My neighborhood, West University Place, is a small, self-contained little island of a city within Houston. It’s only about 2 square miles; but it’s fairly densely packed, about 10,000 families. Unlike Houston proper, West U has zoning. And most of its residents like it this way including, I confess, yours truly.
A recently passed ordinance (sec. 15.011) prohibits door-to-door soliciting in several cases: too early or too late; for any unregistered solicitors; or where the homeowner has a “no soliciting” sign posted. Now it’s been amended again to provide for a “do-not-disturb list,” which lists addresses of residents who have indicated that commercial soliciting is not welcome.
Now personally, I like these rules. But are they libertarian? It seems to me they are.Property owners have the right to exclude, or to permit (“license”), others to enter or use their property. There is normally a presumption that neighbors and others with peaceful purposes in mind can walk up to your door and knock on it, e.g. to borrow a cup of sugar. They have implicit license. There is a presumption in an area based on conventional usage and tradition, etc. But I can change this, e.g. by telling someone they are unwelcome or posting a sign. And there is no implicit permission for girl scouts to knock on my door at, say, 4:00 a.m. to sell me cookies; in such conditions the presumption is the other way around.
This ordinance seems to me to largely reflect libertarian principles. It prohibits soliciting too early or too late. It prohibits soliciting those who have made it clear they don’t welcome it–they don’t give permission for this use of their property (by means of a sign or signing up to a public, easily accessible list). It even makes an exception for those under 14 years of age, because most of us would not want to keep our neighbors’ kids from coming by to ask for donations to the Little League or selling girl scout cookies.
Of course similar comments could be made about spam (as I have done before). If you have a publicly accessible or known email address, the presumption is people can email you to send you a message. But you could rebut it for a specific person, like someone stalking or harassing you. Because sending an email to me is a way of using my computer, since it causes certain physical things to happen to my computer. Therefore you have to have my permission, at least tacit, to send me email. In my view, there should be no need to sign up to a “do-not-spam” list, since the presumption should be that nobody wants all that spam, unless they explicitly welcome it.
3:16 pm on August 30, 2004
