[Jdanz]

I'll admit that i've never read much pure anachro-capitalist literature, but if you'd like a discussion of property rights framed in a context that government intervention is generally harmful i'd point you to Coase or Barzel, most specifically "An Economic Analysis of Property Rights" where Barzel rather convincingly proves that rights cannot be fully delineated.

I really can't summarize his arguements perfectly, but the main point is that identifying and enforcing rights is a costly activity, and that identifiable rights over an attribute are nearly limitless (and variable between similar owned objects), therefore no rights are fully delineated, insomuch as it becomes prohibitevly costly to do so.

We are having a semantic difference of opinion betweeen ownership and damages here. Those who are negatively effected by an actors actions (a power company for instance) by seeking damages, are in other words, delineating their rights over a resource (in this instance clean air). As far they are capable of recovering damages they are capable of delineating and enforcing their ownership.

This process is quite dynamic, however it is almost inarguable that at times it costs more to organize and enforce said rights then those rights are worth. For instance you say a class action law suit (a fairly rare occurance in the greater area of litigations), but this would envolve a class action lawsuit of six billion people versus all those defendents that cause any form of air pollution. This is how "people" as a whole could define ownership over their right to clean air.

I think, quite frankly, that it isn't that they don't value such a resource greatly, but that it's impossible for six billion people to organize collectively, gather a limitless amount of information about how pollution works and identifiying who causes what, and then enforcing each individual case of liability by paying damages to who is effected. It's not that it's not valuable to organize and enforce such rights, it's that it's almost infinetely expensive to do so in a "perfect" anachro-capitalist way.

I submit that the above organization is INTENSELY costly, i'd also agree that government interaction is coercive and costly, but FAR less costly, as the government could for instance substitute a tax per unit of air pollution produced, to change the incentive structure of power companies, and put this tax into a fund to help with damages.

Yes this is coercive, and yes it is economically inefficent (insomuch as a tax removes us from a market equilibrium), but the alternative is more costly (and can be expressed so through voting, another imperfect mechanism). It's simply that no matter how "valuable" clean air is, this value can never be rectified in the free market when organizational costs are prohibitevely high.

Therefore if a resource is percieved as incredibly valuable, and the cost of organization is very high, then government action can lead to a more efficent outcome then anarchocapitalism. (my mathmatical statements from before)

Side note: i myself believe that a mostly hands off approach leads to the greatest amount of value (though i have problems with distributional issues that the market does not address). However people without such liberal tendancies agree for the most part that in certain circumstances (such as those above) that government intervention can be more efficent then the market. As this seems to be an issue you feel extremely strongly about, i would empathically suggest barzel's book you'll find it very interesting as it mainly concerns the generation of economic (as apposed to legal) property rights.