I recently attended a conference on common property resources where the majority of participants were skeptical, if not downright antagonistic, to free market principles.
During one lengthy exchange in which I challenged the presenters to provide clear evidence that common property ownership led to superior environmental and social outcomes than private ownership, the moderator turned to me and asked what recommendations I, as an economist, had for improving the environment.
It was an interesting moment, because the participants had by now realized that I was somewhat of an anomaly at the conference (since I do believe in free market principles) and they were genuinely curious as to what I considered solutions to environmental problems.
After I laid out the four points summarized below, it struck me that most people involved in environmental work are largely unaware of the public policies that hold the greatest promise for environmental improvement. It is not because they are ignorant or incurious, but because of a general aversion to economic theory among many environmentalists, as well as a general failure by economists to clearly articulate the key policy levers that will deliver the greatest environmental bang for our collective buck.
My hope is that these four points will eventually seep into the minds of all environmentalists and the greater public. When this happens, we can look forward to a much-improved public discussion on environmental policy and greatly improve our chances of making substantial gains in environmental protection.
The "Four E's" of Environmental Improvement:
1. Eliminate all natural-resource subsidies
Subsidies to timber companies, fisherman, farmers, and the oil and gas industry are by far the most damaging environmental policies engaged in by governments around the world. Not only do these subsidies directly increase environmental degradation, but by artificially lowering the prices of natural resources, they spur over-consumption, decrease conservation, and make it harder for substitute resources to compete.
In addition, they cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars a year -- money that could be used instead for improving human welfare in myriad ways. Many economists refer to these types of subsidies as "perverse subsidies" because they actually exacerbate bad behavior instead of encouraging good behavior.
2. Expand property rights in areas where they are weak or non-existent
The areas in the world where we witness the greatest levels of environmental degradation (the oceans, many large tropical forests, and the atmosphere) are those where property rights are absent, unclear, or poorly enforced. Without property rights, resources are almost always treated as "open access," which leads to a "tragedy of the commons."
While in many instances private property may be the best form of property rights from an environmental standpoint, property rights can also be held by the government (public property) or collectively by groups of individuals. They key is creating transparent and enforceable property rights for all of the world's resources, so that individuals, groups, governments, and corporations have the incentive to use the resources wisely and invest in their preservation.
3. Empower society with information
Basic environmental science is something that will be underfunded in a pure "free market," because it is rarely profitable; therefore, governments should do more to support scientific research that helps us better understand the links between our actions and environmental outcomes. In addition, laws mandating that companies disclose their pollution emissions and environmental impacts provide individuals, politicians, non-governmental organizations, and investors with information that can help gauge a company's environmental performance and differentiate "green" companies from "brown" companies.
4. Enlarge green markets through government purchases
Since governments are some of the largest buyers of natural resources in the world (e.g. paper, power, food), their purchases have a huge impact on markets and the environment. If governments can increase their demand for "green" products (e.g. chlorine-free paper, power from renewable energy, pesticide-free food) they can push businesses towards much more environmentally friendly practices at a greatly accelerated pace. In addition, governments can both save money and improve the environment by investing in state-of-the-art efficiency for all government buildings and infrastructure.
Calling all radicals: Unite for Kerry-Boxer
Dispassion as the world ends: The absent heart of the great climate affair
Comments
View as Flat
Stentor Posted 9:38 am
17 Jul 2006
Neither markets, nor community, nor hierarchy, nor randomness alone will solve our environmental problems. What we need is a smart mixture of the four, applying each where it's the most effective. I think genuine markets and community-based management (such as common property) are both underutilized at present.
Permalink
Bart Anderson Posted 5:54 pm
17 Jul 2006
Point 1, getting rid of natural resource subsidies, is more complicated.
You are right that most subsidies are counter-productive, but politically this is a non-starter. Large economic interests control how subsidies are allocated and they are not about to give them up. For example, Exxon wailed about the subsidies given to ethanol producers: "We've never been a supporter of subsidies under any conditions because they distort market signals," chairman and Chief Executive Rex Tillerson said in a New York interview Tuesday. "What the government has done is stick a filter between the signals of the market and consumers.
Only trouble is, the oil companies will be receiving some of the biggest subsidies in history: The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years.
New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government.
This example shows the basic truth of politics: MY subsidy is vital to the national interest. My competitor's subsidy interfere's with the sacred free market.
To be fair, some subsidies do make sense. For example, payments to farmers who provide an ecological good to society such as soil banks. There might be a national interest in developing a natural resource so the nation is not held hostage in the event of war. Didn't European countries initiate farm subsidies after the World Wars to ensure that they could feed themselves?
