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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (33535)	3/30/1999 9:47:00 AM
From: Chuzzlewit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

E, there are so many example that of this kind of thing that it would take volumes to just list them. I think that a certain fear of government excess is reasonable, but a lot of what we read is nothing less than paranoia or disregard for others masked as "rights". For example, I may own a piece of property in a suburban area, but I think that the people have every right to prevent me from breeding and releasing vermin. There must be limits to individual actions as well as limits to those limits. Isn't that what the Bill of Rights is all about? Since all of us are investors (at least in theory) wouldn't we all agree that government agencies such as the SEC play a very important role in protective role? Or would we prefer an unregulated system where the unscrupulous would fabricate their accounting? Wouldn't the resulting public apprehension hurt the legitimate capitalist? I remember debating the issue of government with an economics professor. He contended (in the argot typical of economists) that extinction of valuable animals and plants would not occur because it was not in the entrepreneurs interest. I asked how it came to pass that the Irish Elk became extinct? I also asked about the potential extinction of many tropical rain forest plants that might contain important alkaloids useful in treating disease -- medicinal that we will never know about because we have destroyed the source. And finally I asked him about esthetics. Why is it, I asked him, that we insist on measuring the worth of all things in dollars. How much is the sight of a stand of native redwoods worth, and what will it be worth a thousand years from now. How much is it worth to be enveloped in the sounds and smells and sights of native prairies or untouched subalpine forests? TTFN, CTC

To: E who wrote (33535)	3/30/1999 1:24:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Respond to of 108807

E, this is a difficult call. The South American sardine suffered a similar collapse in the 60s. For three decades first the ecologists, then the broader establishment figured they were fished out. But a new (unproven but credible) hypothesis has recently emerged. Large-scale climatic oscillations, and more proximately their effect on Eastern Pacific seawater temperature, caused a boom and then bust in sardine population. A similar model might work for the pilchard. In any case, relying on the little fishies as a food source is fraught with peril. Nobody can tell you how to stabilize the resource pool. The real ongoing tragedy is the extinction of blue-water predators (swordfish, the big tuna) for our dinner tables. Swordfish may be beeyond recovery.

To: E who wrote (33535)	3/31/1999 6:24:00 AM
From: nihil	Respond to of 108807

The destruction of world fisheries resources is not really a problem of externalities (differences in social costs and private costs of production [as in copper smelter poisoning of the countryside] (or of consumption), but a better example of the "tragedy of the commons." Any fixed free (unproduced) resource will be overconsumed or overutilized and ultimately destroyed. Most external costs (which are ubiquitous) merely lead to minor and manageable misallocation of resources. The destruction of Earth's resource endowments (natural capital) without appropriate and offsetting replacement by capital accumulation (human and physical) impoverishes humanity and all living creatures. It is conceivable that we can develop substitutes for the resources we destroy (reforestation, fish farming) but when this is done by the market, the result is nearly always and unavoidably a destruction in the (non-market) quality of the environment and very often unintended degradation of other resources. Thus we kill off whales, and substitute petroleum. Whatever we do, we can only guess at the full social cost of uncontrolled mining of resources. We are bound to make serious policy mistakes, even if we use the most advanced forecasting systems. The waste in investments in world energy systems arising from premature deployment of fission nuclear power runs into the trillions of dollars. The excessive reliance on uncontrolled and inefficient use of coal by threatening a global warming crisis may cause trillions of dollars of inefficient resource misallocation. The causes of environmental destruction are primarily economic -- billions of persons making resource use mistakes simply because the prices make it in their interest to do so. Most prices are not set in unfettered markets. Even our nearly perfect "efficient" capital markets in the U.S. are rigged and manipulated to benefit certain players (e.g. "market makers" and specialists) at the expense of everyone else. The solution popular with many economists and libertarians is to free markets of government regulation. I believe that most of the environmental problems are the result of inadequate, inefficient, and unjust regulation -- selfish, class-interested, nationalistic, ignorant regulation. I believe that free markets to work in the interest of mankind, require free, educated people to make economic decisions. Only when people are able to make efficient consumption and production decisions will we be able to achieve our goals for the future of mankind. The vast majority of people want to live free, healthy, and long lives and to provide their children with even better conditions than they have experienced. No democratic kleptocracy can long endure. Compulsory redistribution from the rich to the poor is a a hopeless, socialistic dream. The rich have the power and wealth to defend their property. "Voluntary" redistribution from the rich to the public occurs constantly. Universities, once supported by the state, kings and the church, are now increasingly supported (in the U.S.) by voluntary contributions of their alumni and private foundations and by tuition and fees. The really great fortunes are largely dissipated to great projects for the public good -- the Rockefeller and Ford (and many other) foundations have revolutionized agriculture, science and education in the U.S. Endowments to Oxford and Cambridge in the middle ages and Renaissance were stolen from poor scholars and fostered idleness and self indulgence in the fellows who seized the endowments for their own benefit. (Adam Smith despised the waste at Oxford where he studied several years). Today well-endowed universities in the U.S. are the leading research institutions in the world, the most demanding of their faculties, and the most productive. It is almost a certainty that most of the great scientific discoveries will be made in these universities (along with a few outstanding state universities) or at least by their graduates and postdocs. In addition, we get the social benefit of events like the Nude Olympics at Princeton which exposes all of (some of) the smartest young people to the world to the environment.