Keirin Ni Kennadah
Ancap proposes private property for this purpose.
If some greedy people honestly bought a lake into their ownership and decided to take all the fish out of it for quick enrichment, they will get the fish, sell it, and then they will have to find some other use for their lake. They could breed some other kind of fish there, use the water for irrigation, build a water park nearby — there are plenty of uses for a body of water. These guys are within their rights.
If these same greedy people decide to take all the fish at once from someone else’s lake, then the owner of the lake will, of course, try to oppose this, if not during the process, then certainly demand compensation after the fact. This is not a state fishery inspection where you can wiggle out with a bribe or connections — quick enrichment will not happen.
Finally, they could find an ownerless lake in the deep wilderness, claim it as their own, and take all the fish in the lake at once. But here is the problem: the lake is in the wilderness, which means problems with transporting the catch. They would have to use expensive transport like a helicopter, likely in more than one trip, and this again means that super-profits will not happen; transport costs will eat up all the profit. Therefore, a lake in the wilderness is useful for recreational fishing and selfies against beautiful views, but not for industrial fishing. If, for some reason, the transport costs are not so high, then the new owners of the lake have no reason to fish out all the fish from their lake at once when they can do it regularly without depleting the resource. They aren’t some poachers who are forced to feed on stealthy raids. They honestly claimed this lake as something nobody wanted, and now they will honestly exploit it.
Exactly the same applies to hunting animals, logging the taiga, and so on. It is precisely the ability to not worry that the state will come tomorrow and drive you off your plot that allows one to moderate their appetite and exploit the resource carefully enough. It’s a pity that the entire taiga in Russia is state-owned; now even putting out its fires has become economically inefficient.
