Hey everybody!
I'm very interested in libertarian and conservative "pro-constitution" ideas, but i have some problems with some thoughts in the movement(s), the anti-environmentalism for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfoP4SPd2Gs
http://www.resistingthegreendragon.com/
They're attacking the whole environmentalist movement, and this is one reason that I'm a little sceptical to, for example, Tea party movement. What do you guys, on the Mises Institute, think about environmentalism. Is it bad? If so, why?
Best regards. (Excuse my english, my capabilities are quite limited)
I don't want to speak for anyone on here specifically, but I don't think anyone purposefully wants to hurt the environment. I love being in the woods and having a clear, dark sky with a lot of stars to look at. The problem comes when the government tries to stop everything because it either lowers production or raises costs, and interferes with human life. And, overall, I feel like most libertarians care more about human life than the life of the Earth. Before us, the chimpanzees were ruining the Earth in their own way, and all the way back in time. What environmentalists doing are trying to protect the Earth in order to keep sustaining 'human' life, not just protect it in general. The Earth lived through the introduction of oxygen and became what it is now. I think it will be fine. Not to mention that the free market can save the environment much better the government. The government subsidized (they still might) junk mail getting transported around to our mailboxes, basically being printed for no reason. The free market created e-mail, which stopped trees from being cut down for mail. Actually, e-mail was created even before the Internet. It's one of the main reasons that the Internet project was initiated.
If you have time one day, check out a few chapters in the Table of Contents of The Economics of Liberty (here) which deal with the environment. It discusses a lot of free market versus government options that have been undertaken throughout the years.
The environment is best protected when there are property rights. Public property creates a commons, and ruins the environment (look at Soviet era Russia). Libertarians are committed to private property ownership, and thus we have the superior position on environment.
Conservatives and tea party folks are not libertarians and they are not usually Austrians (mises types). Many of them love to destroy the environment with weapons of mass destruction, aircraft carriers, bombs and missiles, depleted uranium ammunition, chemical warfare etc.
Most enviros are like watermelons.
I agree some neviromental regulation is necessary.
real environmentalists are against the environmentalist movement
My Blog: http://www.anarchico.net/
Production is 'anarchistic' - Ludwig von Mises
Rothbard himself devoted his time to show that liberty is beneficial to the environment. In fact, in 18th century England many polluting factories were shut down because people sued them for polluting their property, i.e. clothes.
Huh?
What kind of regulations, for what, and why can't they be solved in the free market?
Brian Anderson: Most enviros are like watermelons. Huh?
Green on the outside, red on the inside...
Green on the outside (environmentalist), Red on the inside (communist). Often environmentalism is an excuse for expanding government power, global warming especially. Many of the things that global warming advocates are calling for are the same things the left has been demanding for decades – high gas taxes, high progressive income taxes, restrictions on business, and government control in every part of the economy.
Green on the outside (environmentalist), Red on the inside (communist).
Ohhh hahaha brilliant. I wasn't thinking 'red' as in 'communist' before.
Environmentalists should be libertarians because free markets will in most cases better satisfy their desires - saving the whales, preserving forests, stopping animal cruelty, etc - than will socialist alternatives.
Libertarians qua libertarians do not have a view on whether any particular environmentalist goal is worth it or not. We just say let's have a free market so that the views of everyone are encapsulated in free market prices, so that the amount of resources devoted to particular and environmental causes generally is precisely the amount of resources that the individuals in society are willing to devote to them.
The alternative is having the politicians guessing this and using highly inefficient (and unethical) socialist techniques to try to achieve environmentalist goals. Also, there are the usual public choice problems associated with socialism and democracy in particular: pandering to special interests, bribery, corruption, short-term thinking, waste, etc. These are widespread problems when it comes to state environmental policy-making.
Government Explained 2: The Special Piece of Paper
Law without Government
That works well on land and small bodies of water. I've read suggestions that larger bodies of water, like oceans, can also be privatized in large chunks to ensure that if wildlife are the target, there's sufficient space to keep the property from swimming into another's. It's either that, or you fence in chunks of the sea and I'm not sure that'd go over real well for certain species. Further reading on this here: http://mises.org/daily/4879
The real trick with environmentalism and privatization is with air quality. How do you prevent air quality from becoming the next "tragedy of the commons?" When I think of trying to privatize air, the movie "Total Recall" comes to mind.
Heres a free-market environmentalism site you may like - http://www.perc.org/
Commons, transaction costs.
