property rights and the environment

[Zachery Davis]

As an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism I have encountered many people (conservative and liberal) who cite environmentalism as a reason why regulation is necessary. Since all human life exists in some form of environment, it is in everyone's self-interest to care about their own environment to a certain degree. I think that the "environmentalists" however, are misguided by false premises and an irrational hierarchy of values: they accept original sin as fact, and value plants and animals above human life. I am not suggesting people should be unconcerned with the environment, I'm merely saying that the environmentalists are confused and overly emotional. Nonetheless, the environment is a concern for us all.

This brings up the question, "how does an ideal laissez-faire society address environmental issues?" If a logical goal for an Objectivist is to try to persuade people into accepting our philosophy, we must be able to address this issue intelligently. I have found little work in this area; too many free-market proponents give me the impression that they would be content pretending that environmental issues were impossible contradictions. I think there are very few areas where regulation may be necessary, e.g., long-term disposal of radioactive waste--I can't imagine free-markets would flawlessly dispose of toxic materials which are still harmful for generations to come. Still, I believe that nearly all of the regulation existing today can and should be replaced with a more elaborate system of property rights with definable, objectively demonstrable standards of proof. Murray Rothbard wrote an interesting article in the Cato Journal entitled, Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution, (http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj2n1/cj2n1-2.pdf) in which he thoroughly examines how a restructuring of the current legal system using tort law can be used to implement objective laws addressing environmental issues. I think Rothbard raises many important points and introduces very good ideas. Has anyone else read this article or other informative works on free-market environmental issues? What are your thoughts?

Zack

[Danneskjold]

Look at all industrialized nations. If you look at the environmental standards of cleanliness etc. you'll notice that it's the industrialized nations that are far cleaner than the non-industrialized nations. This is because industry and other such things gives us a better route with which to dispose of sewage and other such problems. As technology advances so does human's ability to protect the environment. I don't have any problem at all with the little woodland critters until the owls keep someone in my state from using their land for something that is actually useful.

As far as property rights goes, they really don't conflict with the environment at all. Especially as long as environmental groups exist they can buy forest land and other such areas and preserve it themselves, even opening it to tourism if it so fits them. No reason why not. The only thing right now is that the government does it, therefore it's not a profitable business to do it without the government. There is no reason why a private charity could not protect the environment, you look at some of those organizations and realize just how easy it would be for them to protect the environment without government help by investing money in new products that would give incentives and open their own private parks.

[Chris Grieb]

Jeff; At a Cato Forum your very point was made. Zach; you might want to get in touch with Fred Smith's organization. I think if you call the Objectivist Center they could put you in touch with Fred. His organization shares the building. I wish I wasn't having this senior moment.

[Zachery Davis]

Thank you both for your input. I just realized how long the article was so I've decided to include and exerpt that captures the essence of Rothbard's case. His view doesn't suggest that property rights and the environment conflict, rather the opposite: property rights should be the sole means of enforcing environmental laws, not regulation. I found this copy at the Mises institute:

"We have attempted to set forth a set of libertarian principles by which to gauge and reconstruct the law. We have concluded that everyone should be able to do what he likes, except if he commits an overt act of aggression against the person or property of another. Only this act should be illegal, and it should be prosecutable only in the courts under tort law, with the victim or his heirs and assigns pressing the case against the alleged aggressor. Therefore, no statute or administrative ruling creating illegal actions should be permitted. And since any prosecution on behalf of “society” or the “state” is impermissible, the criminal law should be collapsed into a reconstituted tort law, incorporating punishment and part of the law of attempts. . . . The tortfeasor or criminal is to be strictly liable for his aggression, with no evasion of liability permissible on the basis of “negligence” or “reasonability” theories. However, the liability must be proven on the basis of strict causality of the defendants action against the plaintiff, and it must be proven by the plaintiff beyond a reasonable doubt . . . The aggressor and only the aggressor should be liable, and not the employer of an aggressor, provided, of course, that the tort was not committed at the direction of the employer. The current system of vicarious employer liability is a hangover from pre-capitalist master/serf relations and is basically an unjust method of finding deep pockets to plunder. . . . These principles should apply to all torts, including air pollution. Air pollution is a private nuisance generated from one person's landed property onto another and is an invasion of the airspace appurtenant to land and, often, of the person of the landowner. Basic to libertarian theory of property rights is the concept of homesteading, in which the first occupier and user of a resource thereby makes it his property. Therefore, where a "polluter" has come first to the pollution and has preceded the landowner in emitting air pollution or excessive noise onto empty land, he has thereby homesteaded a pollution or excessive noise easement. Such an easement becomes his legitimate property right rather than that of the later, adjacent landowner. Air pollution, then, is not a tort but only the ineluctable right of the polluter if he is simply acting on a homestead easement. But where there is no easement and air pollution is evident to the senses, pollution is a tort per se because it interferes with the possession and use of another's air. Boundary crossing — say by radio waves or low-level radiation — cannot be considered aggression because it does not interfere with the owner's use or enjoyment of his person or property. Only if such a boundary crossing commits provable harm — according to principles of strict causality and beyond a reasonable doubt — can it be considered a tort and subject to liability and injunction . . . Finally, we must renounce the common practice of writers on environmental law of acting as special pleaders for air pollution plaintiffs, lamenting whenever plaintiffs are not allowed to ride roughshod over defendants. The overriding factor in air pollution law, as in other parts of the law, should be libertarian and property rights principles rather than the convenience or special interests of one set of contestants" (http://www.mises.org/story/2120#14).

