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

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (27417)	4/4/2008 12:04:05 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

"This is exactly what USA did when they granted everyone who was growing tobacco at the time a right to continue to grow it." I think what you are possibly referring to is when the USA recently CHANGED the old tobacco quota system, allowed quotas to be traded, and also scheduled their phase-out so that eventually people would be able to grow tobacco anywhere they wanted without the requirement of having a quota allotment. Right? (Wasn't the ORIGINAL quota system dated from the pre-WW II era, and weren't the quotas NON FUNGIBLE... which created an hereditary entitlement?) Whenever a right is created it distorts markets. In this case I was talking about the original tobacco rights which Al Gore inherited from his father who got it from his daddy. Al Gore is not believed to have ever done any tobacco farming, yet he was getting a nice income from the fact that his grandfather had been a tobacco farmer. At the time I believe it was done to limit the amount of land that could grow tobacco so that prices would remain high. Maybe it was a good thing and maybe not. We must be vigilant and discourage government from distorting markets for the benefit of a few well connected supplicants. In the case of the tragedy of the commons there may be a valid cause for central coordination and limiting access to the resources. But who gets the rights? A much better system would be to allocate one right to every citizen and allow those who wish to continue to utilize the resources acquire them.