I would like to see the list of english factories closed down due to pollution lawsuits.
Who has more rights to a whale? The whale-hunters or the whale-tourists who go to see them with an expert and learn about this creatures?
Would you recognize the rights earned by a whale protection / scientific group who study and shows them to tourist with care?
Would you consider that this whale experts could have earned rights by their on-going continuous travel to where this whales live and by staying close to them, making videos, teaching tourists in front of them and so on?
Could the same be said about ocean floors used by diving groups who routinely dive into the same corals? They would seem to have earned/homestead more rights than a big ship that pass there a second with a net getting everything from the ocean floor and moving away. Would you agree?
Player, perhaps they could tag/brand the whales? Of course this only lasts for that generation and would require some human interaction (though likely harmless and extremely small).
I don't think it's right to generalize such a large movement like that. And to connect environmentalism with socialism can be quite dangerous, because many environmentalists don't want to see their ideology used for someone elses count.
well no... the environmentalists are not necessarily bad... but the environmentalist movement is... http://www.perc.org ... check that site out, these are true envirnmentalists
EDIT: Haha, the site is already posted, opps... just in case you didnt get it the first time...
Thanks for all the answers!
It seems to be room for environmentalism in the libertarian ideas as well. And maybe my view, that the government can be used as a tool to solve much of the environmental problems, isn't perfect. But the view that business and the free market spontaneously will solve the environmental problems isn't perfect either. How do you explain, for example, Amazonas?
Egoist, just an example, I'm strict vegetarian/vegan and I'm here, and I'm sure there are many more at Mises. There is no contradiction or problem at all. The contradictions are on the state side, anti-envirommentalist paying their taxes to those they hate, animal-rights defenders forced to pay their taxes to universities animal experimentation. Nobody is happy, the answer is propietarianism, choosing your own environment and supporting the ideas and groups you like, forced integration and impossible compromises don't work.
And I'm sure the state is destroying the environment, it incentivates irresponsibility, short-term thinking, shifting away the problems to other generations or groups... You all know.
Egoist: I don't think it's right to generalize such a large movement like that. And to connect environmentalism with socialism can be quite dangerous, because many environmentalists don't want to see their ideology used for someone elses count. There are a few environmentalists who deserve the highest praises. For example Marc Van Roosmalen documented how the Brazilian government jails and fines dirt poor Indios hunters because they put a terrapin or a deer in the pot to feed the family but at the same time actively cooperates with large corporations to turn whole areas of the Amazonian rainforest into cattle ranches or soybean fields. Van Roosmalen has been particularly critical of large supernational bodies like the UN and organizations like the WWF which cheer the Brazilian government for its "efforts" in jailing Indios and Sem Terra activists while turning a blind eye on wholesale destruction of the environment actively promoted by Brasilia. Van Roosmalen himself has been jailed on ridiculous charges (we are talking Assange-level ridiculous) and has been twice targeted by police death squads, forcing him to go into hiding. He's presently applying for political asylum in an unknown country. I'll give you another practical example. You know how environmentalists always seem concerned about "big" themes: AGW, overfishing, etc. Lofty causes all but most of them don't seem to be able to look at the small things. This week I went up the mountain which looms exactly over my house. At the end of the road before the beginning fo the ascent somebody dumped an old bed, complete with mattress and all the rest: in spite of very serious penalties things like this happen all the time. While local newspapers are full of so called activities urging us to stop buying canned tuna or "doing something" to stop ManBearPig AGW, no environmentalist gives a damn about small things like these. They are all city folks and they consider us living nearest "Mother Nature" only a step or two removed from the hillbillies from Deliverance. You know who will clean up that mess? Local volunteers, most of whom are hunters. Surely not eco-mummy who will drive her children to school without thinking how much "poisonous" CO2 her Audi or BMW SUV spouts. Together we go unsung... together we go down with our people | Post Points: 20
the world isn't perfect... so we cant expect perfect things... but think about it like this.. socialism/government has done more harm to the environment than private businesses, just take a look at the environment of Russia when the communists were in power, or even take a look at North Korea's environment now. Their environment is far worse than ours. frankly, i don't see why most environmentalists are socialist because of the fact that socialists countries have a dirtier record when it comes to the environment...
