By Connor O’Keeffe
AI has created enormous demand for new data centers, and many communities do not want them nearby. The Rothbardian answer is not blanket permission or blanket prohibition, but a property-rights framework and the return of market forces that government policy has largely displaced.
Isn't this just a Coasian framework for externalities, and the homesteading principle is just a way of allocating the property rights?
In the end though, theorizing about it doesn't matter because the NIMBYs don't care about Coase Theorem or homesteading principle. They will just fight to prohibit the things they don't want using whatever political lever they have available.
I thought the Coase idea was that, if there were no transactions costs, everything would end up with its highest valued use, regardless of property rights.
Right but I think it still needs to be clear who owns the property right (or, you could think of well defined property rights as necessary to lower transaction costs)
The homesteading principle is one way of allocating those property rights, but not the only way
The idea is that the outcome will be Pareto optimal, given any property rights assignment system.
Rothbard is operating downstream of Hoppe's arguments for why homesteading is the best property rights system ("best" being defined by properties that allow for peaceful dispute resolution).