A Better Link for Fairweather...

[AlpineK]

A better for Fairweather

[AlpineK]

Last sentence: Private ownership: pride and attention. Government ownership: the potential for neglect

 

Whether a lawn is "enviromentally" correct or not is not the point.

 

Another way to point this out would be to show differences in how companies such as LP, GP or Simpson treat land they own outright differently than they do land owned by the US government.

 

Actually the tall dry grass by the freeway is more environmentally correct. The grass grows, then drys, then a passing motorist throws out a cigarette but which starts a huge brush fire which cleanses the land in much the same way that a lightning strike would.

 

The homeowner grass is not natural at all.

 

Sure she puts pride and attention into her property, but it's the wrong kind of attention, and it causes a lot of nasty runoff that screws up a lot more property then her little chunk of lawn.

[mattp]

Another way to point this out would be to show differences in how companies such as LP, GP or Simpson treat land they own outright differently than they do land owned by the US government.

 

Lest you think I'm doing the same thing of which I accuse you, let me comment on this.

 

If, as you suggest, timber companies are less likely to take care of public lands when they harvest timber on them, it is because the timber sales are being mis-managed by the public land managers. And I'd have to 'cede that much of the National Forest lands I've seen have been completely raped with very poor or no long term planning involved. The Forest Service has indeed been extremely irresponsible in their management of timber lands. That's not necessarly an argument for privatizing the public lands, though, as much as its a clear argument for insisting upon responsible public agency land management practices.

[AlpineK]

I think one of the key facts PP forgets is that those logging companies spend a lot of money to lobby the politcians who control public lands. Simpson, and the rest are lobbying for cheap leases and little regulation for use of those lands. Therefore it's the private companies that are responsible for the shitty condition of public land they use.

[Fairweather]

And because of how long-term accounting and planning is done, the government-owned resource is very likely to be BETTER managed because the future is so severely discounted in any business accounting routine that I have ever heard of.

 

Ever heard of The Aral Sea?

[JoshK]

And because of how long-term accounting and planning is done, the government-owned resource is very likely to be BETTER managed because the future is so severely discounted in any business accounting routine that I have ever heard of.

 

Ever heard of The Aral Sea?

 

Yeah, it's a salty inland sea in central asia that has been drying up rapidly due to overdraw for irrigation, etc. I'm sure you are trying to introduce something specific about it, however, so, please continue...

[Fairweather]

The Aral Sea is a victim of government central planning in the extreme, and not a victim of corporate greed.

 

Ditto rotting submarine reactors on the Arctic coast.

Ditto The Three Gorges Dam

Ditto the marshes in southern Iraq

etc

etc

etc

[cj001f]

The Aral Sea is a victim of government central planning in the extreme, and not a victim of corporate greed.

 

Ditto rotting submarine reactors on the Arctic coast.

Ditto The Three Gorges Dam

Ditto the marshes in southern Iraq

etc

etc

etc

Note the "5 year plans" & the like that these economy loved. Maximise Nearterm Benefits regardless of longterm cost.

[Fairweather]

Yes, but Matt's point was that "the govenment owned resource is more likely to be better managed"....

 

Hence, my examples.

[catbirdseat]

When we use the phrase "better managed", different people have different definitions of what it means. To the individual with the lawn, this means that it looks nice. Perhaps to society as a whole it means looks nice AND doesn't pollute ground water or fill up landfills. I maintain that the government is charged by the people with a much broader definition of what "well managed" means. It has more people and considerations, both short term and long term to consider.

[Fairweather]

Of course, Catbird, I don't support unbridled corporate greed at the expense of the environment and I agree that without government oversight corporations would have no incentive...economic or otherwise...to act in a reasonable manner. I just take exception to those who feel a one-sided government equation is some sort of cure-all.

 

You, and I. We are the government!....and the corporation.

[cj001f]

You, and I. We are the government!....and the corporation.

Indeed. And it's good to remember that we don't want to live in either the government state (Communitst Russia) or the corporate state (Nazi Germany)

[j_b]

here is a piece from science mag. (via the national geographic society) on the real economy of land use:

 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/08/0816_020819_environmentinvest.html

 

Study Adds Up Economic Benefits of Conservation

 

National Geographic News

August 19, 2002

 

 

Shell-shocked investors bouncing between stocks, bonds, and real estate are putting their money in all the wrong places, according to a paper published in Science magazine. The best deal going, by a wide margin, is the environment.

An annual investment of U.S. $45 billion in preserving large tracts of wild nature, said the paper's authors, would yield an annual return to society of between $4.4 trillion and $5.2 trillion in "ecosystem services" like water filtration and climate regulation, a 100 to 1 return on the investment (ROI).

 

Greenbacks aren't rushing into green causes because the market-based economy doesn't tell the whole financial truth, according to Robert Costanza, director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont and one of the paper's co-authors.

