I’m very interested in libertarian and conservative “pro-constitution” ideas, but i have some problems with some thoughts in the movement(s), the anti-environmentalism for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfoP4SPd2Gs
They’re attacking the whole environmentalist movement, and this is one reason that I’m a little sceptical to, for example, Tea party movement. What do you guys, on the Mises Institute, think about environmentalism. Is it bad? If so, why?
Best regards. (Excuse my english, my capabilities are quite limited)
I don’t want to speak for anyone on here specifically, but I don’t think anyone purposefully wants to hurt the environment. I love being in the woods and having a clear, dark sky with a lot of stars to look at. The problem comes when the government tries to stop everything because it either lowers production or raises costs, and interferes with human life. And, overall, I feel like most libertarians care more about human life than the life of the Earth. Before us, the chimpanzees were ruining the Earth in their own way, and all the way back in time. What environmentalists doing are trying to protect the Earth in order to keep sustaining ‘human’ life, not just protect it in general. The Earth lived through the introduction of oxygen and became what it is now. I think it will be fine. Not to mention that the free market can save the environment much better the government. The government subsidized (they still might) junk mail getting transported around to our mailboxes, basically being printed for no reason. The free market created e-mail, which stopped trees from being cut down for mail. Actually, e-mail was created even before the Internet. It’s one of the main reasons that the Internet project was initiated.
If you have time one day, check out a few chapters in the Table of Contents of The Economics of Liberty (here) which deal with the environment. It discusses a lot of free market versus government options that have been undertaken throughout the years.
The environment is best protected when there are property rights. Public property creates a commons, and ruins the environment (look at Soviet era Russia). Libertarians are committed to private property ownership, and thus we have the superior position on environment.
Conservatives and tea party folks are not libertarians and they are not usually Austrians (mises types). Many of them love to destroy the environment with weapons of mass destruction, aircraft carriers, bombs and missiles, depleted uranium ammunition, chemical warfare etc.
Rothbard himself devoted his time to show that liberty is beneficial to the environment. In fact, in 18th century England many polluting factories were shut down because people sued them for polluting their property, i.e. clothes.
Green on the outside (environmentalist), Red on the inside (communist). Often environmentalism is an excuse for expanding government power, global warming especially. Many of the things that global warming advocates are calling for are the same things the left has been demanding for decades – high gas taxes, high progressive income taxes, restrictions on business, and government control in every part of the economy.
Environmentalists should be libertarians because free markets will in most cases better satisfy their desires - saving the whales, preserving forests, stopping animal cruelty, etc - than will socialist alternatives.
Libertarians qua libertarians do not have a view on whether any particular environmentalist goal is worth it or not. We just say let’s have a free market so that the views of everyone are encapsulated in free market prices, so that the amount of resources devoted to particular and environmental causes generally is precisely the amount of resources that the individuals in society are willing to devote to them.
The alternative is having the politicians guessing this and using highly inefficient (and unethical) socialist techniques to try to achieve environmentalist goals. Also, there are the usual public choice problems associated with socialism and democracy in particular: pandering to special interests, bribery, corruption, short-term thinking, waste, etc. These are widespread problems when it comes to state environmental policy-making.
The environment is best protected when there are property rights. Public property creates a commons, and ruins the environment (look at Soviet era Russia). Libertarians are committed to private property ownership, and thus we have the superior position on environment.
That works well on land and small bodies of water. I’ve read suggestions that larger bodies of water, like oceans, can also be privatized in large chunks to ensure that if wildlife are the target, there’s sufficient space to keep the property from swimming into another’s. It’s either that, or you fence in chunks of the sea and I’m not sure that’d go over real well for certain species. Further reading on this here: http://mises.org/daily/4879
The real trick with environmentalism and privatization is with air quality. How do you prevent air quality from becoming the next “tragedy of the commons?” When I think of trying to privatize air, the movie “Total Recall” comes to mind.
Who has more rights to a whale? The whale-hunters or the whale-tourists who go to see them with an expert and learn about this creatures?
Would you recognize the rights earned by a whale protection / scientific group who study and shows them to tourist with care?
Would you consider that this whale experts could have earned rights by their on-going continuous travel to where this whales live and by staying close to them, making videos, teaching tourists in front of them and so on?
Could the same be said about ocean floors used by diving groups who routinely dive into the same corals? They would seem to have earned/homestead more rights than a big ship that pass there a second with a net getting everything from the ocean floor and moving away. Would you agree?
Player, perhaps they could tag/brand the whales? Of course this only lasts for that generation and would require some human interaction (though likely harmless and extremely small).
I don’t think it’s right to generalize such a large movement like that. And to connect environmentalism with socialism can be quite dangerous, because many environmentalists don’t want to see their ideology used for someone elses count.
well no… the environmentalists are not necessarily bad… but the environmentalist movement is… http://www.perc.org … check that site out, these are true envirnmentalists
EDIT: Haha, the site is already posted, opps… just in case you didnt get it the first time…
It seems to be room for environmentalism in the libertarian ideas as well. And maybe my view, that the government can be used as a tool to solve much of the environmental problems, isn’t perfect. But the view that business and the free market spontaneously will solve the environmental problems isn’t perfect either. How do you explain, for example, Amazonas?
Egoist, just an example, I’m strict vegetarian/vegan and I’m here, and I’m sure there are many more at Mises. There is no contradiction or problem at all. The contradictions are on the state side, anti-envirommentalist paying their taxes to those they hate, animal-rights defenders forced to pay their taxes to universities animal experimentation. Nobody is happy, the answer is propietarianism, choosing your own environment and supporting the ideas and groups you like, forced integration and impossible compromises don’t work.
And I’m sure the state is destroying the environment, it incentivates irresponsibility, short-term thinking, shifting away the problems to other generations or groups… You all know.