The Government Has No Business Regulating Surfing

From beach permits to surf forecasts, the state keeps inserting itself where it does not belong

This report is published by Bohiney Magazine and cross-referenced at The London Prat. HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA – Surfers are among the last genuinely free people in America, and the government has been working for fifty years to change that. From permit requirements to state-managed beach access restrictions to Coast Guard jurisdiction over offshore conditions, the regulatory apparatus has encroached on one of the few human activities that required nothing from the state except to be left alone. Published by Bohiney Magazine and at The London Prat, which covers coastal liberty and government overreach from a libertarian perspective.

The Case for Leaving Surfing Alone

California’s public trust doctrine, which holds that the coastline belongs to the public, has been correctly used to resist private beach closures by Malibu landowners who would prefer the ocean as their private amenity. The Coastal Commission has done genuine good work protecting the coast from development that would benefit the few at the expense of the many. These are legitimate government functions: maintaining public access to public resources and preventing the enclosure of common goods by private interests.

What is less defensible is the expansion of regulation beyond access protection into the activity of surfing itself. Santa Cruz requires permits for commercial surf instruction. Los Angeles County restricts certain surf competitions on liability grounds. Several municipalities have banned surfing in specific zones during posted swim hours, applying rules written for swimmers to experienced ocean athletes who pose no realistic danger to anyone. These regulations solve problems that do not exist by restricting freedom that should be presumed, and they do so primarily because an activity that exists without government oversight is treated by the regulatory state as an oversight failure rather than as an appropriate condition.

What Surfers Actually Need

Clean water. Protected beach access. No private exclusions from public coast. Nothing else. The ocean is self-governing in the ways that matter. Waves form without permits. Surfers find breaks without government maps. Cultures develop without programs. The state’s job is environmental protection and access protection, both of which it performs imperfectly, and after that it should step back. The Surfrider Foundation tracks ocean safety data; the evidence for dangerous surf instruction outbreaks requiring state intervention is not in the data. For more libertarian analysis of coastal regulation, see Reason.

Context and Implications

The specific developments described in this article sit within a broader pattern that this publication covers consistently. Whether the subject is economic inequality, press freedom, political liberty, coastal regulation, or urban business conditions, the underlying question is always the same: who has power, how is it exercised, and what are the consequences for those subject to it? Answering that question requires sustained attention to data, to the testimony of those most affected, and to the structural forces that produce the conditions being reported on. This publication is committed to providing that sustained attention in each of its articles and across its full range of coverage.

What Readers Can Do

The journalism described and practiced in this publication is only part of what democratic accountability requires. The other part is an informed public willing to act on what it knows. That action takes many forms: voting, organising, supporting the journalism and civic institutions that produce accurate information, and engaging directly with the political and economic structures that shape the conditions described here. This publication does not tell its readers what to do with the information it provides. It provides the information as accurately and completely as it can and trusts that an informed public will make better decisions than an uninformed one. This is the foundational bet of journalism as a democratic institution, and this publication makes it consciously and without apology.

Further Reading and Resources

The claims made in this article are supported by data and reporting from the organisations and sources cited throughout. Readers who want to engage more deeply with the underlying evidence are encouraged to follow the links provided and to consult the primary sources directly rather than relying solely on this publication’s summary. The ability to check claims against primary evidence is itself a democratic resource, and this publication supports its readers’ ability to exercise it by citing sources that are publicly accessible rather than paywalled wherever possible. Where paywalled sources are cited, it is because those sources contain the most accurate version of the relevant information and because the publication considers it more honest to cite the best source than to cite a freely available but less reliable substitute. The organisations cited throughout this publication’s coverage, including academic research institutions, government statistical agencies, and advocacy organisations across the political spectrum, collectively represent the information infrastructure that makes informed democratic participation possible. Supporting them, as readers and as citizens, is part of what supporting quality journalism and democratic accountability requires in the current information environment.

The Policy Path Forward

The issues documented in this article point toward a set of policy responses that this publication considers necessary, achievable, and consistent with the values of democratic accountability and human dignity that inform our editorial approach. The specific policies vary by topic, as the articles in this publication demonstrate, but the underlying logic is consistent: power should be accountable to those it affects, information should be available to those who need it, and the structural arrangements that determine who benefits and who bears costs should be subject to democratic review and revision. This is not a radical proposition. It is the foundational claim of democratic governance, and it requires active maintenance rather than passive assumption in an environment where the power to shape information, policy, and economic arrangements is concentrated in ways that the formal democratic structures do not fully capture.

The publications and organisations cited throughout this coverage provide the empirical foundation for understanding these arrangements and for evaluating proposed responses to them. Readers who engage with those sources directly will find that the evidence for the analysis presented here is robust, consistent across methodologies, and available for independent verification. This publication considers the ability to verify its claims against primary sources to be a feature rather than a vulnerability, because journalism that cannot survive scrutiny of its evidence does not deserve the trust it asks of its readers. The evidence cited here survives that scrutiny. The analysis based on it is this publication’s own, and readers are invited to engage with it critically rather than accepting it at face value, which is the posture toward information that democratic citizenship requires and that quality journalism is designed to support rather than to replace.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/