 

"Converting ecosystems typically benefits only a few private individuals," he says. "Leaving wild nature wild produces benefits in the form of ecosystem services, but these services are public, rather than private goods. They serve society as a whole and aren't captured by the imperfect market."

 

[...]

 

go to link for rest of article.

[mattp]

If I said government owned resources are always going to be better managed I misspoke. (Scroll up and check if you'd like.) Clearly, we all know that government owned resources can be mismanaged and I believe I cited the National Forest services' management of timeberlands as an

example of exactly where that has happened.

 

Fairweather, you cite examples of mismanagement of public resources in Russia and China, apparently to suggest that these show how the U.S. government also cannot manage public resources as well as a large private corporation would. I don't think your examples prove anything, except that there were some disastrous public works projects in Russia and China. I'd be more impressed if you would talk about similar disasters in the U.S., such as the management of timber lands in the West, or completely irresponsible and short-sighted resource management projects like the irrigation of the central California valley. In my view, the driving force behind these disasters has been an effort to provide government support (welfare) for private corporations, and they are good examples of how our government has been co-opted by special interests.

 

Even still, I don't think these examples prove or even tend to prove that private management of public resources or resources in general is desireable. When it comes to resource management, I think there is a consistent pattern of private enterprises completely mismanaging resources in the interest of short term profits. Pretty much all the big single source polluters except some particular facilities associated with the power industry are all private enterprises, aren't they? As to the non-source pollution, isn't it private business practices that are responsilble for just about all of this, too? Pretty much all of the big mining messes throughout the nation were made by private business, weren't they? Aside from a tree farm where I don't even think it is accurate to say that private business will do a better job than government (but at least we could have an argument here), exactly what resources would private business better manage than the government?

 

I don't understand the anti-government arguments very well. Didn't the U.S. government lead us to victory in world war II? Didn't they eliminate Polio? Didn't they put a man on the moon? Aren't these examples of massive coordination and focus? Would private enterprise have done any of these things?

[Peter_Puget]

One "conceptual problem" we have here is that you fail to say what your argument is but another is that you don't want to respond to the arguments sent your way. There was no mystery about what I meant by the word "cooperation" the other day, and no nuance to what I meant when I asked you if it was "cooperative" to refuse to comply with the expressed wishes of nearly every single one of (if not all of) our allies. Had you wanted to say, it was uncooperative but cooperation was not justified, or something like that, I might have been interested in continuing the discussion. Where you wanted to talk in circles to avoid the question, I lost interest.

 

Mattp there was ambiguity in what you meant by cooperation. I asked in several ways what you meant by the term cooperation. You failed to respond. Your statement here is not in accordance with the facts.

 

My original argument was simply that the environmental correctness of lawn care was not the point of the post. I believe I was quite clear on that,but I was confused by many responses in this thread and asked a simply question: what does good mean in “good for the environment”. No definition was given. I assume that people here believe that pesticide runoff is bad, in a sense I was asking why? Seems like a straightforward question. To say that I have failed to respond is mumbo jumbo. I asked clear questions and received no answers. You call it talking in circles I say it is creating a common ground.

 

My own reply, echoing those of others, contained two equally simple ideas: the idea that future expectations are severely discounted in standard business accounting, and the idea that the actual costs or impacts associated with one's economic activity may be external and left completely out of the balance sheet. You dismiss both concepts, without discussing either.

 

No I responded that standard business accounting does not severely discount cost of future actions. The concept of externalities is a well known concept and you brought up both ideas as something more relevant to private industry than government without any theory supporting it other than “I think”. What is even more weird is that you seem to be comparing an imperfect private system with an ideally perfect governmental system. Such a comparison seems silly to me. As the discussion moved I tried to address the first points raised and seek a common definition as to what good for the environment means. My simple definition subject to refinement is a “good” environment is what ever we want it to be – knowing all the time that our knowledge is imperfect. . I also asked a question about what book value means.

 

Perhaps not surprisingly on page two CBS brings up the point of differing definitions. This reinforces my belief that asking for a definiton is worthwhile. After all if we are talking of better management we had better know how we will measure it.

 

PP

[mattp]

Peter:

 

I agree that definitions are hepful, but I believe your call for me to define the word "cooperation" was a dodge and that you just didn't want to answer the question. It was pretty much a yes or no question, calling for a statement of your general impression rather than some technical analysis or complex consideration. By the way, in case you are unclear what the word means, you can look up "cooperarion" in your Webster's dictionary.

 

Again today, I believe you are seeking to avoid or dilude comments with a call for definitions. Are you suggesting that if we define it differently, we might conclude that pesticide runoff is a "good" thing? Maybe there's a job for you in the Bush Administration.

 

Where did I ever say that government was or ever could be expected to be perfect?

[JoshK]

I'm missing the connection between mismangement of public resources in communist china and formerly (and now financially destroyed) communist USSR and mismanagement of forest resources in the US...

