It's this senior right privilege, that is granted exclusively by the state, that I'm claiming is the title of nobility.
They can be. Native Americans considered e.g. land to be a common resource, and yet today you can own it. What is a "common resource" is a matter of social convention, not a consequence of the laws of physics.
Or do you think the ability to put up fences and signs around an area where other people would like to be too is natural?
There is a reason why wars are fought over land (and who controls it), and adjucation of who controls land is the monopoly of the gov’t - and is literally one of the primary responsibilities of every gov’t.
If it comes down to it, something has to break the tie somehow right? Because while in most years, there is plenty of water, in the years there isn’t it can literally be life and death. And timelines for figuring out who does and does not get access need to be as short as days sometimes.
Different courts have decided different rules, but senior rights holder having priority is basically ‘first person to be using it (historically) gets to keep using it if there is a conflict’.
Which stops someone from moving in and screwing over the existing people (as hard!). Think of the alternative - you build a house in a remote area, dependent on a spring. You have plenty of water.
Housing development gets built 20 years later, also dependent on the spring. In good years, everyone has plenty. In bad years…. You die of thirst? Or what? At least the subdivision knew what they were getting into, when you built your place there was no subdivision!
Same with your farm example. First guy to setup the farm did so with expectations of a certain situation. New guy moves in, and should he now get the rights to half of the ‘the first guys water’ in lean years? Maybe meaning neither have enough water to farm? Or should the first guy have the right to the water he was guaranteed when he first moved in, and the second guy might not get enough in a lean year - but at least knew that was what he deal before he moved in?
Others are king of Solomon like ‘split it down the middle’ (everyone hates this idea, since no one might end up with enough water), or ‘fixed allocations first, then proportional later’, or ‘life critical uses first, then lower priority later’ (easy to game/screw with existing rights holders - add enough new mouths, and none of the ‘less critical’ rights holders get any).
Courts move too slow to resolve these kinds of issues when they become critical - which could be on as short a term as a week or a few days, with no notice.
And not having a general rule resolve these kinds of things leaves a massive amount of uncertainly that due to the severe consequences of these kinds of situations can easily lead to people getting killed or even wide scale wars starting.
Or as they say in the US West - whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over.
You’re disagreeing with John Locke, among others, here.
You should be understanding the points I'm making here as I believe I've highlighted what I think is salient. Others can disagree with whether these points are indeed salient, but they (and you) should at least basically understand the point I am trying to make.
I assume John Locke would understand, as he was alive during the passing of the Tenures Abolition Act of 1660.
Anyone can go up to them and draw water from them. Wells and aquifers can be a bit more complicated, but aren’t that different when you get down to it, they just require some equipment to do the same thing. The closest equivalent would be someone needing to use a 4x truck to drive to the lake to get water.
Same with land - anyone can just walk to them and start using them. Beyond what you can personally, physically control at any one moment anyway, which is pretty limited.
What makes them NOT public is gov’t granted monopolies and rules. Like property rights. Society enforced restrictions, which means even if you’re not physically there guarding it 24/7 it can still be ‘yours’.
Examples of natural private property would be something like your own body parts, or things in your possession, or land you are currently standing on, or things in the contents of your mind.