Whose Rights

I just read a NY Times piece by some individual who apparently in my opinion believes that his right to smash someone's body and thus inflicting pain and harm for his personal comfort is a property right!

Let me pose the issue:

1. Assume that a passenger who is 6'3" is assigned to a seat in which his knees abut against the seat in front of him. Namely the passenger is tall, not obese, and the passenger consumes all of the space allotted to him. Specifically this passenger is using to the fullest his space. No more.

2. Assume we have in front of him a passenger who may or may not fills the space. Yet assume that this passenger desires to recline his seat to the fullest.

3. Now it is a physical impossibility to recline the seat without assaulting the passenger in the seat behind the front passenger. Yet he insists on his property right.

4. If we believe that each has a property right then the assault by the front passenger denies not only the back passenger property right but also inflicts harm. Namely deliberate bodily assault. Let us assume the rear passenger does not employ any means other than his body to inhibit the exercise of the assumed front passenger property right.

5. Then the rear passenger should have a right to file a criminal complaint against the front passenger for deliberate bodily harm, namely depressing the patella and inflicting pain.

Now the Times author in my opinion misrepresents the Coase Theorem. He states:

.... airline seats are an excellent case study for the Coase Theorem. This is an economic theory holding that it doesn’t matter very much who is initially given a property right; so long as you clearly define it and transaction costs are low, people will trade the right so that it ends up in the hands of whoever values it most. That is, I own the right to recline, and if my reclining bothers you, you can pay me to stop. We could (but don’t) have an alternative system in which the passenger sitting behind me owns the reclining rights. In that circumstance, if I really care about being allowed to recline, I could pay him to let me.

That would apply if and only if bodily harm were not inflicted. The act of so inflicting harm may very likely may possibly be criminal and this negates any Coasian solution.

However this piece in my opinion does clearly demonstrate the ego of those people who believe the world owes them and to hell with anyone else. It also perhaps represents the paper in which it was printed!

In fact in the old Salic law there are remedies for this type of assault. On the other hand perhaps we should be glad we no longer apply that law.