From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: The Criterion for Ecocentrism
Distribution: world
Date: Fri, 06 Nov 92 03:46:53 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <Iexip8O00iV145_20p@andrew.cmu.edu> ss9o+@andrew.cmu.edu writes:

 > This argument dates at least as far back as the middle of the last
 > century. In cases where the net benefits to society are greater than the
 > net benefits to the resource owners, society should prevent the
 > extraction or destruction of these resources. Usually, competitive
 > markets see to this, however, if markets fail to do so, then society
 > should take collective action. For example, we shouldn't allow the

The argument here is fallacious in the extreme, in particular arising
from a false distinction between "the resource owners" and "society".
Are you saying here that the people holding some sort of tenure with
respect to natural resources are *not* members of society? If you are
not saying that, how does your argument stand?

 > Redwood Forest to be felled. And if the resource in question is not
 > publicly owned, then it must be purchased. If it is really worth to
 > citizens to have the resource protected, then they should be willing to
 > pay. 

I do believe your American legal system is wrought with problems if
such questions were not long ago settled. Here in Australia *ALL*
land is vested in the Crown; which means in the common interest under
the legal framework of a Constitutional Monarchy manifested in the
power which has been legitimated in the elected parliament. That is,
we dispose of this apparent problem of "the public" having to pay for
something by merely stating that the public already own it.

Private interest, as a subdomain of the public interest, therefore
negotiates with the public in order to establish the nature of the
tenure pertaining to any given project. Even my family house is built
on land to which my tenure as "owner" is conditional, although we do
try to plan far enough ahead that we can be reasonably confident that
the risk of future resumption by the crown is slight.

We do not find it a problem; certainly the costs associated with
fighting about it all the time far outweigh any benefits we might gain
from a system allowing individuals an absolute privilege of tenure.
Perhaps someone can post a synopsis of US Law in this regard.

 > Who gets the rent for the resource is a distributional issue. We may not
 > like the idea that this fat-cat gets money for being the lucky owner of
 > a resource in demand. In theory we could then take all the rents/profits
 > away and re-destribute them in equity's name. 

Redistribution of rents/profits has never been a theoretical problem
since at some point the lean and hungry will always take to simply
killing the fat and lazy, and take the share for themselves. The
matter is of purely practical concern since that is just what exactly
happens, in every society and culture which ever existed, and you might
like to pick up a bit of history as you develop your ideas further.
For the moment, what other reason would the fat-cats have for keeping
an armed force at hand?

 > All this may seem to be pie-in-the-sky economics but it clarifies the
 > issues. The problem with having the government protect these free
 > services is that people will not reveal their preferences honestly. Ask
 > me how much I value the spotted owl and it doesn't affect how much I
 > pay, then I'll say a lot. However, if what I say determines how much I
 > have to pay, then my valuation will probably be lower. 

It may have clarified the particular economic theory to which you
subscribe, but it raises tremendous legal and social difficulties.
You indeed state the problem right here, and I suggest you might
investigate it more thoroughly before prognosticating on how you have
clarified your pie-in-the-sky issues.

 > IMO, the real market failure results from lack of information. How do
 > you value a species, much less an ecosystem ? The logger and the
 > environmentalist are both attempting to push their own valuations on the
 > public: the logger would say the spotted owl has little or no value and
 > the environmentalist would say it has infinite value. The real value
 > must lie somewhere in between. Getting even a rough estimate would be
 > inform this debate tremendously, and is an important task for scientists.

Again, having admitted that "the real value must lie somewhere in
between", why posit a bipolar dichotomy between one extreme view and
another as the basis of your argument to start with? Perhaps your
argument is merely symptomatic of the current state of play in the US,
and if that is the case the trend then is toward a very major social
schism. I would be quite worried about that myself, and I trust your
new President has been paying attention to it.

In practice, however, the frequency distributions of human attitudes
are so often normal it has become customary among Social Scientists to
assume a normal curve a priori, and then test for particular variances.
It is merely routine for the first pass over the data to check the
frequencies before other operations are carried out, and even then
what we are looking for is not the norm but what is abnormal in the
particular sample.

It is reasonable here to anticipate that since about 68% of the
population lie within one standard deviation of the mean, and 95%
within two standard deviations, you might have developed a far more
substantial argument on the basis of what the public will probably
expect than on the opinions of the few percent out on either tail.

--
Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
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