TT's Lost in Tokyo — by TokyoTom

 I left this comment on a post at Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth/NYT blog about the January run-in between the Sea Shepherd organization and the Japanese whaling fleet (emphasis added):

Dave Neiwert, a thoughtful voice on the left and with an experienced, informed view on America’s right-wing racist fringe, has a rather confused post up on whaling on his blog, Orcinus.  http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/02/standing-up-to-japan.html.

Neiwert sends a mixed message by saying we need to “stand up to Japan”, by prominently posting recent footage of a whale’s death struggles at the hands of Japan’s “scientific” whaling fleet, and then by calling for the need to build bridges and networks over physical confrontation – but doesn’t really begin to explain why whales have become so politicized or the best way to turn deadlock into a desperately needed victory for management of the ocean commons

Copied below are my comments to his post (edited and emphasis added):

Dave, with you and others thoughtlessly feeding the political grandstanding, it’s hard to see how the bridge- and coalition-building that is needed to tackle whaling – or the much more serious and pressing global fisheries – issues is ever going to get off the ground.

As others have noted, the Japanese came late in the whaling game, mainly after WWII (with US encouragement) and after the stocks were already starting to crash after a 150 years of western industrialized whaling pressure.

The Japanese persist in pelagic whaling [which is obviously non-traditional] despite the damage it does to their international reputation and long-term national interests because Westerners have done a great job of stiffening the spines of conservative politicians – so much so that while Japan’s private industry has completely abandoned the hunt, whaling persists as a wholly government-owned (and loss-making) endeavor!

Have you ever spent any time wonder WHY we care so much more about a Japan’s ‘scientific’ catch of a few whales now (which make no noticeable impact on growing populations, and a return to commercialized whaling under the IWC nowhere to be seen) than we do about the millions of very intelligent pigs, and less intelligent cattle etc. that we slaughter annually? The answer is simple, of course – though we should care about how humanely animals are killed to satisfy our wants, we have our greatest political battles over resources that NOBODY owns and for which unrestrained take can obviously imperil their very existence and lead to extinction. Because there are no ownership rights, political action has been needed.

But politics may often simply feed rancor and provide opportunities for grandstanding by politicians and others interested in protecting or using the resource – at our long-term detriment. Japan should be an obvious ally in preventing the crashing of global fisheries and ensuring their sustainability, but it lets itself be caught up in this emotional nonsense. So while environmentalists should care about building coalitions to rationally manage the oceans as a whole, they choose instead to fight what should be one of their greatest natural allies – a nation which ought to care greatly about the sustainability of the fish harvests they consume – because the partisan battles provide such a rush and keep those contributions rolling in.

There are obvious solutions on whales, that would allow some take of abundant species while protecting others. Establishing property rights of the kind that are now being seen as the solution for managing fisheries (‘catch shares’ or ITQs) is one, and one that would allow environmentalists to directly express their preferences by owning and managing their own stocks, and buying rights from others.

But it’s time to start realizing that the current terms of discussion about whales are not only unproductive, but actually imperil much more important issues about fisheries.

I attach for the benefit of readers a short video explaining the “Tragedy of the Commons” by author and environmental historian Robert J. Smith, founder and director of the Center for Private Conservation (a former CEI project), an adjunct scholar in environmental policy at CEI. Smith is also a Senior Fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research and Distinguished Adjunct Scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. 

Read more by Robert J. Smith here http://cei.org/publications/studies/5811.

I note that I have commented extensively on various commons issues: e.g., bison, fish, whales, “public” lands, oil & gas, and indigenous resources

[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAXcvnNqYeM:550:0]

Yes, another BP post!

The Guardian ran a story last weeks that illustrated some of the human costs of BP’s oil debacle. Lew Rockwell and Stephan Kinsella insist  that the legal fiction known as “BP” is the largest “victim”, but I find their moral clarity rather obtuse, if not perverted.

As men live and work in communities and make their livelihoods in coordinated activities, I’m not sure I agree with Stephan Kinsella’s insistence (in responding to my arguments that state-grants of limited liability to shareholders are unjustifiable and have significant pernicious consequences) that our focus in measuring responsibility must always be on individuals; I do, however, agree that such an examination may be quite helpful – even as I note how Lew, Stephan and others ignore their own prescription when rushing to defend massive, faceless organizations like “BP”, or when fulminating about evil, man-hating  (and corporate-funded) “enviro-fascists”.

With that in mind, I ran across the following article in The Guardian last week that presents human face of what “BP” (and its dirty partnership with the federal and state governments who have deprived users of natural resources of any rights to control such resources) has wrought in the Gulf (my emphasis):

BP oil spill ruined my life, says Louisiana shrimp king; Dean Blanchard’s firm used to account for 11% of the US shrimp supply. Now, he is reduced to supplying fuel and water to BP clean-up crews

(Susan Goldenberg, June 11)

Of all the folks in Louisiana spoiling for a fight with Tony Hayward, none perhaps brings more gusto to the challenge than Dean Blanchard, the local shrimp king.

The outer walls of the trailer office of his seafood empire are plastered with homemade signs reading “BP=Bayou Polluter” and “President Obama: BP took my business and my money.”

The frontroom is painted shrimp pink, and Blanchard is working himself up imagining what he would like to do to the BP chief executive if he ever got the chance: fist fight, public wrestling match, jail time?

