Let the Market Protect the Environment
Well, today is Monday, October 15, 2007--Blog Action Day. I signed up along with thousands of other bloggers to post an entry dealing with the environment today. Figured I should do my part to counter the vast majority of coercion-based posts with one based on freedom. I thought I'd do this via an environmental news roundup with my libertarian response to each item. So here goes:
1. First and foremost, let's look at Al Gore's receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to terrify the world about climate change. He shared this prize with the U.N.'s totalitarian (no, that's not too strong a word) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is absurd almost beyond description. Gore fosters a growing irrational hysteria about global warming and prefers extremely coercive government actions be implemented. Government inherently breeds conflict and misery, while voluntary, free society creates peace and prosperity. Giving Gore and the IPCC the Peace Prize is like giving a "Completely Sane" prize to Tom Cruise or a "Best Mom" award to Britney Spears. It's a mockery of the whole idea of recognizing great achievements, and says to me that the Nobel Committee has lost its way. Interestingly, on the very day Gore was awarded his prize, the renowned Dr. William Gray criticized Gore and his scare tactics in a speech at UNC. The libertarian solution to climate change, quite simply, is to keep the government out of it. There's no justification for using force to slow or halt economic activity (that is, violently restricting your ability to freely enter into a mutually beneficial transaction with someone else) in order to have some affect on the extremely complex and poorly understood planetary climate system based on scientific studies that have been fueled in large part by a desire on the part of unethical scientists to receive government grants and get their names in the paper--an affect, by the way, which could very well end up being worse than if no government action had been taken.
2. The government of Costa Rica is expropriating privately owned land to protect a certain type of sea turtle. Let's put this another way: a group of people didn't like that an endangered turtle was disappearing from their neighbors' land, so they banded together and coercively took the land from their neighbors. That they did so under the cover of the Costa Rican government is immaterial. What they did was wrong. Initiation of violence and force is never the way to get what you want. If so many people felt so strongly about protecting this turtle, why didn't they simply pool their resources and offer to buy their neighbors land? That would be the libertarian way to do it.
3. Well, it seems tuna fishing is causing destruction of sharks, turtles, and endangered sea birds. Environmentalists want governments to initiate force against the offending tuna fishers. Again, let's look at the libertarian solution. Overfishing and accidental catching of non-targeted species is a result of a lack of property rights. When governments prohibit the natural development of property rights, we end up with overuse and misuse (i.e. pollution) of resources. Private entities should be allowed to stake claims to ocean resources, whether that be the water itself, a resource like oil or magnesium, or various ocean creatures. If someone owns, for instance, the rights to all the wildlife in a particular sector of the ocean, they'll have incentive to maintain and even increase that life. Maybe they profit by selling the tuna and shark they catch there, so they come up with ways to make sure those two species remain there and multiply, both for current profit and resale value of that piece of ocean (or bundle of rights). They might receive payments from a private wildlife charity to protect species not necessarily valuable to consumers, like the aforementioned sea birds. There are all kinds of possible arrangements that people could come up with that would protect ocean quality and life in the absence of government restrictions. We've just got to unleash the power of the market.
4. An oil driller admitted to dumping waste in the Gulf of Mexico. The government proceeded to fine the company millions of dollars and forced it to take other actions like adding an environmental division to its corporate structure. This is another case of the tragedy of the commons that results when property rights are absent. If someone had had an economic interest in the water quality in the area where the dumping occurred, the oil driller would have been liable for damages just as if they came and dumped that waste in your back yard. The solution is for governments to immediately get rid of any and all restrictions on owning any resource--oceans, lakes, rivers, forests, fish, birds, the sea floor, air, etc. When these things can be privately owned and traded, their quality will skyrocket.
Well, that's enough government-bashing for the moment. Okay, you can never have enough government-bashing, but I really need to go mow my lawn (you know, it being my private property that I like to take care of and all).
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Blog Action Day
You may have noticed the Blog Action Day graphic in my sidebar. This coming Monday, October 15, is Blog Action Day. Thousands of bloggers are all going to post an entry relating to environmental issues. As you can imagine, most of these will be posts favoring statist, coercive actions to correct perceived environmental problems. As you can also imagine, mine will not. See you Monday!
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No Right to Water
Well, the drought here in North Carolina continues, as do the increasing municipal water restrictions and calls by the emotion-driven masses for a halt to new development. Water systems in cities and towns are considered 'public' resources and are owned by the local governments. The problem is that, when the government owns and controls a resource, the allocation of that resource is based on politics, power, influence, and bureaucracy--not justice and efficiency. Most people would not disagree with that. However, many people will then go on to assert that there's something special about water than necessitates its being owned and distributed by the government.
Their reasoning often follows one or both of the following themes (not necessarily in this order):
1) They will say that water is necessary for life, so the government MUST control it and make sure it's delivered at artificially low prices. There's usually some appeal to sympathy for the extremely poor thrown in there, too. I see a problem with that line of reasoning right off the bat. Food is also essential for life, but we don't go around demanding that the government take over all the farm land and distribute food at artificially low prices. Shelter is considered essential, too (especially during inclement weather)--but we don't demand that the government confiscate all housing and sell it or rent it out in order to make sure everyone has a place to live. A corollary of this "water is necessary for life" argument is the assertion by these people that everyone has a right to water. No, you don't. Nor do you have a right to health care, a certain wage, certain working conditions, certain living conditions, etc (but those are subjects for future posts). Very simply, it's not possible to have a right to something that requires forcibly taking from someone else. A positive right to water for you means the use of force to take water from someone else. That is why a system of positive rights is internally inconsistent. You do, of course, have the negative right not to be prevented from using water that you own or acquiring unowned water by homesteading it. But you don't have the natural right to have water provided to you at the expense of someone else.
2) In the second line of reasoning, they will say that water, because it tends to flow freely across property boundaries, must be kept out of the private property sphere and owned by the government. This is also the reason many people (even economists and others who should know better) believe the government should use coercion to enforce water pollution laws. I don't buy this argument, either. There's no inherent reason something that crosses property lines can't be privately owned. Do we know exactly how water rights would evolve if freely allowed? No, we don't. But that's no reason not to do it. Assuming everyone has property rights in their land, wouldn't it stand to reason that they would come up with ways to assign rights to water running through or adjacent to their land so that the value of their land is maintained? I could envision a system in which those living along a river each have rights to a certain volume, level, and quality of water in the part of the river running through their property. Markets would evolve to effectively and efficiently determine if an upstream neighbor had done something to change any of those characteristics for the worse (as opposed to acts of nature), and a downstream neighbor that was negatively affected could seek damages. Insurance companies would be great at this sort of investigatory and claims process. That's just one possibility. Similar arrangements might evolve with regard to other bodies of water like lakes and oceans.
To sum up, I don't think we'd have nearly the water shortage we're experiencing right now if water was all privately owned and traded. Market prices for water would rise as supply declined and fall as supply rose. Higher prices would result in people using water much more efficiently and thus conserving it in times of drought. And the People's Republic of Durham wouldn't be threatening me with violence should I decide to water my lawn beyond what their restrictions allow.
Well, those are my thoughts on water, dear readers. I'd be interested in hearing yours!
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