[Peter_Puget]

Mattp - the simple matter is all human actions require trade off - require future projections - that hints at the first problem: knowledge. It is never perfect we make mistakes.

 

Yes pesticide runoff is a good thing if we judge the effects of the runoff to be less costly thant he benefits. I consider that to be obvious. I consider your isolation of the runoff problem to be more of a dodge than any request for definitions on my part. Here is an example: Due to "enviromental considerations" the use of DDT has been curtailed to the extent that Malaria control projects in the poorest section sof Afric have been stopped due to lack of $$$. Some estimate 2million mostly children and mostly in Africa die of malaria every year. The UN wont even fund any indoor residential spraying and yet people die. My point here is not to say that the deaths that spraying should go on but to merely point out that many could reasonably conclude that a but of pesticide runoff is a small price to pay for reduced malaria rates. Perhaps you consider a nice lawn not worth the price of pesticide runoff here in seattle that ok thats you evaluation - you are not willing to make that trade off. my guess is some are.

 

This leads to a second problem: How do we coordinate and evaluate all these often mutually exclusive values?

[mattp]

Peter, perhaps I continue to misunderstand you. Maybe my reading comprehension is no good.

 

the simple matter is all human actions require trade off - require future projections - that hints at the first problem: knowledge. It is never perfect we make mistakes.

 

What are you saying here? That we cannot know the outcome of any given action? How does this apply to the question of the relative merits of public vs private management of any given resource?

 

Yes pesticide runoff is a good thing if we judge the effects of the runoff to be less costly thant he benefits. I consider that to be obvious. I consider your isolation of the runoff problem to be more of a dodge than any request for definitions on my part.

 

No, my isolation of the runoff problem is not a dodge. I was talking about externalization of the costs or impacts - a concept which you say that you understand. I'm pointing out that the benefits accrue to our hypothetical "landowner" whereas the runoff does not impact him at all. The pesticide runoff itself is NOT a good thing EVEN IF if we judge the effects to be less costly than the benefits. Your following discussion of the costs/benefits of the use of DDT is more helpful, but the initial statement is confusing at best, and appears to be a dodge.

[Peter_Puget]

Mattp -

 

tradeoffs equal costs. we may find (in fact we usually find) that our analysis of future costs and benefits is in error.

 

As far as externalities your example was not clear but I was simply responding to pesticides being never a good thing. You can reduce your analysis to absurd levels if you wish. Enough of the dodge talk I certainly dont take it seriously when I attempt to address your points after your repeated decisions not to answer my simple questions.

 

Externalities are present in almost every human action. I ask what is your point? Can you provide me with a theory as to why they would be better addressed by the government?

 

You have made statements such as: "Pretty much all the big single source polluters except some particular facilities associated with the power industry are all private enterprises, aren't they? " In a society where industry is for the most part privately held that would be expected even if government was a worse polluter by some common standard.

 

As a general rule markets are better for transmitting and responding to flows of information than governments are.

[Peter_Puget]

Simple question: How do we judge good management of resources?

[mattp]

You have made statements such as: "Pretty much all the big single source polluters except some particular facilities associated with the power industry are all private enterprises, aren't they? " In a society where industry is for the most part privately held that would be expected even if government was a worse polluter by some common standard.

 

Good catch there. However, I think you missed the point of what I wrote. Fairweather noted a few specific public works projects in China and the former Soviet Union in an attempt to show how government run operations are environmental disasters, I'm merely resonding to point ouit that, in this country at least, most serious environmental disasters are purely the result of private-run activities. You are right, though. It is not surprising and this does not show that public enterprises could or would be better.

[Peter_Puget]

...I think there is a consistent pattern of private enterprises completely mismanaging resources in the interest of short term profits.

 

wasn't the quote in support of the above?

[mattp]

Peter-

There is absolutely nothing absurd about addressing the issue of the tragedy of the commons, or of the externality of the costs of production that come in the form of environmental degredation

 

To take an extreme (would you say absurd?) example, though, let me ask you this: Why did big tobacco continue to produce a toxic product, market it to kids, and even manipulate their product in order to make it more addictive after they KNEW they were killing people? The costs were "external." What are the chances that any government-run agency have done this?

 

We've been using a more day-to-day type example in discussing the hypothetical urban or suburban landowner using chemicals to maintain a green lawn. Indeed, I actually do not like it when my neighbors use a bunch of weed and feed on their lawns. You may think that is absurd, but I think they should not be allowed to do so, or at the very least they should be tightly regulated in their use of such products. Am I an evil socialist?

[mattp]

Peter-

In reply to your "pointing out" how I was using the private industry polluters to show mismanagement by private enterprise, please look at my post immediately above. I specifically acknowledged that you are right: by pointing out that the biggest polluters are private enterprises I have not shown that government-run enterprises would be better.