How to catch Pokémon in Pokemon GO under ancap? Everything is private property!

анонимный вопрос

Strictly speaking, under ancap, private territory is not everywhere, but only where someone has privatized it. However, since we are talking about a specific game, it is clear that we are primarily talking about a city, and there, every little scrap of land belongs to someone.

As I have already written in response to the classic question about roads, and later expanded upon when responding regarding traffic regulation, the goal of a land owner is to derive profit from it. To make a profit from land in a city, one must provide the infrastructure so that a customer with money can easily and conveniently arrive specifically at their location and spend their money there. Or, so that workers and materials can reach a real estate object just as easily, if it is a production site rather than a point of sale.

It is clear that if the owner of a certain object wants to attract the widest possible circle of customers, it is completely impractical for them to filter out those from the general flow who wish to catch a tasty Pokemon on their territory and to hinder them in doing so. Quite the opposite: if such a game is popular at the moment, those wishing to ensure a flow of customers should compete to order the best Pokemon assortment for their specific location from the Pokemon producing company, and ideally, one or two should be completely exclusive. Thus, giving wine to every successful Pokemon catcher in a synagogue is cool, but it’s even cooler if one can obtain a unique Jewish Pokemon there, who refuses to fight on Saturdays and always answers a question with a question.

Similarly, those who would prefer that Pokemon not be caught on their territory could simply contact the Pokemon producing company with a demand to remove the entire zoo from a specific location. For example, there are all the grounds for Pokemon not to inhabit a theater, since switched-on phones disturb the actors and other spectators.

I will not venture to predict in detail exactly how the legal battles will unfold between the producers of such games and their clients on one side, and the owners of various establishments on the other. It is clear that if a requirement to turn off or hand over a phone is hanging at the entrance for some reason, it will be quite difficult to contest in court the soft coercion to comply with this requirement and being escorted off the territory in case of refusal.

However, all of this is exotic, since Pokemon are more often found in parks and other public spaces, as one of the goals of the game was simply to get people to go for a walk. I doubt that staring at a phone while walking would be prohibited in a private park; they would likely not even prohibit sex there—why would they, when instead they can sell condoms and rent out blankets?

Shalom!