From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: The Criterion for Ecocentrism
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 15:50:15 GMT

In article <-1364870483snx@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au> gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick) writes:
>
>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.

There is no such underlying authority in the US.  I am sure there are
a variety of legal opinions handed down throughout our history as to
how collective rights compete with private property, but in the final
analysis, its up to whoever happens to be sitting on the Supreme
Court at the time.  The right has been pushing an absolute "you can
do whatever you want with your land" perspective, but many 
components of English Common Law are accepted in the US which
respect historical use even if it limits the owners prerogotives.
>
> > 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.

I think it is the nature of classical economis to take a theory to a
logical extreme when reality lies in the middle.  Nevertheless, the
"current state of play in the US" is moving towards polarization.  I
think it is critical that we determine why that is if we are to deal
with our problems.
>
>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.
>
However, highly motivated activists tend to be in one of those tails
and their goal is to flatten and spread the curve, or maybe to bias
it in their direction.

>--
>Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
>Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
>PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
>   * * Sustainable Community Development & Environmental Education * *


-- 

		dingo in boulder	(dean@vexcel.com)
Newsgroups: sci.environment