Point 2 needs a more rigorous analysis: "Expand property rights in areas where they are weak or non-existent"
Counter example - the browser on which I am viewing your message (Firefox) is the product of Open Source and is superior to that of the privately produced Internet Explorer.
Counter example - our discussion is being held without any property rights being claimed. More generally, the explosion of information on the Web is taking place almost entirely outside the usual model of property rights.
Counter example - the historical Commons was protected by traditional custom. The Tragedy of the Commons occurs when a community is breaking down and the informal rules are not followed.
The biggest problem with Point 2 is cui bono? Who benefits from the privatisation of the commons? In the British Isles, it wasn't the peasants who benefitted from the Enclosure of the Commons. In Russia, it wasn't the population who benefitted from the privatisation of public property.
Realistically, the commons will be allocated by the government. But the government typically is in the hands of the powerful and ruthless (another economist, Pareto, said this). The property will be given to them and their friends.
Granted there are cases in which privatising the commons can be helpful in the way you say.
*
I think markets can be very useful, but one must be very careful about taking advice on faith from "free market" economists who often mix ideology and science. (Watch those hidden assumptions!)
There are several competing schools of economics - ecological economics, Keynsian, Marxist - which together give a more comprehensive picture.
*
I agree completely with your point about a knowledge of economics being critical for protecting the environment. One proposal that intrigues me is that of a carbon tax.
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 1:50 am
18 Jul 2006
J.S.
Permalink
Kif Scheuer Posted 2:29 am
18 Jul 2006
Jason says
Once everyone realizes how damaging they are and public opinion grows against them we will have a chance.
What Jason is essentially saying is if people know X then they will do Y. That's a big if, isn't it? The path between knowledge and action is neither short nor straight. The emphasis in this approach is to get the information out there, assuming people will act on it once it's available.
People make many choices that are nonrational in a classical sense. The economist's error is assuming that there is something akin to perfect information and that people will act on it were it to be present.
I'm also curious as the economist at a CPR conference - did you walk away with just these recomendations for environmentalists who don't get economics, or was there some cross-fertilization?
CPR research has uncovered a wealth of rationality anomolies that makes the "tragedy of the commons" seem more a construct of our particular culture and politics and less a natural outcome of human behavior.
Permalink
Chicory Posted 2:34 am
18 Jul 2006
(The United States government subsidizes TOBACCO farmers, for heavens sake!) And we (the government by the people) have, for decades, paid farmers to keep land out of production, which artificially elevates the price for crops. It's not as if we don't have the resources to produce more grain!
If the price for corn goes up because of demand for ethanol as well as animal feed production, then farmers will produce more grain until the price evens out again.
Thank goodness people are not all alike: life would be pretty boring if we were!
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 2:59 am
18 Jul 2006
as to your point about learning from the CPR crowd- unfortunately, at this conference the majority of the presentations were of poor quality and i did't learn much- but i do think there is a role for common property analysis, especially for water resources, but it must be done with a very highly level of sophistication by people who understand basic economics
thanks,
j.s.
Permalink
LegumeSam Posted 4:32 am
18 Jul 2006
The revised, later version of the "tragedy of the commons" was the "tragedy of the unmanaged commons," and Garrett Hardin altered his slogan after having been persuaded by anthropologists that there were indeed human societies that knew how to manage their commons over the course of millenia. Kudos to Bart Anderson for noticing this in his reply.
The "tragedy of the commons" is in fact the tragedy accompanying the triumph of a certain philosophy, namely possessive individualism. Hardin's essay introduces its object thusly: The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.
At that point the problem is specified further:
As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" But this isn't an encompassing definition of "rational being." Hardin's description of "rational being," in fact, captures individuals under the spell of a philosophy called possessive individualism, which describes the world as a collection of chattels sitting atop real estate.
Indeed, there are other motivations for herdsmen to attend to. Herding animals is hard work; the herdsmen may choose to limit herds in order to maximize leisure time, or to pursue other health-sustaining activities, or just to go to the beach and have sex (though preferably not with the animals). Animals have to be taken care of; during a cold winter, for instance, they often have to be kept indoors, which entails sheltering costs. We might say that a universe in which "it is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons," specifically, is a universe where herdsmen are expected to operate according to a balance sheet where assets are to be maximized and liabilities to be minimized.
In modern life, however, possessive individualism is more than a philosophy, rather, it is a foundation for endemic social behavior. We do not obey property laws because we all popped out of our mommies' wombs having been programmed to do so -- rather, private property is endemic to our culture, and we are enculturated into it from a very early age.
