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From: radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Day to day life in Libertaria
Message-ID: <437@calgary.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Oct-85 00:42:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: calgary.437
Posted: Mon Oct  7 00:42:24 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 7-Oct-85 23:27:52 EDT
References: <139@mck-csc.UUCP>
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Organization: University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta
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> 2 people, A and B, own property directly next to each other.  Person A
> likes to play his stereo late at night to the repeated annoyance of person B.
> What would be the correct responce for person B?  
> 
> For the purposes of this question, please assume a world in which your
> favorite philosophy was the dominant one.
> 
> Bernie Gunther
> mit-eddie!mck-csc!bmg

By my variety of libertarianism:

One owns rights, not things.

It is very convenient to own these rights in packages associated with objects.
For instance, owning the right to drive car A forward and car B in reverse,
but not car A backward and B forward would be pretty useless. Hence the 
usual notion of property as physical objects. But this is not the general
case.

So the question comes down to:

    Does person A own the right to produce loud noises at night on "his"
    land (or more exactly, neighboring land)?

If he does, fine. If not, those who own a right to silence can complain.

Lets assume that at one time all the land in the neighborhood was owned
(completely, all rights) by a developer, who subdivided it into lots which
were individually sold. Presumably the developer could decide which rights
get sold (or establish a mechanism which buyers agree to abide by for deciding
which rights residents have). There are obvious possible motives for not
selling all the rights, given that he guarantees a consistent scheme to all
buyers.

Assuming that problems like this really are significant, one can imagine a
structure resembling a municipal government, complete with zoning laws, 
emerging. The difference from present governments would be that "laws" are
the result of voluntary contracts, not political power. Note that I'm not
saying this structure would really arise - maybe social pressure is sufficient
to stop loud music without a bureaucracy, or maybe there's a better way which
the market would discover. But the market could solve the problem this way
it there is nothing better.

    Radford Neal