This is why a free society is evil.

Ken Brown k.brown at ccs.bbk.ac.uk
Fri Dec 22 03:10:07 PST 2000


Ray Dillinger wrote:

[...snip...]


> >Now, let's assume we've a neighbor making bombs and his garage is 15 ft.
> >from your childs bedroom? Let's ask the same sorts of questions?
> 
> If it's a residential neighborhood, then it was probably developed
> by a commercial real estate developer.  In order to improve his bottom
> line, he will probably retain ownership of certain property rights...

Only an American could write this! You guys live in new houses, most of
you. Whoever the property developer was in my neighbourhood in London,
they probably died well before the first world war. And the company I
bought my flat from went into liquidation some years ago, with the
owners ending up in jail...

Anyway in practice, right now, even in America, most people don't live
in houses owned by property developers, and don't have the extensive set
of complex legal conditions imposed on them that your idea would
require. 

How does your "market-controlled anarchy" handle, say, building
development on flood plains?  

A big political hot potato here at the moment, after our little brushes
with real weather in October, & I should think a bigger one for anyone
within 100 miles of the Mississippi and 40 feet of river level. 

I have no problem with the idea that someone who builds or buys in a
flood-risk area should bear the risk of flood damage to their own
property, which they probably got cheap because of the risk. (In the
October floods in England there was some prat on the TV going on about
how unlucky it was that the SAME PEOPLE got flooded out in Gloucester
this time round as did last time. I couldn't help humming that old
Sunday School song "The Wise Man built his house upon the rock... the
rain came down and the floods came up, the rain came down and the floods
came up...")

But, by building on floodplains, and even more by "improving" farmland
with drainage and dykes & bunds and various barriers to water flooding
the land - in other words by defending your own property against floods
- you make the floods more dangerous for others when they come. One of
the reasons that some of the floods were worse than expected this year
is that the water which used to spill onto seasonally flooded farmland
now is constrained to stay in the river and breaks its banks somewhere
else.

So what do you do when the flood wipes out your house because some
farmer 20 miles away drained his own land, as he has every right to do?
Sue him? And if he can't afford it?  (which he can't of course if the
flood has just wiped out 3 streets of posh shops in a small city).

[...snip...]

> >As we've discussed before on the list, in the cases of commen services
> >like fire fighting which are converted to profit making enterprises, how
> >is intentional fire starting to be prevented?
> 
> It's very hard.  Probably the best route would be again through
> property developers; the property developer could retain the exclusive
> right to sell fire insurance on these buildings, and then license the
> right *only* to insurance companies who contributed a set percentage of
> premiums to a local firefighters company.  Getting all these services
> straightened out is just good business from the property development
> POV.

That's how things were run in London in the 18th century. It didn't work
very well. Which is whey they started paying for the fire brigade out of
tax. The problem is you don't want your *neighbour's* house to burn
down.Even if you really hate the neighbour, it is dangerous for you.





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