Given that real estate is the model for the possessive invidualist world-view per se, we might regard entities such as the oceans and the atmosphere as being inappropriate to the idea of totalizing the (socially-imposed) model of privatization. Real estate fits this model because, usually, it stays in one place (unless we're talking Mississippi River delta, or Florida, where the existence of vast tracts of real estate is dependent upon erosion patterns). Air and water, on the other hand, slosh around a lot. How, perchance, could one own a chunk of seawater (somewhere in the mid-Pacific, for instance), without seeing one's "property" mixed in with chunks of seawater owned by other proprietors? It isn't going to happen. And the idea that we can "privatize" the oceans or the air through a system of government permits is just a rationalization for exploitation, not a true property-system.
And I don't think that "self-interest" naturally obliges property-owners to take care of their property in an ecologically-sustainable manner, either. In fact, private-property ownership, being (Locke's definition) the individual's absolute power over a thing, encourages owners to exploit what they own without regard to future ecological consequences. The immersion of owners in a "free market economy," moreover, makes owners dependent upon markets in a radically unsustainable fashion.
What characterizes the "free market economy," rather than ecological caring, is the alienation of everything to the economy -- people work, buy, and sell, for profit and for pay, in service to a regime of exchange-values, rather than for a system that directly addresses human needs. This is why ecological integrity becomes a tragedy of the commons under capitalism -- all benefit from ecological integrity, but it is too easy for nature to be "exchanged away" for something else someone wants in the short term, at which point it might be "put into production." Privatizing the commons will not delay the expected acts of exchanging-away and exploitation.
No, what you need for the commons is a society that will take care of it, year after year, generation after generation. Hardin characterized this as a system of "mutual coercion, mutually agreed-upon." In another, later, essay, Hardin dawningly admits that there is something wrong with the presuppositions of his earlier essay:With Adam Smith's work as a model, I had assumed that the sum of separate ego-serving decisions would be the best possible one for the population as a whole. But presently I discovered that I agreed much more with William Forster Lloyd's conclusions, as given in his Oxford lectures of 1833. Citing what happened to pasturelands left open to many herds of cattle, Lloyd pointed out that, with a resource available to all, the greediest herdsmen would gain--for a while. But mutual ruin was just around the corner.This was at least more self-conscious than the statement in the original "tragedy of the commons" essay. The problem here is that using "Adam Smith's work as a model" implies a world of propertarian institutions and ideologies that make "the greediest herdsmen" into what they are. Adam Smith does not come to us out of the blue, but rather from a developing, capitalist, 18th century British context, and in adopting that context for theory, Garrett Hardin reproduces it in his assumptions about human nature.
We do well, in other words, to begin an examination of how best to "manage the commons" (i.e. to institute "ecological production" along the lines specified by Joel Kovel) by examining our institutions and ideologies. Will our institutions and ideologies take care of the commons? If they won't, then, we need some that will.
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 4:53 am
18 Jul 2006
J.S.
Permalink
Kif Scheuer Posted 5:53 am
18 Jul 2006
That aside have you read Elinor Ostrom's Governing the commons? It's a study of CPRs around the world. A nice review summarizes it here. But I'll quote a particularly relevant section of the review-
Throughout the book, she stresses the dangers of overly generalized theories of collective action, particularly when used "metaphorically" as the foundation for public policy. The three dominant models -- the tragedy of the commons, the prisoners's dilemma, and the logic of collective action -- are all inadequate, she says, for they are based on the free-rider problem where individual, rational, resource users act against the best interest of the users collectively. These models are not necessarily wrong, Ostrom states, rather the conditions under which they hold are very particular. They apply only when the many, independently acting individuals involved have high discount rates and little mutual trust, no capacity to communicate or to enter into binding agreements, and when they do not arrange for monitoring and enforcing mechanisms to avoid overinvestment and overuse.
Ostrom concludes that "if this study does nothing more than shatter the convictions of many policy analysts that the only way to solve common pool resource problems is for external authorities to impose full private property rights or centralized regulation, it will have accomplished one major purpose."
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 6:10 am
18 Jul 2006
J.S.
Permalink
Corey McKrill Posted 6:15 am
18 Jul 2006
I'm in the midst of Natural Capitalism, and specifically the chapter titled "Capital Gains," which spends several pages discussing "perverse subsidies." I admit to having the environmentalist aversion to economic theory, and in fact I barely got a C in my Intro to Economics course in college. However, I find this issue interesting, and seemingly critical to curing the disease rather than treating the symptoms.
It's amazing to me that with many industries, every step of the process from exploitation to restoration is subsidized in one form or another. One of many examples in Natural Capitalism:Taxpayers paid to drain the Everglades, subsidize sugar producers with price supports, and cover the damage to wetlands and the Gulf from phosphate runoff and pesticide poisoning -- and are now spending $1.5 billion to buy back some of the 700,000 acres that they had paid to drain and sell at below-market prices in the first place.
