Ocean privatization is the sale of the oceans to private individuals or companies. Liberals have long proposed such privatization. The Market for Liberty, published in 1970, stated that "as companies drilling for off-shore oil have proved, there is no reason why a piece of land cannot be owned and used simply because it is covered by water." In proposing privatization, Walter Block stated that "there are vast areas of human existence where private property rights play no role at all: oceans, seas, rivers and other bodies of water. But why should we expect that there would be any better results from such 'water socialism' than we have experienced from socialism on land?" Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty likewise notes, "Anyone can capture fish in the ocean, or extract its resources, but