“He took away everything I love most in the world. I am going to hunt that son of a bitch down like a ‘coon,” he said. “He wants his life back after all he has done to us? The hell with him.”

Then he speculates about peeing in the Queen’s water fountain. “What do you think would happen to me? I’d go to jail for that, and it would be relatively minor environmental damage.”

He may not immediately look the part in his faded shorts and blue vest and the jumble of buildings around the docks, but in the shrimp world, Blanchard is Hayward.

BP ranks in the top three oil companies; Blanchard says his are the third biggest shrimp docks in the world, with some 6,000 fishermen bringing him their catch. His company accounts for about 11% of the US shrimp supply.

In the pre-spill era, that would have put Hayward and Blanchard on near equal footing, he reckons. Oil and shrimp were the two poles of existence in this part of Louisiana. Offshore rigs and refinery tanks are as ubiquitous as fishing trawlers.

Blanchard had a foot in both worlds. One grandfather got rich on shrimp, establishing the business he now operates near BP’s local command centre. The other grandfather got rich from oil.

Now, with the gusher on the ocean floor and fishing banned in much of the Gulf, there is just oil clean-up. At the Sand Dollar marina, redeployed fishermen and shrimpers, hauling containment boom through the water instead of nets, share space with the coastguard and national guard.

The money is only a fraction of what it would be for a successful shrimp season and 2010 was shaping up to be a banner year.

“Every 10 years, when you get a cold winter, you get a really good shrimp crop,” Blanchard said. “We were licking our chops.”

On a good run, a big shrimp boat could earn $1m (£686,000) a day. The going rate for fishing for oil is $3,000, less for smaller boats – not a lot once divided among captain and crew. Several of the men say they have yet to be paid.

Blanchard says his losses are on a far grander scale. “I’ve lost $15m worth of sales in the last 50 days. That would have been $1m in my pocket,” he said.

A few of the big freezer boats are still going out, but Blanchard says he is reduced to selling BP fuel and water for its contract clean-up crews, and renting out dock space. By his terms, it’s a pittance and he has no idea when he will get back to work.

“What I make off of BP I could make in eight hours,” he said.

He is equally scathing of BP’s oil clean-up strategy. “I could take two 32oz Big Gulp cups from the 7-Eleven and do more than what they are doing,” he said.

Blanchard is far from the only angry man in town. The mayor, David Camardelle, was in Washington this week to testify before Congress. He nearly broke down. “The shrimp died. It’s a ghost town. The boom doesn’t work,” he said.

Around the corner from his operations, a family has erected 101 simple white crosses memorialising what has been lost to the spill.

There is sea food industry, with crosses for tuna, shrimp and oyster catches, but also “beach sunrises”, “seafood gumbo”, “redfish rodeo”, “family time”, “porch sitting” and “dog on beach”.

And for all his bluster, Blanchard is overwhelmed by the loss.

“I think I did everything right, and here this idiot came and didn’t know how to run his business and put me out of my business. People used to respect me in this town. Now I wake up in the morning and I don’t know what to do.”

I’ve yet to run across an LvMI post at all sympathetic to people to like Dean Blanchard, much less one in which a poster bothered to put a thinking cap on to make any useful suggestions, such as an insistence on rolling out “catch rights” for fishermen, and rights to veto or monitor petroleum exploration and development.

I note that I have already posted extensively on oceans/fisheries management; for interested readers here are links to some of those posts:

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=ocean

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=fisheries

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=whale

More later.

Another BP post!

I continue to scratch my head on the knee-jerk reactions by Austrian-libertarians on problems regarding management of common resources: are not our physical and electronic communities commons? Don’t commons support many people directly, and us all indirectly? Aren’t there huge and obvious commons-related problems that stem from government ownership and “management” of resources – be they federal lands, the seas, our fiat currency, or our financial institutions and publicly-listed companies?

Don’t we all know that government gets in the way, frustrating the ability of people with differing preferences to search for and reach mutual accommodations, and instead putting them at loggerheads in zero-sum situations?

The unbecoming reflexive hostility  indicates that even those who think they have their thinking caps on cannot see past the partisan conflict that government itself generates.

But I dither.  Allow me to gather here for interested readers some scraps of information regarding the state of our oceans.

1.  From my initial response to Lew Rockwell‘s “Feel Sorry for BP? ” post:

Lew: “the environmentalists went nuts yet again, using the occasion to flail a private corporation and wail about the plight of the “ecosystem,” which somehow managed to survive and thrive after the Exxon debacle.”

Me: Seems to me your “facts” about the damage done by Exxon Valdez to the “environment” – including the small segments used by by man – and recovery/compensation are basically counterfactual:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill

http://www.alternet.org/environment/22260

Further, it seems you don’t have any real clue as to the escalating damage that man is doing to our shared ocean “commons”. These two TED talks might help open your eyes:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_jackson.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/sylvia_earle_s_ted_prize_wish_to_protect_our_oceans.html

4.  I note that I have already posted extensively on oceans/fisheries management; for interested readers here are links to some of those posts:

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=ocean

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=fisheries

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=whale

5. Finally, one wonders whether, if fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico had clear “catch rights” or similar property rights, and had control over oil gas exploration and development decisions, they would not have done a good deal better in overseeing BP, and whether BP would not have been quite a bit more careful.( Likewise – if BP owned the Gulf, and received revenues from permitting fish harvests!)

