Letters to the Editor
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I have heard that argument as well
and I found it maddening to contend with. Apologies if my reaction to you perceiving that I was trying to make that argument was a bit too caustic; I think the both of us think that argument is ridiculous on its face, hence my reaction.
Nevertheless, isn't there a middle ground? Development is not always profitable, and profit is not intrinsically evil.
I would like to offer this: Gaia as a market. Meaning, as the Earth is a system that works best when screwed with the least, so is a market, of any kind. Markets are organic, as part of humans as a herd is to the bison. Without markets, there would be no such thing as human society, and without human society, humans are no longer humans.
Markets naturally sprout as a result of our human-ness, and the less they are messed with the better they work. Essentially, I view markets as a sort of extra-bodily human appendage. Any group of humans will have a market of some kind once the group is of a certain size. In my view, a market should actually not be categorized as a mere "social arrangement" but as a socio-physical appendage as necessary and imminent as one's own limbs. That places a market into a moral category, the ramifications of which are really fun to think about.
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@DCLaw
I am curious how vindication of private property rights will ameliorate or stop these consequences from manifesting.
And I am curious about how movie stars and politicians are going to stop these consequences on their private jets while everyone else is getting felt up by the TSA.
Or how we are going to stop these consequences with over 700 bases in 130 countries burning CO2 everyday while the people at home are "carbon taxed" for taking a shit or eating a cheesburger. Do tanks and jets and missiles run on batteries and ethanol?
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@ Chris Sinnard
I mean, why would AMERICANS do something silly like think that PROPERTY RIGHTS are one of the most important things to be considered during any argument? Maybe because property rights didn't exist until that point? Seems to me that you are advocating doing away with our quaint declaration and its silly insistence on property rights, and going to back to good old fashioned tyranny.
Talk about tunnel vision. The Constitution is not about property rights at all (albeit they sneak in amongst others considered important as well [and you might look at these, Chris] in the BoR).
As far as 'Merkuns inventing "property rights", not to mention their patent on "constitutions" and their trademark on "democracy", that's absolutely ignerrent swill.
"Property is theft." -- The Old Dance, The Oyster Band (also attributed to Jeremy Bentham and others)
Cheers,
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@Etheryin
you sound like you are talking about Moral Capitalism.
I think green is great, it can be both highly marketable and highly profitable. Once people figure out that they can make a boatload of profits cleaning the environment up, more profits then they can make "exploiting it", they will. A lot of people already are.
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@Sinnard
And I am curious about how movie stars and politicians are going to stop these consequences on their private jets while everyone else is getting felt up by the TSA.
Now then, I don't mind getting felt up by the odd attractive female TSA agent. All I ask is that I be allowed to grope back.
Other than that, I have no issue whatsoever with gutting the insane and overboard security apparatus being constructed. I am also unwilling to "redefine privacy" (as some government spook goon put it recently) so that it doesn't mean anonymity, but rather, government and corporations properly caretaking private information. My question: protect my private data from whom? It is the government and corporations that I want to protect my privacy against.
Where we part ways is in worship of private property above all else (except one's gun...which, incidently, I happen to own one such - but I hardly seek to have sex with it unlike certain of the gun crowd).
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Etheryin:
I'm confused. And I'm not William Timberman.
You seem to be advocating a market solution to environmental concerns, on the grounds (you argue) that government regulations necessarily fail but "property rights," properly understood, by which I take you to mean unregulated use and an unregulated market, will save us.
You also claim not to be a libertarian. This confuses me. Do you just mean that you don't vote for the Libertarian party? Because this seems to be a classic libertarian argument.
Note that I am not attacking you on the merits, just trying to understand. Apparently, you're a student of philosophy, so I am interested by your attempt to triangulate your position away from libertarianism. I disagree with you on the merits of the environmental argument, by the way, but I think that it's a bit off topic here and it's not, in any event, a debate that I'm especially interested in engaging you on in this forum. I am interested in your positioning of yourself, though, and the interest is genuine, not snark.
How would you describe yourself?
Note also that I have sympathy for your frustration at people's apparent (to you) unwillingness to engage your argument on the terms that you set, but this may not be a very easy forum for that, not just because of preconceptions that exist here but also because of the sheer number of voices talking past each other.
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@Arne, there is a reason I said maybe
heh
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@ DCLaw1
I am speaking of property rights in the context of a rational, not a religious based morality. Under a rational morality, the value of the lives of the animals and plants on one's property are not such that they can be destroyed without penalty. That puts property rights into a new ethical context. My point is that if morality were rational, property rights would be an effective check against environmental destruction.
I appreciate your indignance at the perception of obnoxiousness, but save it for the courtroom. I recommend you read Hans Jonas' The Phenomenon of Life and The Imperative of Responsibility.
Recent work in ethics has given us great tools to implement as we strive to improve the overall happiness of the world.