Libertopia: Private Ownership of the Earth

Several months ago, Bert B. posted a great article about the Tragedy of the Commons, the idea that there is a tendency for free access and unrestricted demand for a finite resource to result in over-exploitation of that resource. There was some good discussion for a couple of days, but it wasn't until recently that the discussion was revived by comments from Steve Bachman. Steve's contribution to the discussion included his assertions that "the entire concept of 'publicly-owned' property is fallacious", and that the best way to avoid the Tragedy of the Commons is to ensure that everything is privately-owned. Private ownership, Steve asserted, allows for "rational economic calculations" and "a guiding incentive to preserve and to maintain the...given property or asset."

I didn't really think about it much at the time, but after reading one of Steve's recent comments, I was reminded that while the Tragedy of the Commons isn't universal. Some societies manage communal resources quite well. Steve said:

Let's take your example of overgrazing first. The issues that characterize the "tragedy" occur precisely because of the fact that private property rights are absent from the equation. Note that "overgrazing" is a non-issue where privately-owned farmlands are concerned. This is because the farmer is the private owner of the land being grazed, and stands to profit from its upkeep. He has a guiding incentive to keep the land sufficiently seeded; the value, profitability, and utility of his land are all dependent upon it.

And that reminded me of a study (Sserunkuuma and Olson, 2001) of the Bahima people, in southwestern Uganda. Traditionally, they moved around and pastured their cattle throughout their tribal territory. Each herder grazed his cattle on commonly-owned land, but overgrazing wasn't a problem, because he was "subject to strong social controls on whose herds can graze and on how many animals can be grazed." In other words, there wasn't unrestricted demand for a finite resource. Tribal customs placed sufficient restrictions to ensure that the resource (pasture land) wasn't depleted.

So not only did traditional management of common resources allow for sustainable use of the land, it turns out that when that traditional system was replaced with one based on private ownership of land, then overgrazing became a problem. So much for Steve's assertion that overgrazing is a non-issue where privately-owned farmlands are concerned.

Later in the discussion, the issues of clear-cutting forests and strip-mining land for mineral resources came up, and again Steve offered a common libertarian perspective:

Private owners of forests, whose livelihoods depend on the continued utility and value of their property, are stupid enough to "clearcut and stripmine them."

I was hopeful; that, at least, I could get you to admit to the very common sense principle that private owners of scarce resources -- such as forests, fisheries, and mines -- take care to insure the continued productivity and value of their investment, if for nothing else than their own sheer economic self-interest... but apparently your collectivist brainwashing is so thorough that you aren't even able to recognize something as plainly common sense and obvious as this.

I responded with a comment about people choosing gains in the short-term over the long-term (discounting the future, a very common human behavior), but Steve's comments made me curious to learn more about the views of some libertarians with regard to environmental issues. And that led me to discover some fairly disturbing aspects of libertarian thought.

For example, in "The Environmentalist Threat" by Lew Rockwell (founder of the Mises Institute, VP of the Center for Libertarian Studies, etc.), I came across this:

Like socialism, environmentalism combines an atheistic religion with virulent statism. But it ups the ante. Marxism was at least professed a concern with human beings; environmentalism harks back to a godless and manless Garden of Eden.

And this:

The normal attitude for most of human history was expressed by the Pilgrims, who feared a "vast and desolate wilderness, full of savage beasts and men." Only a free society, which has tamed nature over many generations, enables us to have a different view....Few of us could survive in the wilderness of, say, Yellowstone Park for any length of time (even though the environmentalists let it burn down because fire is natural). Nature is not friendly to man; it must be tempered.

And this, with regard to the Exxon Valdez oil spill:

From all the hysteria, and the criminal indictment, one might think Exxon deliberately spilled the oil, rather than being the victim of an accident that has already cost its stockholders $2 billion dollars. Who is supposedly the casualty in the Justice Department's "criminal act"? Oiled sand?

If I may use the environmentalists own language: oil is natural, it's organic, and it's biodegradable. It will go away. (Although if it didn't, it wouldn't exactly be the end of the world.)

He goes on to bitch and moan about attempts to stop ridiculously excessive waste ("we must privatize the entire garbage system"), global warming ("even if it were to take place, many scientists say the effect would be good"), ozone depletion ("the scientific evidence is far from convincing"), acid rain (one problem is "the assumption that nature has the right to rainwater at a certain pH"), killing dolphins in tuna nets ("[environmentalists] want an end, in effect, to the organized tuna industry"), species extinction ("The only environmental impact that counts is that on humans").

Based on these statements, it seems clear to me that for libertarians like Rockwell, the liberty they so desperately crave includes the freedom to do whatever they like with their property, even if that means destroying it. Rockwell sums up his position very nicely with this comment:

Chicken or chickory, elephant or endive, the natural order is valuable only in so far as it serves human needs and purposes. Our very existence is based on our dominion over nature; it was created for that end, and it is to that end that it must be used--through a private-property, free-market order, of course.

It's stuff like this that, for me anyway, blows apart the libertarian claims that their views are all based on reason and "natural law".

But the references to clear-cutting and strip-mining reminded me of another libertarian, Walter Block, another anarcho-capitalist libertarian who Lew Rockwell says was the logical successor to the title of "Mr. Libertarian" when Murray Rothbard died. In Defending the Indensible, Block specifically mentions "The Stripminer":

What of the other argument against the strip miner: that stripping spoils the natural beauty of the landscape? This is a shaky objection at best because, when it comes to beauty or aesthetics, there are no objective standards. What is beautiful to one person may be ugly to another and vice versa. It is true that strip mining removes the vegetation, grass and trees from the landscape. It can turn a lush, fertile landscape into a veritable desert. But some people prefer the desolation and emptiness of the desert!

And:

But...the issue is not really about beauty, though it is phrased as if it were. The real objection seems to be that strip mining is an intrusion upon nature by an offensive industrial society. The notion that land areas should be left in their "natural state" seems to be the operative one. But if the lovers and protectors of "nature as-is" have the right to prevent strip miners from operating, then they also have the right to prevent farmers from clearing virgin soil and planting upon it, and to prevent builders from erecting buildings, bridges, factories, airports and hospitals. The "argument from nature" is really an argument against civilization and against the use of human intelligence.

Actually, many among those who condemn strip mining as "unnatural" would themselves object vigorously if other conditions--homosexuality or miscegentation, for example--were objected to on those grounds. They would point out that very little is "natural" to man, and that sometimes what is natural--murderous rage, for example--is not what is best. Civilization depends to a great extent on our being able to transcend nature.

I think many of these arguments indicate how disingenuous many libertarians are when they claim that pollution and environmental degradation wouldn't be problems in a "private-property, free-market order". In such a system, property owners would have every right to destroy their property (and every living thing on it) if they wish. If doing so somehow causes harm to you or your property, they say you can sue. I guess it's just too damned bad if the judge or the jury agrees that the oil on your personal bit of coastline is natural, organic, biodegradable, and will eventually go away, so it's just too bad if you don't like it. Or it's just too bad that you can't prove that the toxic chemicals in your lungs came from their smokestack, and not from the smokestack of one of the other thousands of chemical plants that also pollute the air.

I don't think many people would deny that there are problems with the way most of our political and social systems work (or don't work). And I enjoy examining those problems from a number of perspectives (including many of the various libertarian perspectives). But I don't want to just swap one bunch of problems for another, and I don't buy into the promises of Libertopia.