Fellow libertarians, O Cynical Ones, you might be surprised to note that, at least in some cases, it MAY be possible to educate thick-headed and corrupt government bureaucrats and political appointees about the reasons for policy failures, and the government MIGHT even actually decide to cean up  its act. While the task may be difficult, it is apparently NOT impossible; there is a silver lining; and persistence may pay off in greater local authority.

The case in point? Signs of hope that the US government is learning from the painful lesson of many disastrously managed fisheries, and is starting to empower fishermen to self-manage that the resources on which they rely, by setting policies that favor “catch share” programs. (I have blogged on the fisheries “tragedy of the commons” a number of times; serious problems continue.) “Free-market” enviro-libertarians have been making the case for such changes for thirty-odd years or so.

(BTW, this is exactly the point that Elinor Ostrom has been making for years, and why she was awarded the Nobel prize in economics. Further, as I have previously noted, even mainline enviro groups – those enviro-facists – have been specifically calling for “catch share” programs as a way to slow the disastrous tragedy of the ocean commons.)

Here are excerpts from a December 10 online release bu the , “NOAA Encourages Use of Catch Shares to End Overfishing, Rebuild Fisheries and Fishing Communities”: (emphasis added)

NOAA released today for public comment a draft national policy
encouraging the use of catch shares, a fishery management tool that
aims to end overfishing and rebuild and sustain fishing jobs and
fishing communities. In doing so, NOAA recognized that catch shares are
not a panacea or one-size-fits-all solution, but are a proven way to
promote sustainable fishing when designed properly at the fishing
community level.

“We have made great progress in rebuilding many fisheries, but more
than 20 percent of our fish stocks have not been rebuilt, and even
larger proportion of our fisheries are not meeting their full economic
potential for the nation,” Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke said.
“Catch shares is a tool that can help us realize the full economic and
biological benefits of rebuilt fisheries.”

Catch share
programs, which include Limited Access Privilege programs and
individual fishing quotas, have been used in the U.S. since 1990 and
are now used in 13 different commercial fisheries. Four new programs
will begin over the next year.  NOAA estimates that rebuilding U.S.
fish stocks would increase annual commercial dockside values by an
estimated $2.2 billion, a 54-percent increase over current dockside
values of $4.1 billion, and help support jobs in the seafood industry
and across the broader economy.

“From Florida to Alaska, catch share programs help fishing communities
provide good jobs while rebuilding and sustaining healthy fisheries and
ocean ecosystems,” said Dr. Jane Lubchenco, under secretary of commerce
for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “Although this is a
national policy, our emphasis is on local consideration and design of
catch shares that take into consideration commercial and recreational
fishing interests.”

A catch share program differs from traditional fishery management by
dividing up the total allowable catch in a fishery into shares. These
shares are typically allocated based on historical participation in the
fishery. They may be assigned to individuals, cooperatives, communities
or other entities, who would be allowed to fish up to their assigned
limit. Catch share participants also agree to stop fishing when they
have caught as much as they are allowed.

Under traditional
management programs, fishermen compete for a total allowable catch.
This has lead to fishermen racing each other to catch as many fish as
they can before the total catch limit is reached. This results in more
boats and gear than necessary, quotas being exceeded, increasingly
shorter fishing seasons, unsafe fishing and high levels of bycatch. It
also may result in too many fish brought to market at once, reducing
their market value to fishermen and coastal communities.

“Catch shares allow fishermen to plan their businesses better and be
more selective about when and how they catch their allotment, because
they know their share of the fishery is secure,” said Dr. Jim Balsiger,
acting administrator of NOAA’s Fisheries Service.
“They can plan their fishing schedules in response to weather, market,
and individual business conditions. Catch share programs help eliminate
the race to fish, reduce overcapacity and bycatch, enhance the safety
of fishermen and their vessels, and improve economic efficiency. They
also help ensure fishermen adhere to annual catch limits because the
value of their share is directly linked to the overall health of the
fish stock and its habitat.”

While catch shares are not
always universally embraced when they are first introduced, their
benefits have been well proven. “We fought against the program right up
until the time it passed,” said Alaska fisherman Rob Wurm, referring to
the halibut and sablefish catch share program, which began in 1995.
”But to my surprise, it really has worked well. It has created a lot of
stability, stopped the race for fish and changed the fishing
environment in ways that have made it safer and allowed us to avoid
bycatch.” …

Members of NOAA’s Catch Shares Policy Task Force, which includes
participants from each of the eight councils as well as NOAA experts,
provided significant input on the draft policy.

Among the policy’s components:

• Development
  of a catch share program is voluntary. NOAA will not mandate the use of
  catch shares in any commercial, recreational, or subsistence fishery.

• The
  individual fishery management councils will consult fishing communities
  to evaluate the data, effects, and enforceability of any potential
  catch share program before moving forward. In some cases, councils may
  find catch shares not to be the most appropriate management option.

• NOAA
  will provide leadership and resources and work in partnership with
  fishery management councils, states and members of the public to help
  with the implementation of catch shares. This includes assisting
  fishing communities as they make the transition, and conducting
  regional workshops, online seminars, and other educational and outreach
  programs.