Zack

Edited February 6, 2007 by Zachery Davis

[heusdens]

On the environemental issue in general.

First we need to understand that the human condition and prosperity is dependent on how we deal and interact with nature, since ultimately, we are dependent on nature. If we destroy nature we can ultimately destroy our own means of survival. So it is only in our own benefit that we should interact with nature in a considerate and thoughtfull way, in order to protect human subsistence.

We live on a small planet, and the population is still growing significantly and also due to economic development of countries with large populations, we will face increasing damage to nature. To protect nature against too much damage is not a goal in itself, but only as a means of protecting our own subsistence as a species.

Currently the staggering growth of countries like China face them with enormous environemental damage. However, the Chinese government takes these issues more serious nowadays and tries to implement efficient remedies to prevent such environemental damage.

[Danneskjold]

Environment, overall, gets cleaner for humans due to industrialization. Look at sanitation conditions in non-industrialized v. industrialized nations. Eating out of a trash heap v. a little bit of CO2 in the air and a little less forestry? Seems like a no-brainer to me. Reminds me of the time I was doing a U.N. simulation and I was Yemen (small, unindustrialized nation in the Middle East in which %50 of the working population earns less than American $2 per day). The problem was unsanitary conditions and a lack of water. My solution was to industrialize, my classmates didn't like it though. It would have funded any water de-salinization plant (or gotten one to move in privately cause you could make a KILLING) and it would have made the place more sanitary (think running water and sewage) along with employing more people for more money. Unfortunately I was outnumbered 3 to 1.

[Chris Grieb]

Jeff; You have a good understanding of the issue. How did you find out about it with all the green stuff in the public schools. I was think of Haiti a very poor country that has almost no forests. One of the reason it that the Haitians have to burn the wood for their wood fires. Some improvement in their standard of living might mean they could get fuel and they would not have to cut down the forests.

Edited March 3, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[Danneskjold]

My school is HORRIBLE. We had a whole section of the student newspaper devoted to global warming. According to one of the articles environmentalists have been worried about global warming "for the last 30 or 40 years". Uhh...30 or 40 years ago they were worried about global cooling.

[SaulOhio]

I have heard the argument that industrialized nations export their environmental degradation to third world countries. To some extent, I think this may be true. I heard the example that used computer equipment has been shipped to be used in 3rd world countries, then once they break down they end up dumped in rivers where they cause pollution. It may also be that factories built in 3rd world countries don't have to deal with the same environmental restrictions as in America, so we buy our manufactured products from them and cause the environmental damage there instead of here.

To some degree that may be true, but I really think that the improved technology we have is a much stronger factor, and if these thierd world countries were allowed to have it, they could afford to avoid importing environmental degradation. The question is, how do you measure it? How can we really know how much the air and water in America has improved because of technology versus exporting?

[Danneskjold]

To some degree, it is true. However, America doesn't export our raw sewage to third world countries. Our industrialization has allowed us to deal with it in more efficient ways, therefore our environment is improved.

[Judith]

Worrying about "The Environment" (I always want to ask "which environment?" when people use that phrase) is a luxury. When people are trying to scratch out a bare existence, pollution is a secondary issue. Only when they have disposable income can they begin to worry about it.

Judith

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This is tangential to the point, but I have lived in a 3rd world country for 3 decades. I have seen chemical dumps near slums and raw massive destruction of wildlife merely for the sake of destruction that I just cannot condone. I see nothing wrong with balance.

I note that Bill Gates is a nature and fitness nut.

More to the point, I see environmentalists get all excited and passionate about not destroying the planet. I see Objectivists/free market people get all excited and passionate and claim that industry does not really do any damage to the planet.

Anybody who has had to rough it in the wilderness knows just how wrong it is to preach back to nature and anybody who has received a blast from an exhaust pipe knows just how wrong it is to deny that pollution exists.

