Dear Readers, We hope you enjoy the following article by Virginia libertarian Karen Kwiatkowski. Karen notes that this article hes been submitted to newspapers around the state, so look for her byline in your local paper.
|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*| Earth Day and 'Balance' by Don Tabor 10 Apr 2011 EVERYONE WANTS a clean and healthy environment for their children. Probably no goal enjoys such universal support. So, why is the issue so contentious? Forty-one years ago, I was the organizer for the first Earth Day Teach-In at Nicholls University in Thibodaux, La. We thought the world was on the brink of destruction in 1970, too. It was the year after the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. Our big issues were the population explosion and chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides. For those who know only the past 20 years, it is hard to imagine how much progress has been made. Yet we are told the sky is still falling and only government can save us. One of the difficulties for a Libertarian is resolving our distrust of regulations with good stewardship of our environment. Libertarians believe that government should act as an impartial referee, excluding force and fraud from the marketplace but otherwise leaving voluntary transactions between individuals under the control of the spontaneous order of the free market. But when dealing with issues of the environment, markets have some blind spots. These are the economic paradoxes of external costs and the tragedy of the commons, examples of private use of force that government should prevent. External costs are costs of a transaction that do not fall on either the buyer or the seller. If providing an item costs the maker $450, and it could be sold for $500, it would be profitable to produce. But if the pollution resulting from that effort damaged a neighbor's property by $100 for each item produced, the cost of producing that item is really $550. However, since neither the buyer nor the seller pays that cost, the transaction takes place anyway. That $100 cost forced on a third party is an unresolved externality ideally resolved in the courts when the neighbor sued for his damages. The producer would then have to find ways to prevent the pollution so that the entire cost, both direct and external, is accounted for in the price. But what if that damage is not to a single neighbor but to 10,000 neighbors downwind? Do they each sue for a penny? Obviously that isn't going to work, so external costs must be resolved collectively, either through regulation or economic means. The other problem, the tragedy of the commons, is seen most often in the exploitation of domestic fish stocks, but the air and the oceans are commons, too. No one person, or one country, owns the oceans. But with modern methods, it is quite possible for the fishermen of a single country, or even a single commercial operation, to fish a species to near extinction. This hurts everyone. Further, because life exists in balance, depletion of one species affects others. One would think that through enlightened self-interest, fishermen would restrict their harvest for long-term, sustained yield so they could continue their profession into the future. But there is no benefit for one fisherman, or the fishermen of a single corporation or country, to restrict their harvest if others do not. Thus, involuntary limits on harvest, by local regulation for lakes and rivers and by treaty for migratory fish stocks, are necessary. So, these are areas where we must act collectively through government if the environment is to be protected. Unfortunately, once government becomes involved, all the bad things governments do will intrude in those efforts. When quotas are used to regulate fish harvests, for example, government gains the power to choose winners and losers in the marketplace, leading to corruption and defeating the purpose of the regulations. We need only to look to the menhaden fishery in Virginia to see how generous campaign contributions by a single corporation have bought lax regulation for that industry to the detriment of all other users of the Chesapeake Bay and the health of the bay as a whole. Once the power to regulate economic activity is granted, it will inevitably be misused. Falsely invoking the environment has become a common tactic. We often see contrived environmental concerns raised to block the development of private property when the true motive is no more than a desire by established residents to preserve a view or keep out new neighbors. Businesses use environmental issues to squelch potential competition or to force products or technology on the public no one really wants. Environmental purists seek to exclude other users from large tracts of public land and to limit the use of private property for agriculture, with exaggerated claims of endangerment of rare species. We must remain skeptical and vigilant lest our concern for the environment be abused. If we allow over-regulation to damage our economy or deny the public the enjoyment of our natural areas in the name of protecting them, we could easily incite a backlash that will undo all the progress we have made in these past 41 years. |*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*| Don Tabor of Chesapeake is a grandfather, Libertarian activist and proprietor of TidewaterLiberty.com. He is a dentist in Norfolk and Hampton. Contact him at <[email protected]>. |*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*| Do you know of other Virginia Libertarians with recently-published material? Send us the link to each article, and pen a few words to introduce it to your fellow Libertarians! ============================================ RUN FOR OFFICE! The Libertarian Party of Virginia is currently seeking candidates to run for public office for the 2011-2012 season. 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