• Well
  thought-out and developed catch share programs will promote sustainable
  fishing communities by supporting good jobs, and promoting preservation
  of wharfs, processing facilities, and fuel and ice suppliers.

• Catch
  share programs can be designed to set aside shares to allow new
  participants into the fishery, including new generations of fishermen,
  small businesses, or others.

NOAA encourages
those councils adopting catch shares to consider a royalty system to
support science, research and management as fisheries become more
profitable under the program. NOAA will also seek appropriated funds to
supplement what may be collected through cost recovery and royalties to
assist in the design, transition period and operation of catch share
programs.

Readers may note very close parallels between NOAA`s approach and the common principles for sucesssful management of open-access resources that Ostrom has identified.

Let`s hope that the US and other nations can use similar approaches to begin to manage any number of fisheries that are crashing or are under severe pressure around the world – due both to government-instigated commons problems and to races to catch fish in pelagic regions not subject to meaningful government control. We could use approaches that actually empower the fishermen, and end both government mismanagement and politicization and chaotic systems of widespread, roving and destructive “fish raiders”. The alternatives of fisheries that have crash and been placed under bans (under the CITES convention) and politicized deadlocks that we see for whales under the IWC are not very attractive.

So, we ARE making some progress.  Forgive me for suggesting that similar efforts by libertarians to play a productive role regarding energy policy might also eventually pay off?

For the benefit of the curious and/or idle reader, I`m cross-posting from my little-used personal blog a short post on the above topic and the ensuing conversation.

(I note that my inaugural post at this LvMI-hosted blog covered a related topic:   “Too Many or Too Few People? Does the market provide an answer?“.)

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Planet’s First-Ever Mass-Extinction Precipitated by Humans

TokyoTom said…

[some snark in the title, reflecting the heat of the fight over the wheel of government]

Further to my prior posts, here is the full list of my comments over at the remarkable RealClimate thread started by climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, to specifically discuss the “tragedy of the commons” paradigm in the context of domestic and international wrangling over climate policy. 

So far, comments by yours truly are as follows:

134. TokyoTom Says: 
8 May 2009 at 11:56 AM

Gavin, thanks for a thoughtful post that I hope will be brought to the attention of every so-called “skeptic” – none of whom has any basis to deny that there are simply NO property rights protecting the atmosphere (or the oceans).

As a result, to prevent a continuing “tragedy of the commons” the nations of the world, we need to make a collective effort to manage what is, after all, a shared resource.

It`s nice to see that others see that where there are no formal or informal property rights or similar mechanisms, all incentives point to ruin.

171. TokyoTom Says: 
8 May 2009 at 7:42 PM

Property rights are not an end-all or be-all, but they are a linchpin in understanding the dynamics of the tragedy of the commons problem. Resources that are owned – formally or informally, in common or privately – are husbanded, at least much better that when they are not.

This is a key point to keep hammering home with “conservatives”, “skeptics” and ordinary people, whom can all recognize that market demands produce a tragedy of the commons whenever valuable resources are not owned (or cannot be protected) by those who use them.

When there is ownership, (1) users have incentives to invest in protecting what, after all, supports their own livelihoods and, even further, (2) those who also care about the resource have an ability to also protect the resource – by investing it themselves, or by making other private, market decisions, such as to boycott particular owners and to favor others.

When there is no ownership, there is very limited ability by anyone to protect the resource directly, and what we are left with is a battle of words.

Of course a corollary problem that requires attention is that when resources are “publicly” owned, such resources may in fact be treated as a commons, or something that politicians and bureaucrats dole out to whomever is in favor – witness the environmental destruction in communist states, the logging of “public” tropical forests, and our own continued mismanagement of public lands.

In that case of fisheries, this is so readily apparent that even the mainline environmental groups are now calling for giving fishermen property rights in the fish they catch in order to end the destructive race to catch them:

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/01/15/for-crashing-fisheries-coalition-of-mainline-us-enviro-groups-calls-for-property-rights.aspx

Meanwhile, concerned citizens continue to misunderstand the key dynamics of environmental problems, and to miss opportunities to rub the faces of “market” fundamentalists and “conservatives” in the obvious lack of property rights in the atmosphere (and a related inability of those adversely affected by using the atmosphere as a dumping ground to seek redress from those who profit from using it as one):

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/03/12/overlooked-by-those-warmed-by-climate-rhetoric-quot-alarmist-quot-or-quot-skeptic-quot-the-fact-that-our-most-important-commons-have-no-property-rights-rules.aspx

194.  TokyoTom Says: 

9 May 2009 at 7:03 AM

Chip, the last time we chatted, you were going to look into why Rob Bradley had decided – in the middle of an exchange of comments with you on a previous post at his supposedly “free market” Master Resource blog – to block a libertarian like me from commenting, even taking that decision away from you:
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/03/11/rot-at-the-core-rob-bradley-at-quot-free-market-quot-masterresource-blog-shows-his-true-colors-as-a-rent-seeker-for-fossil-fuels.aspx

Do you fail to understand that the fact that Master Resource is a soapbox for the coal industry, which has up to know had the political establishment in its pocket (a small investment that has created great profits while shifting costs to the public and future generations)? Or that this affects the willingness of people to listen to you?

