Bush Administration an Ecological Disaster?

[Thorfinn]

BTW, would you mind citing any classical liberal thinker who thought we had a freedom to harm others? I'm pretty sure they listed that as an infringement on the freedom of others to not be harmed.

[Timber Loftis]

Sure they did not advocate harming others. But, by failing to realize that taking resources off your property makes use of a public good without compensating anyone for it, they de facto allow the harming of others.

I'm sorry, you're right. Let's let everyone take the public goods all they want. First there, first to get it. First in time, first in right. Let's make it a race to rape and pillage the planet. Never mind we've overfished the seas, contaminated the air, gunked up the ground, and generally put so much crap in our food and environment that we are truly well-pickled toxic waste by the time we are buried in the ground.

Look, you are beating your own arguments. You want me to pay the shrimper for the ocean he never bought and DOES NOT OWN.

You are going to advocate that the decisions not to use is a "use" and that's just wrong. Unless I'm making money selling it as a scenic vista or I am enjoying it as my back-yard view, in which case any unreasonable limits I put on the property owner should be fairly compensated.

And, I'm not limiting his land or sea use at all whatsoever. I am merely asking he repay society for the resources he uses as inputs (a public good) and the clean air/land/water he destroys with his pollution. He simply pays for how he changes the status quo - and I am willing to do the same. I am asking him to be fiscally honest, and you, Mr. Capitalism Rules, are offended by that. I rest my case.

Put your fingers in your ears and yell "na na na na na na na na na" all you want, but all you are doing is refusing to hear my argument. I'm tired of having my words twisted, my income amount assumed, and accusations of unfair selfishness levelled at me. I am done beating the drum.

[Thorfinn]

Let's try to keep the hyperbole under control, shall we?

Look the definition of public property is property owned by the country, in other words, in common by all citizens. The shrimper is a citizen. You are a citizen. I am a citizen. We all own that property in common. Thus the shrimper does own the land, and through the guise of the ESA, Congress harmed him. It is that simple.

Secondly, your fear of the raping of private property is entirely unjustified. Owners of the property have no vested interest in harming their own stuff -- in fact, they have a vested interest in increasing its value. Contrast that with public land, where no one has any particular interest in maintaining the value. Most people treat rental property differently than they do their own property -- that should be beyond dispute. So if you really want to keep the world in as good a shape as you can, you should be interested in getting rid of as much public lands as possible, and converting them to better maintained private lands. Seriously, where do the major forest and grassfires originate? Public lands.

I believe that if I own my lawnmower, that means I get to decide how and when and even if it will be used. Apparently, you believe that if I decide not to use it, that is not exercising the choice of how to use it. I guess this is just another place where we will never agree.

[Timber Loftis]

1. Let's keep Congress and the ESA out of this - I am not in the business of defending big government.

2. True, the shrimper owns the turtles as much as I or you do. But, he is the one who chose to "take" them, for a profit (in that it is cheaper to use trawlers if you don't worry about turtles). Therefore, he needs to compensate me and you for what we all owned but he got the benefit of using. Same is true with clean air, clean water, clean land, and all trees, resources (mineral and oil and otherwise) and species. They are resources, and "mining" them brings profit. Pay for your inputs, damnit, don't make your dime standing on my back.

3. By chosing not to destroy, you and I do no harm to others. When the farmer plants a potato and grows it, he does not destroy. But, when he sprays fertilizer and contaminates our water, he does. We all own the water, and he owes everone else for what he stole from them. That's very simple. I'm not demanding he NOT use, I am demanding he pay for the things he takes when he uses.

Your argument that I owe him for requiring him not would be true if I were requiring him not to use. But, you twisted my meaning by playing on the meaning of "use" and tried to turn the argument on its head by saying I was forcing him to not plant potatos. I'm not. I'm making him pay me and you for any resources he takes from the land. If he lets BigDirtCo dump benzene on his land for a fee, he has profited to our detriment and taken something from us. And, I simply want to be recompensated.

4. As for owners having no vested interest to pollute their properties, that is a falsehood your conservative brainwashings have led you to believe. Tell it to Amoco, who completely destroys the land a refinery sits on because the refinery makes more money than the land. Tell it to all of the turn-of-the-century MGP plants where I'm currently litigating the cleanup of cancer-causing coal tar that was found by kids digging in the sandbox at their local park. As a side note, this is a byproduct of the fact we cannot know the real value of a resource because we cannot see the future. You did not refute that, I'll note. But, some very profitable land uses absolutely demand you take public goods. There is a vested interest in harming "your" land. Fine. Take the public goods. And pay for them.

5. It is not hyperbole. Try getting a good cut of swordfish. Unless it's aquaculture, you can't find any. Right now in the Atlantic, dozens of 100-mile long-lines dangle to catch fish, but also kill Dolphins at an alarming rate. We HAVE raped the planet, and are in the middle of the biggest extinction since a comet hit the earth with the force of 100 nukes and killed off the dinosaurs, all caused by the hand of man. We are a disease, and as I have said before, if I had the button in my hand that would kill of 1/2 of us right now, I'd push it for the greater good (even if I knew for sure I was on the hit list). We grow like bacteria, and are incapable of living in equilibrium with our environment. I don't hate myself, I hate my species. There, you drug it out of me.

It is our job as a group to reason our way into making a proper rules system that limits our self-destruction. And it is imperative that we realize that trusting individuals and companies to make the right decisions for our good resulted in 7-year-old textile workers losing limbs in machines based on some abjectly stupid "right to contract" bullshit. And, I'll note, our companies still support this bullshit by fleeing the rules here to go kill children elsewhere.

My statement is simple: pay for public goods you take.

I'm weary of repeating myself. Sorry, I just don't have the energy any more.

[ 04-23-2003, 06:50 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]