So eliminating subsidies means more than just stopping direct handouts. It means forcing industries to internalize costs that have been traditionally foisted onto the taxpayers, such as the public health and environmental effects of pollution. One way to do this is change the tax structure:Taxes make something more expensive to buy, subsidies artificially lower prices. Thus, when something is taxed, you tend to buy less of it, and when you subsidize, you reduce prices and stimulate consumption. A practical step in moving toward radical resource productivity would be to shift taxes away from labor and income, and toward pollution, waste, carbon fuels, and resource exploitation, all of which are presently subsidized. For every dollar of taxation that is added to the cost of resources or waste, one dollar is removed from taxes on labor and capital investment.Does this mean we're just subsidizing the wrong things, or is subsidization just evil?
It seems to me that Bart is right, that trying to eliminate subsidies is a political "non-starter." However, it sounds like there are enough external costs to taxpayers that could be directly reduced by de-subsidization that people could be persuaded, if ever a politician had the stones to stand up to industry. Natural Capitalism even offers some success stories (albeit not from the U.S.):Indonesia heavily subsidized pesticides, resulting in massive use and equally serious side effects. Starting in 1986, the government banned many pesticides and adopted Integrated Pest Management as official policy. By 1989, the subsidies were gone; pesticide production plummeted nearly to zero and imports by two-thirds; yet rice production rose by another 11 percent during the years 1986-90, thanks to the ecosystem's recovering health.
Grist's InterActivist ... creating a one-of-a-kind portrait of on-the-ground activism.
Permalink
Bart Anderson Posted 6:18 am
18 Jul 2006
One simple counter-example... the coming of property rights to the American Continent.
Before - ecologically pristine
After - Los Angeles
As to whether previous methods of regulating the Commons are romanticized... I think you have changed the subject. Before you were saying that only property rights could maintain the ecological quality of the Commons. Now you are saying that other ways are possible but you don't like them.
About the brutal nature of common property regimes, aren't you generalizing a bit? After all, contemporary conceptions of property are relatively modern. We were hunter-gatherers for ~100,000 years; then pastoralists and peasant farmers for ~10,000 years. Oh yes, and some parts of the world had Big Men and garden-based societies. I would be very wary of any generalization about such widely varied societies. Value judgments about other cultures tend to be drenched in parochialism.
As for brutality, I don't think anything from those societies can compare with the World Wars of the last century, in which Property Rights flourished.
But do we really need to argue about this? If the claims about privatization were more modest and more based on empirical studies, then we could talk about something productive.
In what specific situations has privatization been tried? How has it worked? What are the variables?
In some cases privatization has been theft and buccaneering, only slightly disguised. The ecological results were often devastating.
Yet in other cases, privatization worked out well.
I like Kif's quote: "if this study does nothing more than shatter the convictions of many policy analysts that the only way to solve common pool resource problems is for external authorities to impose full private property rights or centralized regulation, it will have accomplished one major purpose."
Permalink
JMG Posted 6:30 am
18 Jul 2006
All of the world's natural resources includes all the world's air and fresh water. I take your comment to mean that, absent ownership of all the world's air and fresh water, there is no "incentive to use the resources wisely and invest in their preservation."
Isn't it far more accurate to say that the problem is that people have an "incentive to use resources wisely and invest in their preservation" but that corporations--fictional beings created to maximize private profit while avoiding private responsibility--have no similar incentive, since they feed only on profits and care nothing about food, air or water?
Instead of applying to the oceans and the atmosphere the religio-economic model that has brought the planet to (if not past) the brink of catastrophe, wouldn't it be wiser to get control of our minion corporations--the creatures we created--and start examining whether we can afford to continue acting as if we were a little band of aristocrats in England with a whole new world to explore (and thus we needed to charter a new thing called a corporation, an entity for exploiting natural resources and converting them into wealth for the investors)?
The key aspect of an enforceable property right is the ability to exclude others from its use. Pardon me if I don't think giving corporations control of all the Earth's resources--which follows immediately from "creating transparent and enforceable property rights for all of the world's resources"--and the right to exclude others (humans) from using the air or the water if they don't have the necessary funds--is going to lead to the environmental renaissance.
Reading calls to privatize all the earth's resources makes me realize that economics is not just a religion disguised as a science, it's a severely autistic religion at that.
Permalink
Corey McKrill Posted 6:30 am
18 Jul 2006
Grist's InterActivist ... creating a one-of-a-kind portrait of on-the-ground activism.
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 6:39 am
18 Jul 2006
J.S.