Your hope for a deus ex machina government investment program to somehow save us further illustrates your lack of understand how markets malfunction with respect to unowned resources.

Far better for the government to simply impose rebated carbon taxes, as both Exxon (which no longer funds Rob Bradley`s ventures, BTW; see link above) and Jim Hansen have called for, than to have government itself try to guess what technologies to invest in.

240.  TokyoTom Says: 

10 May 2009 at 7:21 AM

#195: “The tragedy of the commons isn’t actually a tragedy of the commons – it’s a tragedy of the free-for-all. There are any number of ways to overcome the tragedy of the commons – from Mutually Assured Destruction, to consensual co-operation – (and in many societies around the world, the latter has worked for centuries to millenia), but the free market ain’t one of them.”

This is confused. The “free market” certainly pulls on the chain of destruction where resources are not owned or managed, and may, by introducing new technologies, even accelerate the destruction of commons and to the breakdown of communal systems. But broadly speaking, where there are adequately defined and protected “property rights”, the free market does not itself generate the destruction of commons.

And property rights, broadly speaking, are simply instituitions that societies have gradually developed to side-step tragedy of the commons situations

241:  TokyoTom Says: 

10 May 2009 at 7:33 AM

#196 Tamino, I share your sentiments.

Many of those who profess to be interested in protecting “free market capitalism” really have no clue themselves as to how it works, and why it DOESN’T work in the case of environmental problems.

By likewise, many “environmentalists” have very little understanding of how and why markets can go wrong.

A little discussed aspect of the problem is that there is also a rather apparent tragedy of the GOVERNMENT commons, as governments both tend to do a poor job of managing assets and frequently end up either serving special deal to special interests or as public battlegrounds (since different people can`t simply do independent deals to accommodate their differing perspectives).

It`s the battle to influence and win favors from government that leads to partisanship (and “ludicrous rationalization”), which is often hijacked by special interests.

It`s not clear to me how much Chip Knappenberger understands markets, or understands how his posts provide cover for fossil fuel firms/investors who profit while shifting risks to all of us.

But there`s plenty all around. I note that even Jim Hansen strongly favors taxes over cap and trade bureaucracy and green pork.

278.  TokyoTom Says: 

10 May 2009 at 11:16 PM

#188 / 245: Neal & Jim, thanks for the references to the successful experiments in Iceland, NZ and the Alaskan pollock fishery to replace the tragedy of the government commons with property rights approaches that gives the fishermen a stake in protecting the resources they harvest, instead of simply an incentive to invest in a mad race to catch fish before others do in a continually shrinking fishery with shorter and shorter seasons.

I continue to have problems with the spam filter (links and bad words?), so I have excised most of this post and put it up separately at my blog, linked at my name above (with links to some of my other posts on fisheries)

282.  TokyoTom Says: 

11 May 2009 at 12:20 AM

#262 Cardin, do you seriously think that there is ANY possibility of “the U.S. cap[ping] emissions independently of the rest of the world”?

US legislators (and presidents from Bush Sr through Clinton and Dubya) have made it crystal clear that we won`t act alone.

Rather, we face classic collective action problem with respect to a shared resource – like fishermen regulating a fisheries, ranchers agreeing on how to manage a range or farmers managing streamflows – with respect to which we have long been the major user (and remain so by far on a per capita basis), and very few are willing to act (other than to posture) unless we are.

We have long recognized that there are shared gains (in the form of avoided losses to ecosystems and economies) to acting to limit human-induced climate change and ocean acidification, and to improved environmental management in the third world – real costs that your “cost-benefit” analysis neatly ignores), and we have ample carrots and sticks to persuade others to follow.

The problem is that the wheel of our own government has long been captured by the investors and industries that reap short-term profits while shifting costs to all of us and future generations.

IOW, the supposedly cool and rational approach is, at its core, a mask by which particular interests continue to hijack the rest of society.

It`s this fact that drives others – frequently wealthy – who are not invested in fossil fuels to support the PR campaigns of Gore and others (not enviro-facists out to destroy capitalism).

284.  TokyoTom Says: 

11 May 2009 at 12:30 AM

270: Hank, what you`re bemoaning is the “property” is only as good as one`s ability to defend it. The battle we all face with spam is another example.

The rest of creation has long confronted the same, unending battle over resources; unfortunately nature is relatively defenseless before mankind, and our continuing technological/organizational innovation continues to ramp up our assault on “wild” nature.

The flip side is that progress also makes it easier for us to identify polluters and to protect assets.

288.  TokyoTom Says: 

11 May 2009 at 2:17 AM

#145: Jim, it seems to me that you and others have misunderstood Rene and are attacking strawmen rather than his points, which are fairly general – and fully acknowledge the undeniable point that resources that are unowned or unmanaged are abused.

Rather than seeing common ground or exploring how to address these classes of problems, you ll prefer to offer what are essentially red-herrings about how private property is itself imperfect, which is not a point that Rene has at all contested.

“Yeah, let’s just domesticate and privatize everything, that’ll solve it! You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, either with regard to endangered species protection, management of a commons, or the interaction between the two. Zip.”

Is Rene or anyone saying that we have to privatize all resources? Rather, he is giving you a great talking point for all those supposed “free-market” “skeptics” out there, who fail to recognize that markets don`t work with respect to resources that nobody owns or are not collectively protected/managed.

