Topic: What is environmentalism, really? (Read 7932 times)

Ha ha yes that is an excellent comment. Anyway we cannot win the propaganda war, that much is clear. Whatever happens next is not going to be good..

Arctic sea ice recedes to record low faster than before: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=arctic-sea-ice-likely-to-hit-record

I absolutely love the first comment on the article in the comments section.

The return of the Jaguar to the U.S.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=kitty-corner-jaguars-win-critical-habitat-in-us

Yes, that is quite a lot of manual labor. Hopefully, he has more marketable skills than that, though.


Well, unless you would have us all live in caves... It is, however, perfectly possible to build in such a way as to not negatively impact even the local environment.

I mostly agree with you, but OK let's keep Madoff financially responsible. How is he going to pay back the tens of billions of dollars that he lost? That's a lot of manual labour. Or maybe he can run a new ponzi scheme in order to pay back the losers of the previous one?  


This actually looks very interesting to me at first glance. I will look into it more. However I question the idea of 'improvements'. Rather to me it seems almost any effect we have on nature tends to be a negative impact, or at best neutral. The idea of improvements seems subjective anyway.

Well, you have a point with the water supply, intentionally doing something like that ranks up there with Hitler-level of evil, and all you can really do at that point is erase that shit-stain. Of course, I don't need to own the headwaters of a river to do that, I could simply dump a barrel of poison into a water reservoir.

The second point is holding him financially responsible for repaying his victims, not just tossing him in a cage. Put him to productive work, and let him pay off his debt, not to society, but directly to his victims.

As to the renters, it's a proven fact that people are rougher on things that aren't theirs. I agree that considering the land you own to actually be on loan from your children is a pretty good way to look at it, though, because it drives home the fact that you have to retain the value of the land for your kids. (also, loaned items get treated differently than rented ones, so there's that working in the benefit, as well)

And lastly, due diligence happens before you do something, not after. You get the approval of everyone, but if you missed someone, or your project has greater or wider effects than you anticipated, then you'll end up paying damages. And if you run off to the Bahamas with a suitcase full of cash, there'll be someone behind you looking to bring you back to pay up.


So you would be a proponent of this, then?

Just to clarify by 'renting' I don't mean renting from another private owner, but rather renting from nature. I don't mean this in a legal sense, but rather just to show that land shouldn't be seen as a possession with which one can do whatever they want, IMO.

In fact I consider damage to property or to the environment in general as even worse than having a gun to your head. If I can poison a water supply, I can kill a million people. What legal restitution can there be then?

I don't really understand your second point. They confiscated all the money they could find from Madoff. They even took all the money from his wife. However there were tens of billions of dollars, and most of it will never be found. A lot of it was already paid to early investors, or lost in the market. He is being held responsible, but the money is gone. So again what will a private libertarian court do different to get the money back? Obviously fear of the law did not have much effect.

I would have to disagree about renters as well. For example, the native peoples of Australia see their land as being 'borrowed from our children', as corny as it sounds. Their civilization was sustainable for a long time and they contributed a lot less environmental damage than our private land ownership model.

Finally, all affected people agreeing to a project seems like a good idea; my only difference to you here is that they have to agree before the project is put into action rather than after -- since by that time profits could already be booked and somebody could be on their way to the Bahamas with a suitcase full of cash while we get to deal with the consequences. This has happened so many times that it's not even worth giving examples.

You don't seriously equate detriment to your property to holding a gun to your head? Violent situations are different. The problem with the Ponzi scheme operators is that they're anonymous. Give your money to someone you don't know, whose fault is it when they run off with it? With Madoff (and other Ponzi schemes), people don't get their money back because it's already gone. But holding the perpetrator responsible for paying them back will eventually result in them getting their money back - if he's held to it. Simply finding him "guilty" and tossing him in a cage doesn't help anything, especially if you then force his victims to pay for the cage. You need to make him pay restitution, and that's how a private decentralized court would get a different result.

As for the property, renters have historically been much worse on their property than have owners. And I propose that projects that would impact more than just the owner of the land require not just a democratic approval (simple majority, usually), but approval of all affected people. Due diligence, remember? If you don't get approval of someone who is affected, you have to pay damages.

So if I hold a gun to your head, you have the power because you can sue me? Are all of the ponzi scheme operators at a disadvantage because they face legal repercussions if they lose their clients' money? They have the money now, and it's a whole struggle to get justice after the fact. Just look at all the recent cases of fraud and negligence. With Madoff, the court found him guilty but still the clients didn't get their money back. How would a private decentralised court get a different result?

My proposition is simply that not everything should be for sale. Land ownership should be thought of more like long-term renting, and projects that can affect the community at large should go through a democratic approval process.

Then what do you propose instead?

I would argue that if there is any unequal power relationship, it's the neighbors who have power over the landowner, not the other way around. He is very narrowly confined in what he can do without negatively affecting his neighbors, and as soon as he does, he'd be in deep trouble, to pay all those damages to his neighbors. As for the concentration of power, I would say you'd be hard pressed to say that a single arbitrator has any concentration of power.

Well I suppose this makes sense. But you have to trust the courts and the individuals that work there. You have to trust the land owner to abide by his contract. What if he can make a lot of money by breaking the contract? For eg. how many of the ponzi scheme operators on these forums are going to abide by all of their contracts? Will the bitcoinica customers get any restitution?

Probably a decentralised court system is better than the traditional one, but it not true decentralisation. In this model, the land-owner has an unequal power relationship with all his neighbours (unless you count that they can fight him by destroying their environment as well -- something that happens a lot in neighbourly disputes). The court has a concentration of power. I guarantee you that in practice this will never work and the environment will just continue to degrade, while we squabble about money.

For the simple reason that if he did not, he would not be protected by that court system. Along the same lines, he might have difficulty entering into any private contract, since he's already violated one, or at the very least, demonstrated his willingness to refuse arbitration in the face of having caused damages.

Right so basically like bitcoin court. So since we have entities like bitcoin court, why do we need strong ownership in bitcoin? Why not just use the courts?

From wikipedia's article on decentralisation:

"A central theme in decentralization is the difference between:

    a hierarchy, based on authority: two players in an unequal-power relationship; and
    an interface: a lateral relationship between two players of roughly equal power.

The more decentralized a system is, the more it relies on lateral relationships, and the less it can rely on command or force."

But in the case of libertarian private land ownership, you have the land-owner party that has power to physically affect the lives of many others, and then you have private courts that you hope to use to control this. Doesn't seem like decentralisation to me. Why would the land owner agree to be arbitrated by some private court?

Free market arbitration firms offer dispute resolution to people. These decisions are binding because the parties involved have agreed ahead of time (sometimes long before even the dispute) to be bound by the decision.

Basically, anyone can set up a court. Whether others support the court depends on its PR, strategy, and previous decisions. If the court wishes to employ direct democracy, it can.

I thought this is what you meant. So how does a decentralised court system work? Is it going to be akin to direct democracy by any chance?

Ah. I think I see your problem. You're assuming I am referring to a centralized court system. I am not.

One other point is that most of the time people are interested in short term profit and are not going to care about their property value 150 years from now. If I can build a chemical weapons factory and make a large profit today, someone else is going to inherit the hole in the ground in a few decades. Yet a lot of environmental damage is lasting and it is easy to externalise the economics of it. Financial incentives to protect the environment are complete bunk.

That's a good point as well. Owning a piece of the environment seems like just too much power to not be decentralised, for me. Should a private individual be able to run his own nuclear power station station on his parcel of land? Then his neighbours can sue him if he has a meltdown? Then I guess they will be compensated financially and all will be well...