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Without leaving our home, we can experience the magnificence of Mount Everest.
Starting at 5,300 meters, and then moving through a sequence of base camps to the 8,848-meter summit, we can scale Everest in four glorious minutes:
We can also ask if we’ve got a tragedy of the commons problem.
Our Bottom Line: The Tragedy of the Commons
The Commons
Telling us where we cannot fly our drones, the FAA includes stadiums and sporting events, airports, and security sensitive areas. That leaves countless miles of shared airspace. At this point, I thought of the tragedy of the commons. Referring to how we abuse commonly owned resources, the tragedy of the commons signals the damage that drones could do to our air space.
This DJI Maviv 3 (drone) with a mounted camera (probably a 4/3 CMOS Hasselblad Camera) lets us vicariously scale Mount Everest:
It is possible though, that the air is someone’s property.
Private Property
More than 75 years ago, two North Carolina farmers sued the federal government for damages done by the wartime planes that petrified their chickens. When the planes swooped down, the chickens jumped against the side of the chicken house, “burst themselves open” and died. The Supreme Court supported the farmers. Saying that a farmer’s property rights extended to “at least as much of the space above the ground as he can occupy or use in connection with the land,” the Court granted damages to the farmer. Their decision reminded us of why property rights are important in a market economy.
Taking the leap from chickens to drones, we can ask when the air is someone’s property. Otherwise, we can worry about the tragedy of the commons.
My sources and more: Thanks to Moss and Fog (worth the free subscription) for alerting me to the Mount Everest drone. A pleasure to read, this Smithsonian Air & Space article is perfect for contemplating our property rights in the air. Then, for more, you can slog through FAA drone regulations. Also, I suggest this past econlife post.