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 6:40 am
18 Jul 2006
J.S.
Permalink
DaveGreenAndRed Posted 6:50 am
18 Jul 2006
There are actually two ways to solve the problem. First is to parcel out the property, so that there isn't a commons to trash. Second is to coordinate decision making, so there isn't uncoordinated, selfish decision-making.
By framing the solution as referring to "property rights" we tend to be led toward the first solution and away from the second solution.
I know, I know, before anyone feels the need to repeat it: the original post spoke of property rights being held by government or otherwise collectively. I'm just pointing out the fact that the existing framing of the term "property rights" implies individualized ownership.
Let's move away from trying to put square pegs into round holes and place everything in that property rights category, and be clear that there is another solution: using our collective decision-making capacity and conceiving of ourselves as citizens, not just consumers.
Does anyone have a suitable "E" for this one?
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 7:07 am
18 Jul 2006
J.S.
Permalink
LegumeSam Posted 9:52 am
18 Jul 2006
Before - ecologically pristine
After - Los Angeles
Nice.
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
Permalink
David Roberts Posted 10:21 am
18 Jul 2006
Before - ecologically pristine
After - Los Angeles
Nice.
Oh, c'mon. Using that as an argument against property rights is just silly.
www.grist.org
Green is the new black red white and blue green.
Permalink
Kif Scheuer Posted 10:31 am
18 Jul 2006
So, in situations where you have managed access do you consider that private property?
Permalink
Bart Anderson Posted 10:37 am
18 Jul 2006
David, it's not an argument against property rights. It's an argument against saying that property rights IN AND OF THEMSELVES are environmentally benign.
The point is that it doesn't make any sense to take property rights out of historical context and claim them as a magic solution.
Any change of ownership is intensely political; by its nature it involves a conflict of interests. Jason's claim that it is a scientific, objective process is profoundly misleading.
(Thanks LegumeSam for the comments; it's nice when we can agree!)
Permalink
LegumeSam Posted 11:13 am
18 Jul 2006
Nor do I see my arguments about air, water etc. addressed in any serious way.
Could we stick with the subject?
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
Permalink
ffletcher Posted 11:40 am
18 Jul 2006
If we are talking about collective ownership like a golf course where a not for profit corporation owns the land for the exclusive use of its members that is another deal. One that for many looks like private ownership.
Cerritos, California owns much of the land in Cerritos and allows businesses to use the land with long term leases that regulate the use of the land and requires they cooperate in joint marketing. Its "Auto Square" is one of the most successful in the nation. It allows for better returns to the City than simply sharing the sales tax with the state.
Permalink
LegumeSam Posted 12:00 pm
18 Jul 2006
But there is a real social entity that keeps government public; and that is what John McMurtry calls the "civil commons." This is a concept that joins the idea of the "commons" to the idea of people commonly defending that which they share in common. The idea of the "civil commons" is, as McMurtry puts it, "society's organized and community-funded capacity of universally accessible resources to provide for the life-preservation and growth of society's members and their environmental life-host. The civil commons is, in other words, what people ensure together as a society to protect and further life, as distinct from money aggregates."
Now, in the government example, the government could protect nature, of course, if the civil commons were strong enough. Or, for that matter, it could sell nature's rights off to predatory corporations, if there were no civil commons to stop such a move. The question at hand is one of the strength of the civil commons, not the existence or nonexistence of property rights.
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
Permalink
JMG Posted 11:27 pm
18 Jul 2006
Boy, a dimwit like me sure hesitates to respond to such brilliant forensic skill as you display, but I still have to ask what you are talking about when you suggest that there is some distinction between a system of enforceable property rights for all natural goods (and, therefore, for all natural services) and privatization. Exactly which of the bundle of rights that make up "property rights" did you have in mind? Who would own them, and who would enforce them then?
As for the religion of economics, why would I want to live under the communist sect any more than the so-called "free market" one? Is it your habit to suggest that anyone who questions corporate dominance favors communism?
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 3:55 am
19 Jul 2006
As an ethicist and religionist, with no background whatsoever in economics, might I comment digressively that a worldview including the premiss that the supply of "goods" in the world is limited, that human beings naturally compete to acquire as many of those goods for themselves (and those few in whose well being they are interested) as possible, and that the activity involved in that competition is either morally neutral or indeed a matrix in which certain virtues may flourish, would be abhorrent from the ethical perspective of many traditions.
If it be granted that by "property" we mean either "This is mine and not yours, end of conversation, now go away," or "This is mine and not yours, but if you would like to have it, offer me something of equal or greater value in exchange," then clearly the acceptability of property must be considered inhumane in any society in which the value of a human being is not dependent on what that human being owns.
