In free markets, people anticipate likely consequences and learn through trial and error. Competitive forces provide rapid feedback, swiftly rewarding successful innovations and punishing failures. Yet this powerful force for environmental improvement is discounted or neglected by veteran greens. Economies, like ecosystems, are complex and dynamic evolving spontaneously, from the bottom up. In contrast, the beauracracies that greens favor are largely immune from these evolutionary forces.
Agencies become parastitic when they are buffered from the consequences of their actions.
Over time, bureaucracies tend to be run for the benefit of the bureaucrats and the clientele upon whom they depend. Thus we should not be surprised when agencies like the U.S. Forest Service systematically advocate environmentally costly and financially wasteful programs like below-cost timber sales. This once proud agency has squandered its reputation and is having a terrible time earning it back. Yet political pressures inhibit meaningful reform. As people become better educated and more wealthy, their demand for a quality environment increases dramas ically.