From: smith@ctron.com (Larry Smith)
Newsgroups: talk.environment,sci.environment
Subject: Re: Libertarians & the environment
Date: 28 Jul 92 13:16:15 GMT
Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
Followup-To: talk.environment
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.

In article <1992Jul20.192034.2963@beaver.cs.washington.edu>, pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis) writes:

>Ah, so we have to have people *buy* the land so that we can in turn
>*pay* them to be allowed to use it.

Everything in life has its costs, Paul.  The only real question here is who
pays and how.  In a Libertarian scheme, the user pays.  In the current one,
the cost is shared out to all taxpayers so you can walk "free".

>                                     300 years ago, any of us could
>have walked from coast to coast without encountering property
>claimants.

Not entirely true.  300 years ago, most of us would simply have shot the
property claimants we encountered in our walk.  As, in fact, we did, since
virtually the entire continental United States was *someone*'s tribal territory
before the Europeans came.  Relatively little was actually purchased.  Of
course, killing and war and such are costs themselves, but are not so easy to
quantify in purely monetary terms.

>           What is it about those who will be able to buy this land
>that makes them special, special enough that they are able to profit
>from what was once unowned land ?

It wasn't *ever* unowned land, and *still* isn't unowned land.  At present, if
it doesn't have a deed it literally belongs to the gov't, which is the only
body empowered to sell or lease the land.  Those are laws lobbied by the
environmentalists!

As for who will be able to buy it and make a profit, the same people who buy
any business and make a profit.  The business is different, that's all.

>>2. The forest is useful because it consumes CO2.  [ ... ]

>Perhaps you could explain this a little more. Personally, if I were a
>businessperson looking to cut back on CO2 emissions without much pain,
>"the forest" is the last thing I'd look at.

Then you would clearly not be a good business man, which means you'll shortly
go bankrupt and someone more perspicacious will support the forest.

>                                             It consumes enough land
>that I could sell it off for housing or factories, buy a decent
>next-generation scrubber *and* have money over to pay the dumping fees
>for the filters.

Doubt it like mischief, but this suggestion awaits the enactment of pollution
rights brokering legislation, otherwise it can't happen.

>>3. The forest is useful because we may have a use for its genetic
>>   information someday.  [ ... ]

>Interesting notion of investment. Most people invest in things they
>have some identifiable reason to believe will be profitable. "Gut
>feeling" investment is rare.

Obviously, you've never encountered that strange life-form called a
"speculator".  You'll find herds of them loitering about the stock market,
which is where they retreated when so many of them were harvested after the
recent crash in the land market.  Houses, forests, whatever, it's all grist
for the speculator.

>What's the forest have to offer most people as an investment ? 

Depends on what they invest *for*, doesn't it?  If you're the Audubon Society,
you're investing in bird sanctuaries.  Why must you insist on presuming that
the only people who could possibly want to invest in land are lumber companies?

>>4. The forest is useful for logging.  The best strategy for long-term
>>   management for maximum production isn't clear-cutting.  Clear
>>   cutting tends to happen if there is fear that logging will soon be
>>   prohibited by government regulation, or if the land is part of a
>>   national forest managed by people who don't have a financial interest
>>   in continued produciton.  

>This is such utter nonsense, it shows that your clearly know very
>little about forest practices.

The pot calls the kettle black?  In fact, he is dead right in every particular
on this one.

>                                Clearcutting was in use long before
>there were any government regulations; its been used to decimate
>forests all over the planet. Clearcutting is cheap, and productive so
>long as you don't mind an expected lifetime for the replanted tree
>farm of only 300-1000 years (based on studies in German forests). By
>most business criteria, this is just fine, so there are few business
>incentives to do anything other than clearcut.

Look, we used to use slash-and-burn agriculture as well, does that mean every
agribusiness in the country still does it?  It easier and cheaper, isn't it?
Don't be silly.  Lumbering companies will clearcut any land they don't own,
which is why they do it whenever they get leases to federal land, it's quick
and cheap and _they_don't_have_to_suffer_the_consequences!  Not ONE of them
do that to land they OWN.  If they did they'd be out of business in one holy
hell of a hurry, and rightly so, and they damn well KNOW it.

>>5. The forest is useful because it's good to have some old growth
>>   forests around.  As the amount of old growth forest decreases, the
>>   value of this forest to environmentalists will increase whereas the
>>   value to people who want to use it up will stay about the same.
>>   Eventually the evironmental groups will find it worthwhile to acquire
>>   the remaining old-growth forest.  This seems like a reasonable
>>   outcome; it doesn't make sense to preserve all of the old-growth
>>   forest that ever existed.

>Why not ? What evidence do you have that it was not all a necessary
>part of the ecosystems in which it plays a role ?

First of all, it was *all* old growth forest before man.  If it was all a
necessary part of the ecosystem then it's just too late and we might as well
cut the rest of it.  The point he is making is an economic one.  How much of
that old growth you cherish so has to be cut before you'll shell out your OWN
money and BUY the thing to protect it instead of trying to use gov't power to
steal other people's rights to manage their own land as they see fit? Remember,
the gov't is _not_ your buddy, give it power over other people today and it
will use that power _against_ you when you finally decide that buying and
protecting that growth is the only option left.  The gov't already refuses to
sell timber rights to land it lets slide into the private sector, many people
in the midwest may yet wake up to find lumber trucks harvesting all their
trees - and all that power was so the gov't could *protect* the land.  And
then James Watt wound up in charge of it all.  How can you _trust_ them, after
that?

>>6. The forest is useful to itself because it has a right to exist,
>>   since trees are people too.  Unfortunately for your friend,
>>   Libertarians only give rights to real people, not trees.  In this
>>   case, your friend should probably look into joining Earth First!.   

>Why the caricature ? What aspect of deep ecology ("biocentrism")
>prevents you from recognising the idea that trees deserve rights as
>trees, not as people ? 

Because if you give trees rights then gov't will assume people have no more
than they.  It dilutes and destroys the concept of rights, and fuzzes it out
so much that the concept - and the rights - are totally destroyed.  All that
remains in a word whose meaning changes from election to election.  People
are more important than trees, than animals, even baboons.  And rights are
most important of all.

Larry Smith (smith@ctron.com) No, I don't speak for Cabletron.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Daily I'd go over to Congress - that grand old benevolent national asylum - and
report on the inmates there.  Never seen a body of men with tongues more handy,
or information more uncertain.  If one of those men had been present when the
Deity was on the point of saying "Let there be light" we never would've had it.
Newsgroups: talk.environment