Assignment task:
In a small farming community, a businessman and entrepreneur buys the biggest local pond in the region and sells rights to it to local farmers for irrigation and to the local town for residential water. He increases his profits this way and proceeds, over the years, to buy-up all the other ponds in the region. Since the area is very remote and completely dependent on the local water supply, the businessman then decides to increase the price of water-rights by fifteen times, which effectively makes water-rights too expensive for farmers and most residents of the region. Some of them have other places to go to find work, but most will wind-up in complete poverty or starvation with nowhere to turn. The Businessman is perfectly OK with this, as he wants to buy the bankrupt farmer's land and use it for other business ventures. Nor does he care that this will be depopulating most of the community, as he plans on buying-up their lands as well and using those too. The businessman has done nothing illegal and feels that it is his right to do what he pleases with his own property.
Is the businessman doing anything immoral in this case? Should the State be empowered in some way to intervene in this situation and compel the businessman to do something different?
What would Mill, Locke, or Marx say about this situation? What do you think?