Remember Jack Reed, the journalist who covered the Russian Revolution, played by Warren Beatty in the 1981 movie "Reds"; he kept the door to his apartment ever unlocked, with a sign on it, reading, "Property is theft." I am not sure I am prepared to go quite that far, but I understand what he is saying.
The early Franciscans, in the footsteps of their glorious founder who considered himself the self-mortifying Champion of his Lady Poverty, preferred a concept of conventional, more or less long-term "use" of goods, which are never truly owned, and which can easily pass from one user to another out of many considerations.
"The tragedy of the commons" is actually an obvious idea, once one understands the absurdity of the term "commons," in a society in which it is opposed to "private" property, and whose members are property-owning individuals interested each one in increasing his or her ownership of the limited number of goods. "Commons" may indeed be a real phenomenon, but inasmuch as it is supposed to mean "a common lot of goods," its reality is surely ephemeral.
(Thanks to LSam for introducing me to that expression.)
Here is one of the Verba Seniorum, the "words of the elders," reports about the Desert Fathers and Mothers of Egypt of the 4th and 5th centuries, as translated by the American Trappist Thomas Merton:
<<
There were two elders living together in a cell, and they had never had so much as one quarrel with one another. One therefore said to the other: Come on, let us have at least one quarrel, like other men. The other said: I don't know how to start a quarrel. The first said: I will take this brick and place it here between us. Then I will say: It is mine. After that you will say: It is mine. This is what leads to a dispute and a fight. So then they placed the brick between them, one said: It is mine, and the other replied to the first: I do believe that it is mine. The first one said again: It is not yours, it is mine. So the other answered: Well then, if it is yours, take it! Thus they did not manage after all to get into a quarrel.
>>
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 4:16 am
19 Jul 2006
to your second point- economics is a philosophical system based on empirics- it is exactly what a religion is not- something based on science with testable hypothesis and constant revision
and no, just because you don't understand and appreciate the brilliance of the market system you do not automatically favor communism or pastoralism, but then, let me ask you what system do you prefer?
J.S.
Permalink
JMG Posted 1:01 am
20 Jul 2006
Environmental regulation in this economy, for example, is like this clean water law: Any business discharging materials to a stream or river must draw their intake water downstream of their discharge. Similarly, real people with the controlling majority of confined animal feeding operations must live within the "blast zone" downwind of those operations.
Corporations would again have limited charters, and the limits on liability for stockholders would be progressively lowered according to the social value of the goods and services provided by the corporation and the social costs that those goods and services impose.
I favor not driving with our foot on the gas pedal and the brake at the same time. Therefore, I favor taxation of four things: land-value (Georgist), the use of non-renewable resources, the creation of hazardous wastes (including CO2), and wealth left behind at death. I oppose taxes on the wages, savings, and investments of the living.
But, of course, this is all heresy to economists, who are immersed in the belief that you can have an infinitely growing economy in a finite world.
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 3:43 am
20 Jul 2006
as to infinite growth- do you not believe that knowledge is potentially infinite? That's the only thing economists do.
J.S.
Permalink
JMG Posted 1:25 am
21 Jul 2006
We need about 6 billion fewer people if the planet is to survive in any semblance of its current biological complexity (in ref. to the discussion about people being part of the environment--yes, we're the part that's extirminating all the others and making the climate hostile to our own children). So no, knowledge is not infinite.
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 3:34 am
21 Jul 2006
J.S.
Permalink
JMG Posted 3:51 am
21 Jul 2006
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 4:19 am
21 Jul 2006
and here's some simple numbers for you:
An economy that generates $1 million in wealth using 100 barrels of oil
An economy that generates $2 million in wealth using 50 barrels of oil
In #2 we have growth with decreased throughput- in the final analysis we have many sustainable resources- the sun, wind, gravity, etc.- that could produce energy orders of magnitudemore than what we currently employ- the neo-Malthusians have always been wrong, will continue to be wrong, and have never been right.
J.S.
Permalink
pentheus Posted 8:25 am
21 Jul 2006
Permalink
bookerly Posted 1:10 pm
21 Jul 2006
There are some problems with the idea of eliminating "all natural resource subsidies" as Jason has described it.
First, is the assumption, that lacking subsidies, a free market would exist where "substitute resources <can> compete".
There is no "free market". All markets are maninpulated to some extent (some more than others). For instance, the market for corn is dominated by large scale producers (such as ADM) and without government subsidies, the small scale producers in places like Mexico, go out of business.
A free market would only really be free if we could eliminate history, and start everyone off "equally" (on the mythical level playing field). Since this isn't the case, calls for eliminating all government subsidies are usually embraced by the large and well off corporations, since this means they can take control of the market.
