[whswhs]

Three thoughts occur to me about dwarf mining rights law:

* Once you have dug a tunnel, it's kind of hard to undig it; you can put the rubble back in, but you can't restore structural integrity to the rock. That more or less establishes an instant "adverse possession" process.

* Given that, dwarves are likely to be quick to take legal action if other dwarves start to undermine them. At the first sound of digging they'll be investigating who has a tunnel in the area and applying for injunctions.

* A fairly self-enforcing way of preventing careless undermining would be to say that if you undermine someone else, and their tunnel floor collapses into your tunnel, they become the owners of the new combined tunnel and everything in it. Kind of like the "commingling funds" rule for trustees and bank accounts. It puts the incentive to avoid problems on the one who's digging. (Though maybe it should be "the one who digs the new tunnel." It would be kind of nasty to encourage digging above another mine and thinning the floor until it collapses—or deliberately digging in from above. "The intruder loses" would avoid that.)

Bill Stoddard