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I've just read the most amazing article outlining a way to save the BC salmon industry, which for many years has been wracked by conflicts between aboriginal and commercial fishermen over ever-dwindling salmon runs. Dr D Bruce Johnsen, Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, has applied extensive study and research of aboriginal culture as it existed before the arrival of Europeans in suggesting an ingenious application of pre-contact economic principles to the contemporary situation.
Before the Europeans arrived on the west coast of Canada, many aboriginal tribes exercised exclusive control over salmon streams through recognition of property rights.
Because Pacific salmon return to their natal streams to spawn, tribal ownership of streams provided secure ownership of native salmon stocks. Rather than being the fortunate beneficiaries of a naturally rich environment, the coastal tribes actually created an abundance of salmon through centuries of purposeful husbandry and resource management.
This system broke down in the late 19th century when commercial fishermen began catching salmon in the ocean before they could swim upstream. Salmon stocks have declined steadily since then due to overfishing and other environmental problems.
Because salmon was absolutely central to pre-contact aboriginal society and economy, the tribes developed a system of preserving and protecting salmon stocks. That system entailed ownership of salmon streams.
[E]ach tribe normally claimed a large territory oriented around one or more rivers small enough to be owned throughout their entire length. The tribe consisted of several shifting subdivisions, sometimes called clans, which in turn were divided into local group houses. . . . Almost uniformly up and down the coast, wealthier title holders were known by a name that translated roughly into “river owner.”
. . .
Tribal organization was also suited to knowledge accumulation. Tribal chiefs held title to streams and other resources on behalf of their tribe. A tribal leader’s reputation was part of his payoff from superior salmon husbandry, and tribal chiefs were known to possess a corpus of “secret” knowledge about how best to use their resources to create wealth.Potlatching evolved as a way to define and enforce exclusive tribal property rights to salmon streams and stocks. [footnote omitted]
One purpose of the potlatch was settling disputes over ownership of salmon streams.
When tribes experienced disputes over the title or ownership of streams, the rival claimants resolved the dispute with a “rivalry potlatch.” As Drucker outlines it, “When two chiefs claimed the same place, the first one would give a potlatch, stating his claim; then the second would try to outdo him.” At some point, one of the chiefs either “gave away or destroyed more property than his opponent could possibly equal.” [reference omitted]
Thus was decided ownership of the disputed stream—without resort to threats or warfare.
Dr Johnsen proposes implementing a modern-day analogue to the rivalry potlatch as a means of deciding ownership of salmon habitats and restoring stable and competent management of stocks. That would be a sealed-bid auction in which the winner’s payment is the amount bid by the loser; and that amount is paid, not to the seller, but to the loser, thus compensating the loser for the value he placed on the asset auctioned.
The Crown would facilitate an auction for the BC salmon industry between two bidders: BC first nations and commercial fishermen. The winner of the auction would pay the loser the amount of the loser’s bid. The loser would thus be precisely compensated for the value he assigned to the industry, while the winner would enjoy an exclusive and perpetual claim to income from the BC salmon industry.
That's the concept in a nutshell. (Bankers, the inevitable lawyers, and other experts would need to be brought in to work out the financial, legal, and logistical details of such an auction.)
Dr Johnsen expects that the tribes would win the auction because their return from moving to a modern approximation of the pre-contact ownership system far exceeds their income from the present government-regulated system. Moreover, it preserves ancient cultural traditions and rights, and it gives BC first nations a chance to be self-reliant, self-supporting, and prosperous.
Why not? It cannot possibly be worse than what’s happened to the BC salmon industry in the last hundred years.
The paper linked above is a summary version of a longer article entitled “A Culturally Correct Proposal to Privatize the British Columbia Salmon Fishery”, which can be downloaded as a pdf document through this page.
I also have to mention that Bruce Johnsen and I attended University of Washington together as graduate students in economics during the early 1980s. I hadn’t heard about him since until I browsed the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) website earlier today. Congrats on your success, Bruce.
Those interested in discussions of property issues and environmental problems from a free-market perspective will find lots of good reading at PERC. Check it out.
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