The Zenith Of Property Rights
In Property We Trust - Growth And Freedom In The Sky
It’s no accident that a nation conceived in liberty protects property rights. Property is the foundation of every right we have, including the right to be free.
The Foundation of All Rights
The basic property rights the early founders of the US recognized and that common law jurisdiction share, beyond acquisition and disposal, are the right of sole dominion, a right to exclude others, a right against trespass, a right of quiet enjoyment, and the right of active use.
When these rights are violently taken it’s easy to see and take action. When they are taken by a thousand cuts it can be harder to recognise. Like a small leak in a roof, it appears innocuous until the roof caves in. Property rights do not live in a vacuum, an open property market is the backbone of some of the most successful societies on the planet. We give that right up at our peril.
We may accept exchanging our data for a product we enjoy, but would we exchange our property rights for a product that accumulates benefits to a few organisations rather than to ourselves, should you be paid for the use of your property?
Property acquired through hard work and investment is being used without permission or compensation. No one I have asked would sell a property and give a percentage of the profits to Alphabet voluntarily. No one rents out a room in their home through Airbnb and would accept Airbnb not handing over the agreed fee to them. In Texas, a community of over ~1.8 million homeowners are being asked to accept a version of this.
It must be noted, that until now it has been difficult to get the permission from the air rights owners needed to enter and exit the low-altitude airspace they control. Nevertheless, taking the air space without permission and trespassing is not the solution, and it is certainly not the solution when drones can ask for permission through SkyTrade.
Drone Delivery Expansion
Walmart is now able to reach 1.8 million Texas households in collaboration with on-demand drone delivery services, Wing and Zipline. Its drone delivery will be able to cover nearly 75% of residents in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. These partnerships cement Walmart's status as the US retailer with "the largest drone delivery footprint," but with the least permission to be in that airspace.
The venture will leverage Wing and Zipline's drone technology to cover more than 30 towns and municipalities in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. Wing, an Alphabet-owned entity, had earlier collaborated with Walmart in September, offering drone delivery services from two Dallas-area stores.
The Routes of Change
Wing, Zipline and DroneUp (partially owned by Walmart) have secured Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval to extend drone delivery ranges without relying on visual observers. Walmart's drone delivery service promises that customers receive their items within 30 minutes, and some in a 10-minute timeframe.
The Part 107 waiver is a streamlined process for companies resembling already approved entities in terms of infrastructure, drone hardware, and technology, and has been pivotal in expanding Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) capabilities.
Wing has already accomplished ~350,000 drone deliveries globally, partnering with retailers like Walgreens and Walmart in the U.S., Vicinity Centres in Australia, and supermarkets in Ireland.
The cruising altitude is 150 feet for the drones and the ‘immediate reaches’ of property owners is up to (at a minimum) 500 feet. In other words, the drones are in the airspace that is owned by the property owners. Drone delivery is squarely in the property owner’s backyard.
Drone companies want to fly in all the airspace in a town. Heatmaps guide flight planning, trying to avoid too much repetition in case of complaints from property owners. However, when it is a hub-a-spoke model, the residents and property owners close to the hub get the most overflights and can become the most valuable properties when compensated for the use of their airspace.
"Property rights are the bedrock of a functioning market system and crucial for the diffusion of knowledge and innovation." - Friedrich Hayek
The waivers contribute to the FAA's ongoing efforts to gather insights into operations and are expected to continue issuing BVLOS waivers and summary grants. Some drone companies, who are not listening to communities and the property owners, will continue to use this FAA waiver, which gives no access to airspace, as a red herring to fly into private airspace and trespass.
Public Relations
Some of the drone companies’ approach to public relations is to emphasise how they try to prioritise seamless integration with partners and existing transportation systems, avoiding the need for extensive new infrastructure. Without a wide range of places to take off from, land and charge, it is unclear how this is a coherent seamless vision.
Property owners in many cases would welcome being part of the new transportation infrastructure and can add to the available market for drone companies and the required infrastructure, and the ultimate success and growth of the market.
There are also articles published that couch drone delivery as a utility in a collective society, that benefits us all. While there is no doubt drone delivery is wonderful, it adds to our society in many significant ways, if the trade-off is individual property rights, this will not fly. Bringing property owners who control low-altitude airspace into the system is essential to scale the drone industry.
Property and Permission
In the United States, and many other jurisdictions property is sacrosanct and decentralized. The right to own, trade and permit entry and exit to property is the backbone of many countries’ legal architecture. Without the property owners granting permission to the drone companies or their masters we are standing ideally by while private air rights are infringed upon for no compensation. Trespassing into people’s private airspace is currently a feature not a bug of some of the drone companies’ businesses, but this is changing.
In a recent YouGov survey, most Americans said they want a say in who and what goes in and out of their airspace. More than half of those surveyed would be happy to use their air rights to permit entry and exit for drones if compensated and SkyTrade helps the industry on all sides of the market achieve their goals.
Air rights are part of a property and transportation system that allows individuals to make decentralized decisions based on their knowledge and circumstances, which leads to efficient and dynamic economic outcomes for our society.