Quote:
Originally Posted by partofme
Assuming one could then what motivation would they have to limit pollution since their profit would likely stem from charging people to navigate through it? That doesn't require it to be clean and the more profitable traffic through it the more likely it is to be polluted.
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A few things should be considered. First, with the privitazation of oceans, comes the privitazation of fish. Now, fish will essentially be like cows, herded in a place in the ocean and raised. Given the fluid nature of water, pollution in one part of the ocean can easily find it's way to one of these oceanic fish farms. This would be in violation of the property rights of the owners of the fish farms. Second, an owner of part of the ocean will have an incentive to keep the ocean clean because passengers probably do not want to be on a ship going through black, muryk, oily water.
Also, worth noting is that the owner of some passages for ships will not neccesarily own a column of water descending to the bottom of the ocean (though I guess it would be an inverted cone, and not a column, wouldn't it?) He will only own that part of the ocean which he has homesteaded. Just as we do not own all of the space above out houses, he will not own all of the space below the passages. So, if it takes 50' of depth to have ships go through, then he will only own 50' down.
The problem is that no one owns the ocean. When someone makes an oil mess, he is not held completly liable for his actions. He must pay for the clean up, but what about the damage to the enviroment? And, to go on another note, we have a tragedy of the commons with resect to ocean life. Animals are hunted and killed at high rates because no one owns them. No one has an incentive to save animals so that they can reproduce. If people could raise whales, sharks, and other fish, the populations of these animals would increase, not decrease, as their owners tried to make money selling the fish. Also, because oceanic fish farming exists, there will be competition, a higher supply of fish, and more efficent means of harvesting fish; these will lead to lower prices for the fish.