TT's Lost in Tokyo — by TokyoTom

Another BP post!

Both of Kevin Carson’s most recent posts at Center for a Stateless Society are worth a read.

BP’s Fate in a Free Market, Part Two

How’s All That Progressive Regulatory Stuff Workin’ Out For Ya?

In particular, Kevin’s “Part 2” post – and the comments to it and posts by others whom he references – are quite thoughtful. Below are some points that I think deserve particular attention (emphasis mine):

Shawn Wilbur, a leading scholar in the history of the individualist/mutualist tradition in addition to being an anarchist himself, agrees that oil companies like BP would be far less able to externalize costs on the public in a free market order, absent such privileges as caps on liability.  But he goes on to raise the issue of the “many kinds of value and interest” that are not adequately represented by markets:

“After all, sea turtles and brown pelicans don’t get any more of a vote in the market than they do in elections or campaign contributions. Private property conventions tend to establish a separation of interests not reflected in, or respected by, the circulatory systems of the biosphere …”

Gary Chartier, a market anarchist professor at La Sierra University, commented that since sea turtles lack any means of effectively asserting or defending rights on their own behalf, their interests in any system — whether under statism, market anarchy, or any other kind of anarchy — depend entirely on the existence of human beings who identify those interests with their own.

I would add that the present system includes many structural barriers that prevent humans who value the interests of other species or of the ecosystem from expressing that valuation in the marketplace.  For example, federal lease auctions allow only companies from the relevant industry (lumber, mining, etc.) to bid on access to federal land.  That means conservationists who value holding land out of use are banned from the bidding process, that the winning bid is hence lower than it likely would otherwise have been, and that resource extraction is artificially profitable.  Federal preemption of vacant land means, likewise, that the privileged access granted by the federal government is uncontested by other previous claimants.

Were vacant land not preempted by the state and then granted on a privileged basis, then the oil, mining and lumber companies could establish legitimate homestead rights only over the land that they were capable of effectively developing and fully prepared to economically exploit at any given time.  In the meantime, other groups might have homesteaded significant parcels of land with the intention of conserving  it.  As Wilbur himself states in the comments under his post, “active conservation” — like “a wildlife corridor, or critical wetland, or scenic area” — is “pretty obviously a use.”  In a free market regime with open homesteading, lumber and other extractive industries would have to buy out such competition at whatever price the latter demanded, if they were willing to sell at all.

As I mentioned in another post, one reason the ecosystem in West Virginia has had so little protection against mountaintop removal, is that the property rights of small owners had so little protection against expropriation, and the surrounding communities had been robbed of so much of their common law protection against tortious action by the mining companies against their air and water.  As chronicled in the movie “Matewan,” the first white homesteaders in West Virginia — who mostly lacked formal title to their land, having settled when government was still quite irregular — were later expropriated by the mining companies, who could afford to buy both good lawyers and bad legislators.

I would observe that Austrians at LvMI routinely discount – if are not actively hostile to – the preferences that non-industrial users (and destested “enviros”) have regarding common or publicly-owned resources. This is clearly inconsistent with Austrian principles. Further, Austrians also generally – and wrongly – treat with scorn even the notion that there are commons assets – such as “ecosystems”  that are important and valuable. Austrians are wrong to have their thumb on the scale in the way that they do when determining how government favor should be bestowed; this tendency amounts to fairly consistent support for/defense of statist corporations.

Kevin is entirely correct that “the present system includes many structural barriers that prevent humans who value the interests of other species or of the ecosystem from expressing that valuation in the marketplace.” So let me connect a link that somehow Kevin has overlooked in the context of the BP oilwell blowout and spill: the chief structural barrier here is the US government, which “owns” and “manages” the Gulf out to the 200 mile limit (there is moderate state control out a few miles), and which prevents indigenous and commercial fishermen, oystermen, shrimpers and conservationists from actually owning or directly managing any of the resources or ecosytems on which their livelihoods depend or that they otherwise value, and which is favors and is financially beholden to the oil industry.

See, for example:

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/01/14/for-crashing-fisheries-coalition-of-mainline-us-enviro-groups-calls-for-property-rights.aspx

http://twitter.com/Tokyo_Tom/status/15689063688
http://twitter.com/Tokyo_Tom/status/15689222932

I think Kevin that is also correct about mountaintop removal, which involves a frequently flagrantly corrupt use of the state to subvert common-law protections, as I have commented a number of times.

I also highly recommend the post by Shawn Wilbur that Kevin references; I may comment separately on it.

And the following comment on the state grant of limited liability to corporate shareholders is consistent with points I have made any number of times:

Brian Cantin on Jun 7, 2010, 9:53 pm: [I hope Brian does not object]

Without the government, a limited liability corporation would not have the protections they enjoy today. The corporation could gain limited liability if it is obtained via contract. Why anyone would sign a contract allowing a corporation limited liability is another question.

However, in the case of a tort, the owners of offending corporation would not only be possibly liable for the all of the assets of the corporation, they could also be personally liable down to their last farthing.

Strict liability is a great inducement to careful practices.