You are all so ready to fight that you are having great difficulty distinguishing friend from foe.

322.  TokyoTom Says: 

11 May 2009 at 2:08 PM

I`ll let Rene correct me if I`m wrong, but I don`t think that Rene has asserted that all resources MUST be privatized (as opposed to being owned and managed by communities or subject to some public regulation) or that private ownership is perfect, but that he`s simply pointing out that resources that are un-owned and are subject to open-access commons exploitation get trashed.

There is ample room for disagreement over the best approaches to such resource problems, as corruption, favoritism and incompetence are inescapably linked to government action. I think Rene was referring to this in connection to tropical deforestation, where what others call “commons” are in fact either lands held by indigenous peoples and stolen by government, or otherwise government-held “parks” and “reserves” that are liquidated by elites (look at the the Amazon, Kalimantan and the sources of the Marcos family wealth, for example).

But Rene is clearly on the side of those who want to see resources protected, and he should be credited for trying to give you guys tools to fight your real enemies – the so-called “skeptics” and “conservatives” (like George Will) who think that “markets” will magically solve problems relating to un-owned (and un-managed) resources (and who serve as deliberate or unwitting fronts for those who are happy to take profits now but leave costs for others).

I keep trying to make this point – see the post linked at my name – but some of you seem to be in “full hackles” mode, certain that you see an enemy, and single-mindedly dedicated to chasing your own tails.

325.  TokyoTom Says: 

11 May 2009 at 2:30 PM

#320: Jim, I think I just answered you in a pending post – the REAL point is that the REAL enemy in the climate change struggle are people ((VERY DIFFERENT from Rene) who think that modern markets work great but forget to note that they undeniably produce destruction where resources are either UNOWNED or UNMANAGED.

On bison and whales, I invite you to a quick read of my own writings:

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/12/16/bison-markets-the-tragedy-of-the-commons-and-the-indian-war.aspx

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/02/15/whales-and-fisheries-quot-standing-up-to-japan-quot-or-enclosing-the-commons.aspx

I think I have provided links upthread on fisheries, but the people who understand these issues best are the free market environmentalists at PERC who have documented how Indians used to own and manage fisheries and other resources. If the tribes` treaty rights and traditional rights to salmon, etc. had been respected, then there would be a resource owner that would have every incentive and right to sue landowners for destruction of watershed habitat; instead, the resource became a state-owned free-for-all, subject to further federal mismanagement.

As Mike G has noted, the successes in marine resource management have all come by restoring some measure of private ownership to “public” resources, which is the reason, as I have already noted, the even the mainline environmental community is united in calling for more property rights-related approaches to crashing fisheries.

328.  TokyoTom Says: 

11 May 2009 at 3:11 PM

Let me link to a post that makes my point – and I think that of Gavin`s extended metaphor – fairly clear:

“Overlooked by those warmed by climate rhetoric (”alarmist” or “denialist”) – the fact that our most important commons have NO property rights rules”

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/03/12/overlooked-by-those-warmed-by-climate-rhetoric-quot-alarmist-quot-or-quot-skeptic-quot-the-fact-that-our-most-important-commons-have-no-property-rights-rules.aspx

The point is not that “property” is an easy panacea to every problem, but that the biggest problems lie where there are no property rights (or other mechanisms that give users incentives to invest in sustainability) in place.

Why don`t you guys see that using this as an argument on climate change is what like throwing holy water in the face of almost every climate change vampire?

#326: Hank, who say there IS a purely private solution to every problem? Certainly not me.

336.  TokyoTom Says: 

11 May 2009 at 9:21 PM

#333: Yes, Silk, there are still “a few people are willing to take the Exxon dollar and sell their soul.”

However, as I noted upthread, Desmog Blog has shown that Exxon no longer funds Robert Bradley or his blog where Chip appears:

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/03/11/rot-at-the-core-rob-bradley-at-quot-free-market-quot-masterresource-blog-shows-his-true-colors-as-a-rent-seeker-for-fossil-fuels.aspx.

It wouldn`t surprise me if Exxon is joining others in pushing for oil & gas development at home, but for now they`re no longer funding climate denial shops – and like Jim Hansen actually calling for carbon taxes!

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/03/08/exxon-rex-tillerson-no-longer-willing-to-be-quot-conservative-quot-on-climate-risks-advocates-carbon-taxes-and-invests-in-carbon-lite-tech.aspx

So where is their money going? How about the Stanford University-centered Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP), the world`s largest privately-funded effort to conduct basic research on energy technologies to reduce GHG emissions, which they are funding over 10 years to the tune of $100 million?

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/03/08/exxon-rex-tillerson-no-longer-willing-to-be-quot-conservative-quot-on-climate-risks-advocates-carbon-taxes-and-invests-in-carbon-lite-tech.aspx

Exxon is now a climate change story that the right no longer wants to hear, and is one of the reasons I`ve been banned from the “MasterResource” blog.

337.  TokyoTom Says: 

11 May 2009 at 9:41 PM

#328: “You completely ignore the numerous examples that have been given of property owners trashing natural resources for a quick profit.”

Nick, no I haven`t. Rather, as I note in 327, I`m making a different point, that as Gavin points out with his metaphor, one of the best arguments to make to denialists and skeptics is that, as their OWN principles tell them, the “market” reality is that the worst cases of resources abuse are where there are no property rights at all.

