Ocean privatization
Ocean privatization is the sale of the oceans to private individuals or companies. The Market for Liberty, published in 1970, stated that "as companies drilling for off-shore oil have proved, there is no reason why a piece of land cannot be owned and used simply because it is covered by water." In proposing privatization, Walter Block stated that "there are vast areas of human existence where private property rights play no role at all: oceans, seas, rivers and other bodies of water. But why should we expect that there would be any better results from such 'water socialism' than we have experienced from socialism on land?" Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty likewise notes, "Anyone can capture fish in the ocean, or extract its resources, but only on the run, only as hunters and gatherers. No one can farm the ocean, no one can engage in aquaculture. In this way we are deprived of the use of the immense fish and mineral resources of the seas...Even now there is a simple but effective technique that could be used for increasing fish productivity: parts of the ocean could be fenced off electronically, and through this readily available electronic fencing, fish could