I am wondering how an anarcho-capitalist society would respond to the threat of invasive species. I have been reading quite a bit about IP lately and this seems to me to be a similar problem.
i.e. once an idea is created, it spreads and the original person can’t really be compensated for it. (and shouldn’t, property is something that is scarce, ideas are not)
It seems to me that the person responsible for introducing the invasive species would also be impossible to be made to pay for the damages caused by their actions.
Yeah, I had rats in mind specifically because I had recently seen a show on TV about how rats were introduced to an island and destroyed crops.
But even if one person couldn’t be held accountable, how would we eliminate them all? I assume everyone would pay for exterminators on their own property but what if we have some residents that are pro-toads or pro-rats?
No reason why there couldn’t be a voluntary association of people who contribute and work together to alleviate the problem. This could include outsourcing the solution to a private business with ecological experts etc.
someone can choose whether or not to integrate an idea into an action. kudzu sort of has a mind of its own. it would maybe be akin to littering something that propagates.
True indeed. But one should keep in mind that “proving” damages brought by any specie is well nigh impossible. Keeping to toads, wouldn’t “native” rats have done more or less just he same damage? If not, what quantifiable difference should be attributed to toads? And if toads have damaged, say, crops, did they do so directly or indirectly, by altering the ecosystem? I’m afraid that in the later case no reasonable arbitrator would allocate damages to be paid, for proof here is impossible to satisfactory provide. On the real world it would boil down to an “unproovable offense”.