you bring through?
–Tim
the dirt would be the easy part…getting through all the bedrock and mantle would be the real difficulty 
You nerd!
Heh.