Murray Rothbard’s seminal contribution to the market environmentalism literature is entitled “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution.” As the name implies, the article discusses far more than how the price system coordinates human actors in their attempts to solve environmental problems. The substantial majority of the article is dedicated to elucidating a theory of property rights and what a body of law based solidly on such a theory would look like. The discussion of air pollution seems like more of an illustration of previous points rather than a conclusion built upon the previous points. As I mentioned in a previous Journal, I was disappointed with the content of this seminal piece. However, I do recognize the importance of what it does contain. It is telling, I think, that Rothbard believed that the most significant contribution he could make to the literature on environmental economics was an explication of property rights.
Now, Rothbard meant for the enforcement of property rights to be a direct solution to a number of environmental problems, namely air pollution in this particular article. And I agree that this is a valid contribution to the market environmentalism literature. After all, the tragedy of the commons only arises because of there is a commons. If that land had been privatized, then overuse and abuse would not have occurred (provided, of course, that a legal system existed that could enforce those property rights). Dr. Walter Block, Rothbard’s heir as Mr. Libertarian, has written two books drawing upon Rothbard’s property rights focus: Privatizing Roads and Highways and Water Capitalism. The last time I spoke with Dr. Block, he was working on a third book about privatizing space. So, it is clear that privatization and enforcement of private property rights eliminates many of the externality problems and resource conservation problems and efficiency problems that are raised by the environmentalists.
But my project focuses on something a little bit different. I’m focusing on adaptation, rather than prevention. I acknowledge the validity and utility of the privatization and enforcement route for the solving of many problems, but the literature already richly addresses those issues. My project is about how the market might build a better future through climate change, rather than how the market might prevent climate change. So this focus on property rights as a direct solution to environmental problems is somewhat peripheral to my own focus.
However, property rights are an indirect solution to the problems that I seek to address, because private property rights are a necessary precondition of a free market. My project is about how the price system and the market process can create solutions out of the problems, rather than solutions to the problems, but the price system and the market process would cease to function without private property. At the very beginning of this project I justified calling it “Market Environmentalism” because I was going to make the explicit assumption that socialism, without property rights, would be incapable of addressing the environmental issues we are facing. After reading Rothbard’s article, however, I’m wondering whether I should turn that explicit assumption into a reasoned explanation. I didn’t want to get too far afield with my project, but Rothbard’s focus makes me think that taking the time to explain and defend the system of property rights that is necessary for the market to function might be necessary. Indeed, Rothbard has written elsewhere that one cannot explain the market without explaining property. After all, when men engage in exchange, they are not really exchanging an apple for a box of nails; they are exchanging ownership of the two goods. The former owner of the apple now has control over and may dispose of the box of nails, and vice versa. Still, to save time and space, I think that I’ll skip the philosophical justifications for property (citing to proper authorities) and just explain the libertarian theory of property.
Briefly, the libertarian theory of property rights is similar to the Lockean theory of property rights. Property is the right to exercise exclusive control over the owned good/resource. An individual owns himself, and acquires property by appropriating/mixing his labor with unused nature-given resources, transforming them into valuable economic goods. He may then trade these produced goods for the property of others, which was acquired in the same way. In a libertarian social order, these property rights are absolute: they do not expire after a number of years of nonuse, they are not subject to taxes, they are not subject to government regulations as to what one can produce or how one can produce or what one can do with what one produces. Again, for the sake of time and relevancy, I won’t enter into an explanation of how the market might enforce these property rights, but the theory of a free market is based upon the assumption that these property rights are enforced. The market cannot exist without private property.
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