Look up a person named Maurice Strong, he claims to be an environmentalist, in fact he is arguably the leader of the environmentalist movement, and has served in environmentalist related positions in Canada, the US, and the UN... but you want to know how he made all his money? OIL!!! and it is funny how he targeted specific oil companies in favor of others when he made his environmental policies. This is some debate, but he was one of the heads that contributed to the 'Food For Oil" fraud agreement with Iraq, he even quit the UN after the ''food for oil'' agreement, suspicious.
I love the environment but the environmentalist movement is looking at the wrong thing that will solve our environmental problems. They are in fact relying on the worst source to help them out, the government. Private business can do it better... in fact let me give you other examples besides that website... The Nature Conservancy is a purely private company that is one of the biggest eco companies. According to their website, they have saved 17 million acres in the US and 117million internationally without government funding... also their assets are worth more than $5 billion... Ted Turner is another example, he owns a large part of America's wilderness
Maybe we should compile a list of private-property environmentalists and cooperate with them to spread libertarian thought? I think we can win a few eco-hearts for freedom.
Egoist: How do you explain, for example, Amazonas?
How do you explain, for example, Amazonas?
Most of the amazonian rainforest is public land. Property rights in the forest have to be granted by government, and often for a very short period of time. There is no long run conservation in the forest because the government creates disincentives for companies to care about that, due to the short lengths of time land is lent.
Peru
Public: 83.1% Private: 15.2%
Other: 1.7%
Brazil
Ownership Pattern:
Public: 81%
Private: 19%
Other: 0%
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/deforestation/2000/Brazil.htm
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/20peru.htm
Some quick spontaneous replies to you guys:
@ Isaac "Izzy" Marmolejo: First of all, I think it's wrong to just lump all the environmentalists to one enormous group or movement, "the movement", when in fact environmentalism is very fragmented in different small groups. Second; if we count post-Cold War only, then I'm not totally agreeing in what you're saying, that government has destroyed the environment more than private business. In modern time, private corporations have been given larger opportunitys to apply its "power" in new parts of the whole world. But in generally, including pre-1990, yes.
@ Kakugo: I think you have a good point, that environmentalists focus too much on the "big" things. But it's important to mention that there have been so in almost all historical events, so I'm not surprised.
And again, I think it's wrong to lump all environmentalists to one group and call it "the movement", and say that they're socialists. It's not just "red" people that are environmentalists, but also "blue"/right people etc.
Again, thanks for all the answers, it's always interesting to read what you have to say on this site!
I keep up with PERC regularly now, they're based here in Montana.
As a property owner myself I'm staring to realize I'm an anarchist environmentalist thanks to you guys and the Austrian Network.
Egoist: In modern time, private corporations have been given larger opportunitys to apply its "power" in new parts of the whole world.
In modern time, private corporations have been given larger opportunitys to apply its "power" in new parts of the whole world.
What do you mean by this?
I will try to convince you further that governments are far worse than private business when it comes to the environment...
Atomic bombs... government
wars... government
anti hemp campaign... government... hemp has far more uses than smoking it...
a really good introduction to free market environmentalism is a book called Eco-nomics by Richard Stroup. Terry Anderson is a great source of free market environmentalism, if the name sound familiar it is because many Austrian Economists refer to his book " The Not So Wild,Wild West", but he also has an awesome book on the environment, "You Have To Admit It's Getting Better:From Economic Prosperity to Environmental Quality"... i think if you read "Eco-nomics" and "You Have To Admit It's Getting Better", you'll better understand my position in this...
I dont have anything against enviormentilism, at least in the sense of 'I dont want to see the enviorment needlessly trashed.' In fact some libertarian thinkers have argued that capitisism and property rights(including rights over bodies of water and, if possible the atmosphere) are the best way to ensure that doesnt happen.
However the modern enviormentilist movement is led by, and largely(thought not exclusively composed of) two groups:
1. Extremists who think ANY change people make to the enviorment is inherently 'bad'
2. Socalists/communists using 'the enviorment' as an excuse to support their policies/programs.
Neither of which I can support in good faith.
Kakugo, the way you reply to posts breaks the forum display. I am exhausted from manually editing your posts to keep them from breaking the forum display.
If you need help learning how to quote this thread has a lot of information on how to do it,
http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/18184.aspx
This isn't your fault, but you can help make the situation better. Thanks for understanding.
LS, ever since I downloaded the latest version of Firefox I am having troubles with the forum. Sometimes preview just shows a blank screen, other times the posts go entirely missing upon pressing the "Post" button, now this. Can you tell me what adjustments do I need to make to avoid you the work and me the embarassment?
Thanks
Kakugo, I will message you privately.