So, the idea of eliminating all government subsidies should arrouse suspicions in our minds (and does for many of us).
In poorer countries, governments manipulate the agricultural market to keep certain food staples affordable. They often do this through a combination of subsidies and price controls. Unwieldy, but somewhat workable.
While a free market might (over time) be able to replace this system, during the cut over, there would be lots of "collateral damage" (my term for when "others" we don't care enough to acknowledge get killed on the way to our brighter future) (And , no!! I am not accusing Jason of advocating such).
Also, the free market is about monetary value of things. A free market might see gorillas as worth more to trophy hunters than as residents of a protected enclave.
Finally, markets are generally interested in short term returns. Short term returns are not the best values for environmentalists.
The idea that all subsidies encourage "bad behavior" is a political idea, not truly an economica idea. It is based on a political value.
We need to look at markets realistically for what they are, then we can better figure out how to deal with them.
Eliminating of subsidies should be done carefully, with full consideration of the economic, social and environmental consequences.
patrick
Permalink
bookerly Posted 1:29 pm
21 Jul 2006
Perhaps this is a misleading term. Maybe the expression should be "Property Responsibilities".
The problem is that Jason has lumped private property, public property and collective property (that owned by groups of individuals) together into a big mishmash and called it "Property Rights".
First, of all, it is not clear where he would put corporate and institutional property.
The idea that "open access" property is not cared for is also misleading. Historically, such property only existed in areas of low density human civilization. As soon as many human began to live in an area, resources (property) are usually assigned one of the types of ownership that Jason describes.
The one example that does fit his argument is that of the oceans, where there is often a lack of responsibility. But, it is worth noting, that rich nations have been able to overfish and deplete even parts of the ocean "claimed" by a poor nation (or an irresponsible rich nation).
Property "ownership" does not guarantee responsibility. We can see that in the tremendous damage done to the environment in all parts of the world, no matter which model of ownership is applied.
Instead of lumping all the models of property ownership together, we need to instead, seperate them and examine them carefully. We would probably find that there are many different types of property ownership models available, and different results flow from them.
patrick
Permalink
bookerly Posted 2:15 pm
21 Jul 2006
Sometime in the past, the "Tragedy of the Commons" became required misreading for students.
There are a number of problems with this "famous" essay. Starting with the assumption that "Population, as Malthus said, naturally tends to grow "geometrically," or, as we would now say, exponentially." (from the essay).
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html
Actually, it doesn't. Population growth (as we know) depends on the status of women, the existence of social welfare plans for the aged, and a number of other factors. It does not grow exponentionally outside of poorly designed mathematical models.
Malthus was writing in part to alarm the Western world at the numbers of the poor who were not white and middle class but were having babies.
Hardin has been active in anti-immigration groups for many years (and so-called population control groups, despite having four kids). He is essentially an elitist, he says "So, you can feel as bad as you want to about the fact that you're comfortable and somebody else is uncomfortable, but I think it's very foolish to try to eliminate that aspect of life - that is, the unequal distribution of things. If you're going to eliminate unequal distribution, you should work at the other end by reducing the number of people who are living a miserable life, which means reducing the number of people who are alive in the next generation. That's the thing to work on. And don't have a bad conscience about your prosperity now."
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/gh/gh_straub_interview.html
I quote these because some people blindly quote Hardin without considering his larger political philosophy. Which I think is a mistake, but so many people blindly accept the ideas of "The Tragedy of the Commons" without considering their provenance or examining them carefully.
So, let me take a minute to do so.
The basic idea is that we all act for individual gain and damn the consequences, and that furthermore we will continue to do so even when it destroys us. (Humans as greedy lemmings philosophy).
There are a number of problems with this idea. One it assumes that altruism doesn't exist. Greed and gain are certainly motivations for many people, but the primary motivation? The only one?
Look at school teachers (ahem). How do the sacrifices they make benefit them personally? How about nurses (paid very poorly in many countries)?
There are many people who make life decisions on the basis of other than greed and gain.
Let's look at farming. Most farmers understand the need to take care of their land from generatio n to generation. If they didn't, farming would have died out thousands of years ago! (okay, hundreds in some places).
Why do they rotate crops? Why do they limit the number of animals they keep? They do, any farmer will pay attention to how many animals they are able to raise, not blindly go out and get as many as they can.
"The Tragedy of the Commons" describes a situation that generally doesn't exist (though it may from place to place) among most human societies.
Where it does come in to play at all, might be when we developed those supra-humans called "corporations". Aha!! For them, it tends to make sense, and we can see that when corporations act, they often act in the way Hardin described! The problem then is corporations, perhaps.
