Organized Labor

[Renton]

We can even have fully rational actors. A person can rationally decide that it is preferable to rape their plot of land, leaving it untenable for literal eons. They reap the benefits, live their life like a king, and that's that. This is a perfectly rational way to act. Maybe not ethical, but certainly rational.

A renewable resource like fresh water can only be most profitably exploited through sustainable means. In the case of a river you'd virtually never see such "rape." It would be the rough equivalent of Tyson foods deciding to slaughter every single chicken to get a uptick in productivity for a quarter. Tyson's never gonna run out of chickens, and Acme fish company is never gonna run out of freshwater fish. You tend to only see such resource rape with a publicly owned resource, and this is understood by many as the "tragedy of the commons".

1. The state certainly can be corruptible, and politicians can squander public resources, but in a well functioning democracy they are accountable. Further, the fact that the government doesn't see everything in as dollar signs is a reflection of the fact that people don't see everything as dollar signs. There are draw backs to this, but there's also the fact that Yellowstone isn't a geothermal plant, and Yosemite hasn't been strip mined into 1,200 square mile gravel pit. The individual has the great burden to not squander his resources, but an individual can happily vote for "squandering" the financial resources in the national parks, because the burden is not directly on him. Even great barons of industry, such as the Rockefellers fully understood this. They bought up large swaths of land to set aside as nature reserves. However they knew better than to keep it owned privately, as the temptation of a future Rockefeller could trump their wishes. They donated the land to the federal government.

The problem is that there's never been a democracy so well functioning as to make people accountable for such things with a degree of reliability.


The fact that the government doesn't see everything as dollar signs is one of the main problems of governments. It's not a plus. Its not like "oh thank god there are some things that no one is trying to make a buck off!" All of those things suck, and would be better if monetary value were ascribed to them. The key to making a resource be squandered and treated like shit by the multitude is to take away its monetary value. This is demonstrable. If everything had a dollar sign attached to it, there'd be less species going extinct. If everything had a dollar sign attached to it, there'd be dramatically less pollution of every kind. If everything had a dollar sign attached to it, there would be less waste. If the united states government saw its mammoth land holdings as dollar signs, they could sell some of it off and put a massive dent in the national debt.


Parks like yellowstone could still easily exist privately. If the government sold off yellowstone and yosemite, no doubt billions would flood from the private sector to preserve those parks. And they'd most likely do a better job of it (/speculation boost would never buy).

3. I'd rather not just say, if you don't mind-- and as I pointed out above, rational actors can produce abhorrent conditions. The market, the market, the market. This argument is hollow and tired. Yes, the market responds to input, and exerts its force, and while it may be omnipresent, it's not omniscient, nor is it omnipotent.

I didn't just say, I outlined specific reasons, mr. snarkybreeches. And the market is far more scient and potent than any elected body could ever hope to be. Again (I'm repeating this for like the 40th time) not because it has some mysterious omniscience, but because markets tap the knowledge of millions and millions of people. There's no one person who has to know something. No one committee. People with their financial ass on the line have great incentives not to fuck it up. Governments just have to be loosely accountable to voters.

*Fuckin sweet. Now is the time to snap up cheap shitty homes around airports. You don't even need a perfectly connected loop, but a dense enough "minefield" of property surrounding the airport which can mathematically be shown to be impossible to circumvent given the trajectory of an airplane. Cha-ching!

So you don't think entire neighborhoods or suburbs of cities that have their land values plummet because of a new runway should receive any remuneration? you've got to be trolling with this. As if buying a house near an airport would preclude airplanes from flying there. Of course this is a dispute that would need resolving. Empowering the individual with greater property rights is the way to do this.