Unchecked by property rights (and consumer pressure, regulation, trade agreements), markets are very effective machines of destruction, as I have tried to explain elsewhere:

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/09/27/too-many-or-too-few-people-does-the-market-provide-an-answer.aspx

It`s a lack of understanding of this that makes market conservatives right / enviros wrong on SMALL issues (such as Ehrlich`s bet with Julian Simon on commodity prices), but wrong on the BIG ones. Those ranting about “neo-Malthusians seeking to destroy civilization” are simply not ignoring or are blind to how consumer and other markets are destroying unowned, unmanaged Nature around the world.

This partisan blindness is readily understandable; after all, we see the same thing here among enviros!

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/07/06/mind-games-how-an-absence-of-functioning-markets-means-that-i-m-right-but-you-re-a-delusional-neurotic-quot-zealot-quot.aspx

376.  TokyoTom Says: 

12 May 2009 at 12:10 PM

#338 Ike, thanks for the interesting link on Polynesia.

But spare me the slave economy argument, not only because slavery is hardly something libertarians would find at all morally justifiable, but because it`s unrelated from my point – and, I think, Gavin`s – which is not that there is an ideal form of ownership/management, but simply that, where resources are unowned or unmanaged, they tend to get trashed.

This is a long, tragic and continuing story. The primary point is that we need to start better managing our commons, including our shared atmosphere. The ancillary point, for the purpose of political jousting, is that it is highly effective to ask skeptics to show you where the property rights (or other management mechanisms) are in the air that ensure there is is no tragedy of the commons. This is a show stopper, because you`re talking a language
is familiar to them, but they are forced to realize that the market system does NOT work for the atmosphere, because it is a commons and without property rights.

Are you with me?

[I responded to this before, but it apparently didn`t post.]

378.  TokyoTom Says: 

12 May 2009 at 12:27 PM

#331 : “Nah… it’s the same gut reaction I have when folks are asserting that Jesus loves me, or giving me free links to mises.org… not my religion, and I’m beyond redemption thank you very much. I like to live on the reality side of things.”

I can understand your “gut” reaction, but it`s rather obviously getting in the way of your higher faculties. I am barely tolerated by many at Mises (to whom I come off as a commie left enviro Nazi fascist) and offer links only to my own thoughts there, and similarly have been shown the door by RedState, Freepers, NewsBusters and now the place that Chip Knappenberger blogs from. And I`ve spent many a comment thread at Mises battling similar nonsense that people concerned about climate change have drunk the the Koolaid of some religion or another; e.g,http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/07/06/mind-games-bret-stephens-of-the-wall-street-journal-panders-to-quot-skeptics-quot-by-abjuring-science-and-declaring-himself-an-expert-on-quot-mass-neurosis-quot.aspx

Feel free read further or test me.

382.  TokyoTom Says: 

12 May 2009 at 1:21 PM

#349: John, George Reisman is your uncle? I`ve had the nerve to joust with him on the LvMI pages and my own blog over the past few years on environmental matters, where he is simply emotional and not reasonable:
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=reisman
http://blog.mises.org/archives/005916.asp

Thanks for your various questions and observations. I don`t think that we are actually that far apart, but we are drifting a bit off-thread. Let me make a few specific responses.

“Mankind did not create the resources so by what right has he to own them? People own oil, but oil is being drilled and used to its inevitable extinction of the resource. It might be better to think of the global resources as being lent to us by the mere fact of the existence of such resources, so what right of ownership should exist?”

My own view is that “ownership” is chiefly not so much about our individual relationships to “property” (can we really “own” any other life form? aren`t we just as much owned by the bacteria in our gut, parasites, diseases and predators that use us for food?), but more humbly about our relationships with each other regarding relative priority of claims to make use of particular things we find valuable. What those things depends upon place, time, culture and individual.

“Many owners have exploited a resource wile abusing it and destroying its capacity to survive simply to finish with it and move on to another resource to exploit.”

I don`t disagree. In fact, I think that this is endemic whenever there are open-access commons remaining for such exploiters to move on to. (In this regard, we differ from the rest of nature only in the leverage that technologies give us to wreak devastation.) While we have developed property rights institutions (communal and private, informal and formal) precisely to get a handle over tragedies of the commons (and even evolved possessive and cooperative behaviors) only a blind ideologue would assert that creating property has somehow changed human nature. But it is worth noting that property IS helpful, as it makes it possible for others to acquire and manage more beneficially resources that others mistreat.

“There is also ample room to see that corruption, favoritism and incompetence are inescapably linked to corporate greed through over manipulation of markets. The users and the looters are not always the government and the belief systems, they are also corporations.”

Again, I agree; my point is not that all use of government should be avoided (indeed, it might even be needed), but simply that use of government itself no panacea, but fraught with danger – as corporations and their owners are far more effective in Washington than the citizens who continually have to organize to do battle with them. Some corporations (not all, by any means) are looters, and use government to achieve their ends.

This goes back a long way, with the chief roots in the grant of limited liability to shareholders for bad acts by corporations:http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=limited+liability

Sorry, but I need to wind this up.

383.  TokyoTom Says: 

12 May 2009 at 1:32 PM

#354: “So the protection of your property DEMANDS an overwhelming force and a force that no other power can bring against you.”