How come people don't get excited and passionate about common sense? The choice is not roughing it like Nomads with clean air and lush green areas versus technological wealth with massive pollution. The proper choice is to reject this dichotomy. It is a false one.

We can have the best of both. And we can have it objectively.

Michael

[heusdens]

Worrying about "The Environment" (I always want to ask "which environment?" when people use that phrase) is a luxury. When people are trying to scratch out a bare existence, pollution is a secondary issue. Only when they have disposable income can they begin to worry about it.

Judith

"What environment?"

What about the air one breathes and the soil on which your food grows, and the water you drink. If that gets polluted, you get polluted too. If you get sick and can't work anymore, you loose any possibility to subsist yourself.

"Pollution is a secondary issue"

You might think so, but in many practical circumstances and considerations, such is rather unthoughtfull, since it means practically destroying one's own means of subsistence and one's own health.

The practical vision that one needs to adapt to is create one's existence and economic means of sustaining oneself without destroying those same means of subsistence itself.

All kind of economic development, when put forward as a strategic target, which aim at manufacturing more durable goods (and only those which are realy needed), recycling waste materials and energy, and utilize durable forms of energy and utilization of other materials and resources are in that perspective the only lasting way of keeping the economy from destroying it's own lasting resources.

Such forms of economic development have a better future as short time economic management (short scale profits at the costs of large scale pollution and destruction of economic resources, both human and natural).

We live in a world which is in all respect limited (setting up colonies in space, as some think is a way out, is just a fairy tale) in natural resources, while the economy (esp. that of countries like China and India) and population still grows (world population doubles every 25 years!).

So what alternative is there in the long run?

It's a sensible midway between either having the economy ruining or wasting the economic resources in the long run, or decline human (technological and scientific) development and live human life of the past ( 'back to nature'). Neither is an alternative since the first will destroy human development in the long future, and the second is impossible either, since we can not go back in time, the only way is forward, using rational ways (through scientific and technological development) of producing in a less poluting and less wastefull way.

Scientific and technological advancements in the field of production technologies, waste management and durable forms of energy enable a quite reasonable amount of economic prosperity for everybody and at the same time could reduce pollution and other environemental risks.

It's the only rational solution I think.

[Judith]

Worrying about "The Environment" (I always want to ask "which environment?" when people use that phrase) is a luxury. When people are trying to scratch out a bare existence, pollution is a secondary issue. Only when they have disposable income can they begin to worry about it.

Judith

"What environment?"

What about the air one breathes and the soil on which your food grows, and the water you drink. If that gets polluted, you get polluted too. If you get sick and can't work anymore, you loose any possibility to subsist yourself.

"Pollution is a secondary issue"

You might think so, but in many practical circumstances and considerations, such is rather unthoughtfull, since it means practically destroying one's own means of subsistence and one's own health.

You misunderstood my intentions -- which is understandable, given the short length and flip tone of my previous note.

I do, of course, care greatly about not drinking industrial waste and about not inhaling toxic air. I'm actually quite a nature lover.

What I don't like is the fuzzy thinking that comes about from people saying "The Environment" in sacred terms, as if it's self-evident what they mean by it. There are many environments. There are many solutions to the problem of human existence on earth, none of which requires a return to the Pleistocene. Those who talk about "The Environment" also tend to reject technological solutions to pollution problems; accordingly, I don't like to use that phrase.

As far as my statement about the issue being secondary, think about it. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough about how poor I meant one had to be to care about it. I'm not talking about people on welfare in the United States, but people in unindustrialized countries. When you have to spend most or all of your time on problems of bare survival and someone from a first world country visits you and talks about "The Environment", chances are you'll laugh in his/her face. That's why richer countries are cleaner -- they can afford it.

Judith

[reason.on]

Scientific and technological advancements in the field of production technologies, waste management and durable forms of energy enable a quite reasonable amount of economic prosperity for everybody and at the same time could reduce pollution and other environemental risks.

It's the only rational solution I think.

It all depends on what specific "environmental" issue you are talking about, what the risk vs reward is, as well as HOW "you" intend to go about implementing those new technologies and bringing them to market.

For example, it is not rational, nor even moral, to suggest something like the socialist Hillary Clinton did recently:

http://www.investors.com/editorial/editori...257732045589009

"I want to take those profits [40 billion from Exxon] and put them into an alternative energy fund" for "smart" alternatives."

As the author of the article rightly points out:

That amounts to nothing less than a seizure of private property without compensation. Clinton would "take" profits and use them as she thinks best — substituting her judgment for that of millions of consumers, shareholders and oil industry workers.

