I’m not sure what the issue is you are trying to get at. What makes you think the right to property is always absolute? It may be in some cases, but not necessarily in others. Why do you think that the right to energy rests absolutely with the individual? What if the reserve extends under several properties? What if the overwhelming good of the society depends on the resource?
For example, would you say it was advantageous for water to be privately owned, a “right” of the land-owner? Can private land-owners such the aquifer dry? Can a land-owner bottle all the water and sell it to those who have none, and deny it to those who cannot afford it?
These are not simple or obvious questions, and the answers may not always be the same.
It’s not the answer to your philosophical question, but it may be of interest to know that there are basically two approaches to water use in the U.S.
In most of the rainier portions of the U.S., the rights are “riparian rights”; that is, the owner of the bank of a stream may take as much water as he wants from the stream. That applies to underground water as well. But the underlying supposition (taken from England) is that the rainfall and thus the water flow is so plentiful that its overall quantity is not a matter of concern. In many places, that’s exactly correct. In some, it isn’t.
In much of the southwest, however, the doctrine is that of “prior appropriation”. In other words, whoever utilizes the water first has the right to continue taking that same amount of water regardless of how it affects others.
Perhaps this is at least mildly instructive in a moral sense. If desired resources are such that one person’s acquisition does not, in itself, deprive others from the same opportunity to acquire, the acquisition of the first ought not to be condemned. When, however, resources really are not available to all, it’s a different story.
The difficulty, when applied to things other than water flowing in a stream or some massive petroleum resource bubbling up in one’s yard, is in determining what “availability” is. Does it mean “equality of opportunity” in the normally used sense that all could work hard and achieve reasonable, though perhaps unequal levels of prosperity? Or does it mean the result should be the same for everyone regardless of the (name removed by moderator)uts he brings to the endeavor?
The answer might differ from time to time and place to place, because sometimes material resources really are a “zero sum game”, like water in a desert. One man’s wealth requires another man’s poverty. In some societies that’s probably the case. But is that true in the U.S. and most of the West? Personally, I don’t think one could make a credible case that it is.
Therefore, then, it seems to me the acquisition of material goods in the U.S. is more akin to “riparian rights” than it is to “prior appropriation”; the supposition, of course, being that diligent effort will yield a reasonably satisfactory result for those approaching the “bank of the economic stream”.
and some of their proposals I found very odd and unworkable.