If nobody owns that part of the river or lake, I guess you can claim it as yours, but you can’t have all the river / lake unless you have the resources to protect it from other people that wants to take it from you. And if that is the case and you do have the necessary resources to protect all the river, and I steal water from your river, yes you can be angry with me because I would be violating your private property.
Discussion
But now we have incentivized use of force to claim natural resources.
Not necessarily, obviously violence is part of human nature but we have a better and more efficient tool, the market, where the private property can be exchanged. In that case, violence is not necessary and everybody wins.
Paraphrasing Frédéric Bastiat “Where trade enters, bullets do not enter.”
I’m a huge believer that markets and property rights are crucial to allowing peaceful society to exist. But ironically, I don’t think there is a peaceful way to start this process.
For example: America was taken by force from natives who took it by force from prior inhabitants. Israel was created by western nations post WW2 without (much) regard to rights of the tribes inhabiting the land pre-1948. I wish we could have a better basis for peaceful society other than murdering everyone who got there first.
That is true, but if you think about who generally uses violence more frequently, it is the governments (big mafias) “controlling” the market which is the only civilized and peaceful way humanity has to develop societies without the use of violence.
Governments depend on violence and coercion, against their own or other people to exist and maintain their power.
Many people forget how lethal governments are. Roughly 100 million citizens have been killed by their governments since 1900, all following society wide civilian disarmament. Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Khmer Rouge, etc…
Everyone gets hung up on this right left nonsense. The real spectrum is libertarian vs. authoritarian. Individuals either have a natural right to life liberty and property or they are mere property of the state.
This is why I have many guns of many different types.