The government must be restrained from taking sides. That means not helping one side or the other with funding or with scientific arguments.
No offense, but as commons are socialized, the government is increasingly taking the "side" of the agencies themselves, reflecting their interests even if they are adverse to the health of endangered species.
What the government does well is to act as repository of information, educational resources, libraries and history.
I shared this view with you about three years ago. What's wrong with private information, particularly intellectual property? That means that there would be advertising and subscription services. Think how many government documents are generated, particularly technical reports. How many of them get to the public? When information is collectivized the condition of that asset deteriorates like any commons. Look at our libraries.
Communities and individuals can work out their differences over their environment while using government resources and expertise, and if necessary as a last resort the judicial process.
This demonstrates a very common misconception: "The environment" is not a community asset, that is, if you are not a socialist. It is a vast web of individual interests that will begin to prosper AND INTEGRATE when private property rights to market habitat management services are respected and that market matures into a web every bit as complex as the ecosystem it manages. The only reason that no one would do that now is that they are competing with an armed monopolist who can use tax money to sell the product at below market. Who would go into the park business when they are competing with the government?
Please, go read the first chapter of Natural Process. I think you'll find it thought-evoking.
Klamath Falls was an example of how government can be manipulated by unsound unbalanced policy.
No, it shows how government was manipulated by economic interests. You just don't know who they were and what were their profit motives. Environmental issues are so complex, that is usually the case. Manipulating resource value is a very profitable business. I like to call it Highly Organized Crime. Sick semper HOC. :-)
One would hope that now there are working groups of farmers, government natural resource specialists and concerned residents that are in the process of educating themselves how best to manage the land for people and wildlife.
I am not hopeful in Klamath. The players are, from what I can tell, a collection of cadres of spoiled children. I have an article on that topic at the website too.
Something must be done all righty, and I do have the beginnings of a plan in the book. The key is to privatize the actual habitat management operations into a market system of checks and balances through the courts. That is what I have desingned. Once we get started, the necessary legislation will become obvious. We are a lot further along politically than Mr. Pombo realizes.
27 posted on 6/25/02 7:11 AM Pacific by Carry_Okie
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