Mark, this is too simplistic. What is “property” and how it can be defended depends on context. In close communities, people don`t lock their doors, do deals based on handshakes and reputation, and little resort is made to law, police or courts. In other cases, weapons – or thick contracts or physical or technological locks – and constant vigilance are required.

Maine lobstermnen have an easier task defending their resources than do indigenous fishermen or forest-dwellers.

So what will work in the case of climate depends on available technology and the level of trust (and enforcement) that can be established.

385.  TokyoTom Says: 

12 May 2009 at 1:41 PM

#365: “Just as the Newfoundland fisherman remained blind to the consequences of their actions. In both cases, what was happening was obvious, yet in spite of the evidence of diminishing resources, they cut/fished as if there were no problem whatsoever.”

JSM, thanks for bring us back the tragedy of the unmanaged/government commons. Who owned the fishery, the government or the fishermen? Except in places where fishermen are being given transferable harvesting rights (or being completely locked our – very rare) government-management fisheries are all crashing, which is why mainline environmental groups are calling for more property rights in fisheries.

Ironic captcha: bickers Salmon!

416.  TokyoTom Says: 

13 May 2009 at 3:39 AM

#391: “A corporation which takes other factors than money into account can be taken over with money when their book value gets too high for their stock value. You forget that some resources are too large for a single owner (and single owners eventually die), and so crowd theory takes over. In a sense, corporations are a tragedy of the commons for everything they own.”

Richard, these are extremely important nuances, to be sure, but it is still helpful for Rene to generalize by saying that “Those who own a forest are not compelled to harvest it against their wishes.”

Rene was talking about what ownership of a forest (or a transferrable fishing permit, first use water rights, etc.) implies – and was surely correct – while what you are talking about what we mean by ownership of a public corporation, which is also an important area of inquiry.

Starting with the first state grant of limited liability to investors/owners for damages that corporations do to third parties, to other extensions of unlimited life, unlimited purposes and the Consitutional right as a “legal person” to lie and to purchase influence, moral hazard and risk-shifting has become rampant in the businesses closest to government:
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=limited

Back to resources, what we typically mean by “ownership” is the right, vis-a-vis non-owners, is to determine who has access to the resource and the terms under which they can use it. The nature and preference of the individuals, community or government that owns the resource may make all the difference between how well a resource is used and protected, but markets do allow people and groups with differing preferences to make deals regarding ownership and management.

It`s where there is NO ownership, or where ownership is in the hands of a kleptocracy or poorly-run bureaucracy that either the “tragedy of the commons” takes place, or deals cannot be done and everyone is stuck in a struggle for control over the wheel of government: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=wheel

“Private” and “community” property systems that put control in the hands of users are by no means perfect, but they avoid the worst of the tragedy of the commons, which is why mainline environmental groups are now together calling for property rights in fisheries (as linked above).

417.  TokyoTom Says: 

13 May 2009 at 3:56 AM

#373: “The increased logging clogged many salmon streams, in many cases permanently degrading them. This has been a large factor in the collapse of West Coast salmon fisheries (along with increasing diversions of water to agriculture and rising river water temps).

Now, if the salmon fishermen owned the redwood forests that surrounded all the salmon streams, they might have had a very different take on what the best thing to do was – a very different view from Wall Street bond traders. Which one is right?”

Good questions, but you`ve missed an important one – what would the result be if salmon fishermen actually owned rights in their FISHERY (as opposed to land, as you query), instead of just being allowed to catch fish when the government allows?

Wouldn`t they have an ability to sue landowners for messing up streams, and to make deals with then to enhance and maintain habitat? This (and water rights) in fact underpin river and stream fisheries in various parts of the world and US. It`s mainly the government ownership of the resource – after stealing it from the Indians – and the fact that users have no rights that they can protect or trade that is the reason why the great salmon fisheries are surely dying:

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/07/23/destroying-the-salmon-the-socialized-commons-and-climate-change-part-ii.aspx
http://www.perc.org/articles/article249.php
http://www.perc.org/articles/article884.php

433.  TokyoTom Says: 

13 May 2009 at 10:31 AM

#424 “Markets have their place, but they give individuals and corporations influence in proportion to their wealth – thus in practice, giving only corporations and very rich individuals any influence at all. This is why “libertarians” love them so much. “Propertarians” would be a far more accurate term for their views.”

Well said, but with more bark than bite. Consumer preferences on green issues – expressed by individual purchases and by group action – have done a great job of influencing markets and products provided, and there is ample room for more.

See Walmart working with fishermen and a sustainability certification group re: Copper River salmon:
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/12/09/save-wild-fisheries-buy-your-certified-sustainable-salmon-from-walmart.aspx

What we desperately need right now re: bluefin and other fisheries are consumer boycotts and demands for sustainability labelling.

#439:  TokyoTom Says: 

13 May 2009 at 11:14 AM

#429 Jim, people turn their backs on the rules because the rules create incentives for destruction and no incentives for compliance.

See what Defying Ocean’s End (cofounded by Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Ocean Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, The World Conservation Union, and World Wildlife Fund) says about protecting fish:

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

These crazy, dedicated cionservation groups are all pushing for poerty rights approaches to end the tragedy of this government-mis-managed commons.

[this is a short repost as it seems my initial post has been lost]