But, where there are governments that act as governors (as opposed to co-destructors), then a balance can be achieved.
"The Tragedy of the Commons" assumes that seeing the edge of the cliff approaching, we are not able to modify our behavior and avoid it.
Yet, if anything, history suggests that we can do so.
The "real" "Tragedy of the Commons" is that people accept and quote this work as if it made sense in the real world, and it doesn't.
patrick
Permalink
Bart Anderson Posted 7:53 pm
21 Jul 2006
Much of the heat of this discussion could have been avoided by a more careful use of the terms.
It would have been good to define privatization and not be coy about telling your position on it. Privatization is the big issue on people's minds. If you mean to talk about something else, you must be explicit. Reading your post, I'm not sure what your intent is.
"Property rights" is a loaded term in public discourse, used as a banner by certain political groups. If you want to use the term in a value-neutral way, then maybe it would be better to explain it more fully. Better yet, use a different term without the emotional and political associations of "property rights".
"The Commons" is an imprecise term. The best use is historical -- to describe traditional societies. Even then, one needs to be more precise since there are many widely varying ways in which the Commons was handled by societies of the past. Hardin is not a good model to follow in the use of this term, in my opinion.
For modern society, perhaps "undefined or confused ownership" might be a better term.
Discussion about ownership is problematic enough as it is... no need to make it more so with confusing terminology!
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 3:56 am
22 Jul 2006
What you take as an insult, I take as the responsibility everyone has to make informed statements so as to not waste people's time. No one needs me to tell them what privatization is- which is the selling off of property rights to private entities- as I have gone to lengths to show, property rights can be held by the government (at various levels) and even private ownership can be by groups such as the nature conservancy which hold resources in trust for groups. I have also gone to great lengths to say that open access to resources almost guarnatees their degradation- we see it in the oceans, the rain forests, and the atmosphere- and there is not a single credible solution to dealing with these issues that doesn't FIRST incorporate creating property rights over those resources so that people can limit their use.
And Patrick- almost everything you claim about "free markets" is incorrect- I don't have the time to get into all now, but future pieces will continue to address these misconceptions.
J.S.
J.S.
Permalink
bookerly Posted 4:10 am
22 Jul 2006
Jason,
If you can demonstrate that what I say is incorrect, please do so. (smile).
You have made a number of large sweeping generalizations, but offer very few details to back them up! (smile). I look forward to the details, and hope to learn something from the discussion.
patrick
Permalink
Hal Posted 2:10 am
26 Jul 2006
Evolution- Just like life evolves, economics does too. We no longer live in the industrial age where supply and demand determine price, even though many business minded people would like you to believe and may even believe themselves. We live in the information age where there is more power in knowledge than in any tangible widget. For ecologist who want to understand more about economics, for every word in ecology you can find a corresponding word in the study of economics. But, beware of the economic terms that you can't find an ecological equivalent, either we aren't ready to understand it or it just ain't natural. Still evolution and natural law prevail and encapsulate any and all Ages we live in. So simply said: The environmental problems will not be solved with a silver bullet but can be more properly addressed with an active debate and interest in where we, as a species and a society, want to go.
Furthermore, address the problems of the environment, economy, and society with the same breath. They are interrelated to the point of confusion because they are all similar systems that we are trying to work on without the realization that they, we, and them are all one system. Problems will end when they lose their energy. Still, if the problem is not caused by your actions but affecting you, like some of these issues are, not doing anything is actually doing something, in which case you should do something else. We will evolve to find a way to end these problems. If we don't, the problem will cease to exist just shortly after we do. The evolution of the problem is still key to identifying the solution. There is so much potential in our ability to adapt that it should suffice to have your mantra be "elevate": Another e-word which can be applied to environmental improvement. Elevating will improve your talent to make better decisions based more on your understanding of the world and less on the consensus of the mass media. And in the end, all we individually have is our decisions, and our decisions are all we really need. Develop the resource you know best, yourself.
Energy- The final e-word addresses environmental problems. Energy is the capacity to do work, or, power. No wonder it is in demand and constantly changing forms. It is the string that ties the problems, and their solutions, together. I don't believe that government or the free market will either be able to solve or manage energy most appropriately. Energy is available for everything and we don't understand "everything" sufficiently to legislate or expect the simple act of business transactions (however perfect the information) to yield solutions to environmental problems. The life and time we spend here is fleeting, use it efficiently.
Child of activists. Environmentalist turned economist, now passive revolutionary communalist. Always looking for a good conversation and a skinny dip.
Permalink
Amfora Posted 11:25 pm
05 Mar 2008
Permalink