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Pastimes : The New Judge Bleonard's Assorted Reef Life&Bottom Feeders
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To: Father Terrence who wrote (112)6/10/1998 12:41:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte  Read Replies (1) of 174
 
I see one gap in the responsibility-by-liability issue. (Aside from the fact that it encourages a thriving legal community.) Liability relies on valuation, and valuation does a poor job of controlling "intangibles" which nonetheless prove objectively significant.
Remember the way gold was commercially mined in 19th-century California? You dam a mountain stream, then build pipes which provide water under high static pressure to water cannon which ******* melt the soil. The goo is then run thru sluices. Today such practice would be decried for its environmental nastiness.
You could argue that back then, there were no to few downstream inhabitants to molest except some natives, who couldn't buy a good enough lawyer anyhow. Or that in 1870 Sierra land was dirt cheap. Maybe California was big enough to absorb the damage, and we got away with it.
What about the Easter Island history I presented on another thread some weeks back? The early islanders had plentiful cheap wood. But they used it up, and with the loss of forest, unforeseen consequences caused their economy and population to vanish. The last coupla generations there musta been pretty shitty.
How would you suggest that the starveling endgame islanders make their wastrel ancestors aware of their negligent husbandry of a valuable resource?

While I'm enough of an optimist to believe that we aren't gong to render earth uninhabitable, I do see a cautionary tale in the above. Some care now will yield big dividends in a century or two. A sound environment can much more economically support a decent standard of living.
I'm not saying how much environment-minded restriction of mining, deforestation, etc. there should be. I'm not that smart. i'm soliciting opinions. To you specifically, FT, I ask that you respect the boundaries suggested above. No epics of some polynesian Edison who'll discover the technology of universal salvation. Taht's cheating.
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