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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (27393)	4/3/2008 10:30:42 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Re: "Iceland did the same thing with fishing rights that the US did with tobacco farming rights. I suspect in a couple generations they will have some moronic politician who has never fished in his life living off the fishing rights his grandfather was granted try to Gore their economy." You might assign the label of 'cap and trade' to what they did with fishing rights. As I said: (although no policy is ever perfect), I still see at least TWO big virtues in what they did: 1) They avoid collapse of the fisheries due to uncontrolled fishing. (The Malthusian 'Tragedy of the Commons' problem....) This maximizes the long-term wealth possible to extract from the resource (by making sure that the resource is sustained, and therefore, around to be exploited still in the coming years). This produces the largest possible return for their economy and taxpayers. Some nations --- West Africa, parts of Europe, have not had the wisdom to act, and have seen severe collapse and destruction of the resource. 2) They have monetized the resource. By letting the Free Market assign the appropriate valuation to their fisheries, they know the fair value of what their conservation actions are preserving. It's (exactly) like an 'investment' in productive assets. (As far as the down-side... creating an 'entitled class' of fishing rights owners, I don't see any way around that. At least they were smart enough --- UNLIKE what the US originally did, in your example of 'tobacco growing rights' --- to make sure that the rights could be FREELY BOUGHT AND SOLD in the markets. That makes sure that it does not turn into an hereditary entitlement... and 'new blood' (new owners, etc.) can come and go in the market.) Re: [how then to explain the curiously WEAK national currency] "This would be why they are trying to publicise their strong points. Compare and contrast to the US's financial situation." Yes, I figured that. Still --- for whatever reasons, their currency in recent years has proven weaker then even the very weak US Dollar.... (Perhaps an even greater level of monetary inflation....)