A free market, capitalist, exchange, political, economic system is far more environmentally friendly than any statist system, including the welfare state, socialism (whether democratic or centrally planned), or fascism. To demonstrate this, I engage in some conjectural history, that is, to imagine how the world might be different had government never intervened to protect the environment but rather left all matters to property owners to sort out. FULL ARTICLE
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/3731/environmentalism-without-government/
Environmentalism Without Government
Previous post: Journal of Libertarian Studies 19, no. 1 (Winter 2005)
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I really like this line of thought. With some more research and data presented, this could be a persuasive essay or book, maybe.
For a couple of years that I lived in California, I lived in the forest in the far north of the state. Far from the idiots in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Or Sacramento, for that matter.
It was a very different experience. Even the government employees there respect others and the land. No wonder the Feds had to send in Federal agents to close the irrigation spillways a few years ago, the locals wouldn’t do it and hurt the people around them who depend on the dams for irrigation. Who gives a flying fart about some micro-fishes when an entire valley is run dry by orders from Washington DC?
But the most surprising was a “class” provided by the California department of Forestry, on private forest management for property owners. According to the presenter and the copious materials he handed out, the large majority of productive timberland in California is privately owned by relatively small land-owners. The land produces more board-feet of timber per acre than commercial producers, and has less problems of fire or erosion because, as he put it, people are taking care of their own land.
To hear that from a “state” employee was surprising. To have it be an entire government agency policy was even more surprising.
Excellent article, Mr. Machan. In the same line of thought, here are a couple of other points for historical imaginings:
Hmm. Might make for an interesting science-fiction story.
Interesting perspective. How would this apply to the Barton Springs issue in Austin?
Barton Springs is located inside the city limits of Austin. There is a nice park around the springs and people swim there. It is fed by the Edwards Aquifier. Developing the land above the aquifier would have polluted the spring. Everyone was saying development was inevitable and the spring should be paved over and a swimming pool put in.
The SOS (Save Our Springs) group was effective in getting legislation passed that the land in the aquifier recharge zone could not be developed. So, the people who own property located in the recharge zone are having their rights restricted. But there is otherwise no incentive for them to exercise voluntary restraint, as Barton Springs is not on their property.
Would it be “better”, in the environmental or any other sense, to let private owners develop their land and thus destroy a public treasure?
Interesting perspective. How would this apply to the Barton Springs issue in Austin?
Barton Springs is located inside the city limits of Austin. There is a nice park around the springs and people swim there. It is fed by the Edwards Aquifier. Developing the land above the aquifier would have polluted the spring. Everyone was saying development was inevitable and the spring should be paved over and a swimming pool put in.
The SOS (Save Our Springs) group was effective in getting legislation passed that the land in the aquifier recharge zone could not be developed. So, the people who own property located in the recharge zone are having their rights restricted. But there is otherwise no incentive for them to exercise voluntary restraint, as Barton Springs is not on their property.
Would it be “better”, in the environmental or any other sense, to let private owners develop their land and thus destroy a public treasure?
Lauxa,
Well, if someone values that land being as it is, then they should buy it. Or, rather, a more general solution: fiat legislation preventing the private ownership of “national treasures” or “parks” should be overturned. This would allow private individuals to homestead these lands, and thus these individuals would have property rights in them. In that case, polluting that land would be considered an initiation of aggression (a tort) against the private property owner.
Of course, not all natural areas are going to be preserved as-is. This is because many people value things more than nature-preservation. The reality is that 4000 acres of trees just aren’t going to make it on the free market. But so what? Environmentalists who want to preserve whatever it is they want to preserve are welcome to use their own resources to do so.
Tibor makes a general case with a few examples, some of which I am already studying with the idea of writing a book. For instance, the disaster that is the TVA also has intimate links with the origin of the nuclear weapons complex, which to this day is far and away the single most malignant development in the environment, and, not to put too fine a point on it, is wholly the responsibility of the US federal government.
The crazy example in the Pacific North West is that the same envirowacks who think global warming is destroying the world also “believe in” Darwinism. If they were consistant then they would understand that as the sea water warms the salmon will quit migrating this far south and they should assume that nature will evolve a better adapted fish for the new conditions. Instead, they want to increase the summer spill in the Bonneville Dam system to “save the salmon” at a $100 million or so cost to the working people. They don’t care. Most envirowackos are not working people.
If the human race did not consider themselves endangered (They certainly are not.)there would be fewer other endangered species.
Of relevance is Rex Curry’s site:
http://members.ij.net/rex/comindex.html
Really gotta love that proposed licence plate.
Phaedrus
I am interested in this approach as it happens to be the correct one. After all value is determined by those who do the valuing.
What intrigues me from a historical pint of view is trying to imagine what ground transport would have developed to be like had Eisenhower not decided to emulate Hitler and build autobahns in Amerika.
“Such a general approach to ownership of land, for example, would not have made possible the implementation of massive projects in the name of the public and thus would have diversified resource use throughout the country. The building of railways, highways and many other pseudo-public projects would not have occurred with the aggressiveness they actually occurred in this country’s history.”
What a great argument for state ownership of roads, railways etc. I would never have expected reading that on THIS blog.
What a great argument for state ownership of roads, railways etc.
Not at all. Again, we must consider Bastiat’s point about what is seen and what is unseen. True government ownership of the roads has created the massive infrastructure that we have, but it’s also fostered the pollution, congestion, and fuel problems we now face, with no easy solutions and undoubtably more government intervention in the future.
In short, we don’t know the market value of personal transportation. Perhaps people would have valued it enough to create something similar to what we have now, but it seems more likely that alternatives would have been more vigorously pursued that would have avoided much of today’s problems, less congestion, more transportation and energy diversity, less pollution, not to mention that the development of the cities, urban, suburban, and industrial, would have been different.
Michael,
Don’t forget that the roads in America were originally overwhelmingly privately owned and developed. The government eventually (mid-19th century or so) taxed them out of operation and took them over.
Without the state development of a transportation grid, it would still exist because it is a sorely needed service from which virtually everyone benefits (even non-drivers, who are dependent on over-the-road freight hauling to get their produce, slippers, Reader’s Digest subscription and so forth.)
The idea that transportation just couldn’t be done without the state is one of the biggest fallacies of the liberty movement. State worshippers constantly bring this up as if it’s some sort of trump card, but consider the economics: the total federal DoT budget is around $60 billion per year. Given that the DoT is pretty much the poster child for government waste and jurisdictional nepotism, a truly efficient private system providing more or less the exact same grid should not cost more than say $40 billion per year. $40 billion per year for a system on which the entire nation’s economy depends is not that much money, and it’s not hard to figure out from where the funds would come.
The only real challenge is in administration, since such a large project would almost unavoidably morph into an elephantine bureaucracy sooner or later and have to be purged periodically.
Pellinore
Pellinore, I’m not saying that transportation couldn’t be done without the state. I’m merely saying that it would have developed differently, with more diversification and flexibility. Interstate highways, for example, would probably be joint ventures by many different people and organizations who had agreed to build and maintain a portion of that highway, and to make it compatible with the rest of the highway. We would have such highways, I think, but not necessarily along the same routes as we have now.
Furthermore, buses and passenger rail service would probably still be viable alternatives. Or perhaps competition would have spurred new transportation developments by now, like, I don’t know, personal hovercars or ultralight airplanes.
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