From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: Environmentalism is not Anti-Individualism
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 14:45:30 GMT

In article <1992Oct11.235932.19887@yang.earlham.edu> allens@yang.earlham.edu (Allen Smith) writes:
>In article <1992Oct11.172626.18947@vexcel.com>, dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>> In article <1992Oct9.194117.19852@yang.earlham.edu> allens@yang.earlham.edu (Allen Smith) writes:
>> 
>> However, it is the example you offered.  Land usage for private land is
>
>	I didn't offer that example; someone else did.

Sorry for the misattribution.
>
>> quite different.  I do believe certain limitations apply and they are
>> similar to yours, though I imagine we might define harm differently.
>> Pollution-induced health impacts are hard to prove, they have long
>> latency periods.  Is it appropriate to limit the use of private land
>> when the use _might_ cause cancer, but we don't know?  If so, how
>> much proof is needed.  What if there is damage to the biosphere is ways
>> that do not directly harm humans but _do_ harm natural _services_.
>> For example, if you own private beach land and want to build but that
>> building will end the buffering function which that land serves to
>> protect others from storms?  Many wetlands serve the purpose of
>> filtering water and preventing salt intrusion to farmlands and aquifers.
>> Are people who destroy such wetlands responsible for the enormous costs
>> entailed in manmade solutions for these problems?
>
>	It's an interesting question at what point one starts harming 
>other intelligent beings enough for government (or others) to be justified 
>in coercively stopping one. The problem in going too far is that one 
>starts saying things such as that one can't open up a competing business 
>because it harms an already existing business.

Can you offer a suggestion for what the limit might be?  Its easier to
condemn the extreme than to suggest solutions.

>	My point on environmentalism and libertarianism being opposed 
>frequently (at least traditional environmentalism, as opposed to people 
>such as the Nature Conservatacy) is that environmentalists are, as far as 
>I can tell, frequently more concerned with non-intelligent beings than 
>with humans and other intelligent beings.
>>>> 
>>>> I personally find your attitude towards less/non-intelligent things
>>>> to be abhorrent but I recognize that it is a value judgement.  It has
>>>> been debated in depth in these groups and I don't really have anything
>>>> to add to it.
>>>
>>>	As long as you don't try, say, to stop me from eating meat 
>>>(including veal) whenever I wish and have the cash, feel free to have your 
>>>viewpoint. It only becomes wrong when you try to enforce it on others.
>> 
>> 
>> The problem comes when the majority do agree on a moral cause and force
>> it on the minority.  Based on this principle, and not on its specific
>> application, how would you have responded to slave owners who might say
>> to an abolitionist: `fine, you don't have to own any slaves'?
>> 
>> I am not trying to force my ecocentric posistions on anyone.  You can keep
>> eating your meat (I am not a vegetarian, anyway).  If the ecocentric
>> position one day is a majority position, it will likely be imposed.
>> I don't have an easy answer for justifying when this becomes 
>> acceptable.  I can say I believe that it was acceptable not to pay
>> slave owners.
>
>	Certainly; I agree on the slave owners. Slaves were obviously 
>intelligent, no matter how much some (even some calling themselves 
>"scientists") tried to claim otherwise. Slave owners were harming others, 
>and should be at the minimum prevented from doing so further. 
>Unfortunately, the political situation at the time did not allow for 
>further punishment of the former slave owners.
>	I don't really care whether the majority wants something or not. 
>I'm interested in making sure that individual rights aren't trampled upon.
>
This parallels the discussion between Dietz and McGowen.  I think it is easy
_today_ to claim a qualitative difference between the morality involved in
slave ownership and the treatment of non-sentients but I would claim
that this is merely an artifact of the moral development of humans.
If we replaced the word "intelligent" in slave-owner arguments with
"sentient", the arguments, moral and economic, would be virtually
identical.

>	-Allen


-- 

		dingo in boulder	(dean@vexcel.com)
Newsgroups: alt.individualism