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Timber industry officials, however, said that the scientists' argument was wrongheaded. Not only does cutting timber on national forests provide wood products, they said, it also keeps forests healthy.

I believe this argument has an enormous amount of validity, as this relatively new book I purchased has pointed out. In the book, Natural Process by Mark Edward Vande Pol, the environmentalist argument about doing nothing is questioned. While it is easy to convince urban activists (a technical term I picked up in the book) that logging is wrong--show them torn up ground, broken branches--there could be greater danger in doing nothing. Errors of inaction Mr. Vande Pol calls them.

The philosophy of preservation preserves ignorance of ecological systems by destroying the resources and tools to fund, measure, mitigate, or reverse historic damage. It could make the situation impossible to fix.(Natural Process p 30)

There was one other sobbering idea in the book, though presently I can't find it. Paraphrased: The environmental movement is composed of foundations, environmental groups that are corporations, and business is good for them because they have a supply of resources (other people's property, gov't-owned land) to finance they operations. What happens when they run out of resources?

But if we take this notion of the environmentalist's: That by doing nothing we're protecting something and tag it with the question raised in the book: However, if we adhere to this perspective of doing nothing, what good is preventive intervention? and apply it to the legislation in Congress to take some of the sting out of the ESA--how do the two compare?

On one side we have the argument that to support HR2829/HR3705 is to lend legitimacy to regulatory problems that tryannical, an obstruction to the growth of the Tree of Liberty. Would that be the same as "doing nothing"?

I'd like to continue, but I have to go look at a house.

I take it you are developing an opinion that you might be into something important? From what I can tell it is, but then, I'm rather biased. :-)

I've got nothing against Hayek or Rand, I just don't think they finished the job with their ideas. I differ somewhat with Hayek over monopoly as I don't think that he properly understood irreversability or the proper role sovereignty. Rand had no clue at all about what to do about economic externalities. There was plenty of room to play with ideas and I think I have hit on a few, though they need more development. I do hope you find the book illuminating and that its principles may have some historic and practical significance.