I had a long drive yesterday and my brain got to wandering.
So, property rights. I think even the most ardent defender of property rights would agree that they do not extend beyond the boundaries of your property. In fact, a hard line property rights supporter would probably be the person most insistent on that point. You have the right to do what you want on the property you own but you can’t impose your views on property that somebody else owns.
That works out easily in terms on location. I own this piece of property and you own that piece. If I want to do something on my property I can as long as it doesn’t effect your property.
So for example, I can build a toxic waste site on my property as long as I seal off the chemicals. But if the chemicals leak out and travel over to your property you now have a legitimate issue with me. You can sue me because my actions have effected your property. Or more generally, people accept the idea of regulating what you can do on your own property when it’s reasonable likely to have effects on property other people own.
But here’s another way of looking at these same issues. None of us are going to live forever. At some point whatever property I now own will be owned by somebody else.
So is there a rational basis for putting limits on what I can do on my property today based on the fact that I know it will someday be owned by somebody else? If I can’t do something that will have an effect on a piece of property that somebody else owns fifty miles away, why can I do it to a piece of property that somebody else will own fifty years away?
To use my toxic waste dump example, can I dump chemicals on my own property even if I know they’ll make it uninhabitable for the next five hundred years? I obviously know I won’t own that property in five hundred years so I’m knowingly making somebody else’s property uninhabitable. How is this any different from dumping those chemicals into a river when I know they’re going to poison all of the property which other people own downriver from me?
Because a person who owns property 50 miles away has no input over your current use of the your property and possible adverse effects that may follow. The person who owns your property 50 years from now either inherited it from you and would have no claim of damages or would have purchased the property with full knowledge of any adverse effects your actions would have caused.
Choice, for one. A person could choose to buy, or not buy, your contaminated property from you or your heirs, or their heirs. A person could not choose to be contaminated or not if you’re dumping them into the river.
Now, if it’s a case where, absent pro-active intervention, the toxic waste will spill forth from your property, then the fact that no-one lives forever becomes very relevant in determining the limits on use of property.
I’m not following your argument here. If you’re saying the government can regulate what you do on your property because a person living fifty miles away will be effected but has no direct control over you, doesn’t the exact same logic apply to future owners? They’ll be affected by your actions but have no way of directly controlling those actions.
Choice is an argument. But I don’t necessarily think it’s a conclusive one.
The analogy I’m thinking about if the different interpretations of freedom of the press in regards to print media and broadcast media. With print, the courts have generally taken the view that the correct response to an argument you don’t like is to offer a counter-argument. They will rarely take action to prevent an argument from being made. This is not true with broadcast media like television and radio. There, the government has set broad standards that broadcast outlets are required to operate within.
Why the difference? Because print is theoretically unlimited while broadcasting is not. If you disagree with what somebody wrote, you always have the opportunity to write a response. But that’s not true in broadcast media. There are only a finite number of available broadcasting spots. So not every possible view can fit and that means the government has to step in and make decisions about which views will be given an available spot.
And that’s the situation I’m seeing about land use. Yes, there’s a lot of land in the world - but it’s a finite amount. You can’t simply adopt a policy that says “Everyone do what they want on their piece of land and if you don’t like what other people are doing, you can get your own piece of land.” There isn’t an infinite supply of property that would allow such a policy.
Real estate isn’t as restricted as broadcast bandwidth but the same principle applies. There’s a finite amount so decisions have to be made about what uses it gets allocated to. You can’t simply adopt a policy of saying “everybody can use as much as they want” because they’re isn’t that much out there.
You can adopt such a policy, and if the number of property owners that set about making their land useless for future generations is low, it won’t cause any problems. Most people are interested in improving their property value, not destroying it.
The future person only owns it because you chose to give it to them. Yes, you naturally have to give it to somebody, but there is no individual who can legitimately claim that you are damaging their property until they’ve got it in writing that they and not one of the other seven billion people on Earth will be the recipient.
People who don’t exist don’t have rights than anyone is bound to respect. So you don’t need to consider any scenarios at all - just recognize the factors of the situation now.
If you destroy the value of the property so that nobody ever wants it again, you haven’t hurt any future owners because there are no future owners to be hurt. They don’t exist.
It is similar in some ways to selling the property and spending the money on hookers and blow. Your future heirs will never have the benefit of owning your land in that case as well, but it would be difficult to argue that you can be prevented from selling for that reason.
Come to think of it, there’s another, more realistic case that you could look at, which is inheritance in general. If you’ve got a million dollars, your adult children do not have any legal right to force you to save that money for their inheritance. If you want to spend it on hookers and holidays, that is your right, and they cannot stop you just because it’s diminishing the future value of your estate.
In the case of distance the effects can begin after you already have ownership of your property while in the case of time the effects are apparent and can be factored into your choice to buy and the price you pay.
The superfund law or CERCLA defines one class of PRPs (Potentially Responsible Parties) that can be held liable for cleanup of toxic wastes as “the owner or operator of a site at the time that disposal of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant occurred,” so there is already an instance where the law theoretically prevents an entity from dumping on their own property and then blithely saying “fuck you, you clean it up on your dime” to future owners/the government.
Your hypothetical is based on a place where they have no regulatory or zoning laws, yes? Otherwise, this falls apart: “So for example, I can build a toxic waste site on my property as long as I seal off the chemicals. But if the chemicals leak out and travel over to your property you now have a legitimate issue with me.”
Even if there are no regulatory/land use laws applicable, that doesn’t mean a neighbor can’t address if the fact that you have a toxic waste faciilty is known or becomes known and it affects their property values. There are many ways to skin a cat (or a toxic waste dump owner), whether it be to use existing laws-regs or lobby for new ones.
I feel these are two different issues. One is a question of which specific individuals own the property. The other is the issue of the property itself.
If I have two sons and I decide to leave all of my property to my oldest son and leave nothing to my youngest, then the youngest son might be pissed. But I did nothing to the property itself. It didn’t make any difference to its status if it was owned by either of them, both of them, or a complete stranger. The issue of who owns the property doesn’t affect the property itself.
The issue I’m talking about is actions which do affect the property (presumably negatively). If I cause a negative effect to the property, that effect exists regardless of who owns that property. And if that’s true than the identity of the specific individual who owns the property is an irrelevant issue.
I think the topic is “What are the reasonable limits of regulatory or zoning laws?”
Here’s a hypothetical. Going back to my toxic waste dump. I’m putting the chemicals in a large metal tank. It’s sturdy enough that it will hold the chemicals without any leaking for a decade. But after ten years, it’ll begin to corrode and leak and the chemicals will spread out into neighbouring property that I don’t own.
Do the owners of that neighbouring property have legitimate grounds to protest my actions? After all, I’m not doing anything that will affect their property now. I’m just doing something that will affect that property in the future and their ownership of that property in the future is merely hypothetical in the present.
But I can theoretically go around to my neighbours and obtain their permission for my actions. They might agree to accept the consequences of my actions. That’s not an option with the future owner of my property.
Can I buy Vermeer’s “The Milkmaid,” from the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, and then set fire to it?
I say I can.
Even though none of us are going to live forever, and at some point had I left it intact, it would have been owned by somebody else, and there won’t be any replacement of it; it’s unique.