RCR

Edited March 5, 2007 by R. Christian Ross

[heusdens]

You misunderstood my intentions -- which is understandable, given the short length and flip tone of my previous note.

I do, of course, care greatly about not drinking industrial waste and about not inhaling toxic air. I'm actually quite a nature lover.

What I don't like is the fuzzy thinking that comes about from people saying "The Environment" in sacred terms, as if it's self-evident what they mean by it. There are many environments. There are many solutions to the problem of human existence on earth, none of which requires a return to the Pleistocene. Those who talk about "The Environment" also tend to reject technological solutions to pollution problems; accordingly, I don't like to use that phrase.

As far as my statement about the issue being secondary, think about it. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough about how poor I meant one had to be to care about it. I'm not talking about people on welfare in the United States, but people in unindustrialized countries. When you have to spend most or all of your time on problems of bare survival and someone from a first world country visits you and talks about "The Environment", chances are you'll laugh in his/her face. That's why richer countries are cleaner -- they can afford it.

Judith

Thanks for your elaboration. They are quite clear and I agree.

When poor people in third world countries are being told to safe wildlife and forests to "save" the environment, this is obviously something absurd. We should value people's life higher as the environment.

Protecting the environment is a luxoury the poor can't afford.

So, I do agree on that. Beating poverty is actually beneficial for the environment. Poor people also have substantial bigger families and raise many children as a primitive pension plan.

To solve environemental problems, the solution is not to go back to the "stone age" but to use better technology to improve recycling, increase energy efficiency and to use durable energy resources.

I am convinced every such problems can be solved by technological advances, wether that be nuclear fusion, solar or other energy resources.

[shadesofgrey]

This is tangential to the point, but I have lived in a 3rd world country for 3 decades. I have seen chemical dumps near slums and raw massive destruction of wildlife merely for the sake of destruction that I just cannot condone. I see nothing wrong with balance.

I note that Bill Gates is a nature and fitness nut.

More to the point, I see environmentalists get all excited and passionate about not destroying the planet. I see Objectivists/free market people get all excited and passionate and claim that industry does not really do any damage to the planet.

Anybody who has had to rough it in the wilderness knows just how wrong it is to preach back to nature and anybody who has received a blast from an exhaust pipe knows just how wrong it is to deny that pollution exists.

How come people don't get excited and passionate about common sense? The choice is not roughing it like Nomads with clean air and lush green areas versus technological wealth with massive pollution. The proper choice is to reject this dichotomy. It is a false one.

We can have the best of both. And we can have it objectively.

Michael

I never ACTUALLY thought I'd see this on an objectivist forum. Compromise? The best of both worlds? A little reason inserted into the equation rather than an automatic, emotional, reactionary negating of the opposite side's view? That perhaps the answer to the environment vs. industrialization question is somewhere in the MIDDLE (a shade of grey if you will ;-) is refreshing to see on here. Right on.

High fives all around.

[Selene]

This is tangential to the point, but I have lived in a 3rd world country for 3 decades. I have seen chemical dumps near slums and raw massive destruction of wildlife merely for the sake of destruction that I just cannot condone. I see nothing wrong with balance.

I note that Bill Gates is a nature and fitness nut.

More to the point, I see environmentalists get all excited and passionate about not destroying the planet. I see Objectivists/free market people get all excited and passionate and claim that industry does not really do any damage to the planet.

Anybody who has had to rough it in the wilderness knows just how wrong it is to preach back to nature and anybody who has received a blast from an exhaust pipe knows just how wrong it is to deny that pollution exists.

How come people don't get excited and passionate about common sense? The choice is not roughing it like Nomads with clean air and lush green areas versus technological wealth with massive pollution. The proper choice is to reject this dichotomy. It is a false one.

We can have the best of both. And we can have it objectively.

Michael

I never ACTUALLY thought I'd see this on an objectivist forum. Compromise? The best of both worlds? A little reason inserted into the equation rather than an automatic, emotional, reactionary negating of the opposite side's view? That perhaps the answer to the environment vs. industrialization question is somewhere in the MIDDLE (a shade of grey if you will ;-) is refreshing to see on here. Right on.

High fives all around.

Shades:

Precisely. This is not your father's Oldsmobile objectivist forum. Trust me, this is the only forum that I belong to because it is not "mono-Objectivist".

In fact, if you discount the insanity that hit the movement during the late 60's and its current aftermath, the BIG O behavior of the defenders of the Holy Grail works of St. Rand, is counter-intuitive to rational thought and damn intellectually petty.

This is a pretty open place as any forum dealing with Ayn's philosophy should and must be.

Adam

winking at Bill P. and remembering her nicotine drenched voice rolling that word out......fill....osso....fee!