TT`s Lost in Tokyo : commons

Third-World land theft and the tragedy of the commons: Mother Jones ponders, "Conservation: Indigenous people's enemy No. 1?"

TokyoTom — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:50:00 GMT

The Mother Jones magazine has been running a series of on-line articles which exemplify how progressives are exploring the ways in which various parts of the environmental/conservation agenda in developing countries have been counterproductive, adversely affected indigenous peoples, favored Western companies and played into the hands of local elites.

The articles are worth reviewing, as they reveal that enviros are starting to realize that protecting nature in the developing world requires protecting the property rights of indigenous communities.

One such article, by Mark Dowie, appeared in Mother Jones` on-line edition on November 2. The headline reads, "Conservation: Indigenous people's enemy No. 1?", the sub-header states, "For centuries we've displaced people to save nature. A huge project in Africa offers a chance to turn that around." Dowie, an award-winning investigative journalist, is an author of several books published by the MIT Press, including his most recent, Conservation Refugees - The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples.

Dowie`s thesis is that, until recently, conservationists have typically taken the approach that the best way to preserve tropical forests and other wild ecosystems, the right approach was to establish pristine reserves from which people were excluded, and describes the change in strategy in the context of a new series of parks that the government in Gabon, central Africa. Dowie notes that the traditional approach - of establishing government-owned and -administered parks - has a long, and long-forgotten history in the US (emphasis added):

But there was another, more historically significant opportunity facing Gabon that day, one that Fay merely hinted at in his presentation and Sanderson didn't mention at all. It was the opportunity their own industry, transnational conservation, had in Gabon: to do right by the thousands of tribal people living inside those emerald patches, by allowing them to remain in their homelands and participate directly in the stewardship and management of the new parks. They would then not be passive "stakeholders" relocated to the margins of the park, the typical fate of indigenous peoples who find themselves in conservation "hot spots," but equal players in the complex and challenging process of defending biological diversity. The goal of such a policy would be the concurrent preservation of nature and culture; Gabon just might come to signify a happy ending of a tense, century-long conflict between global environmentalism and native people, millions of whom have been displaced from traditional homelands in the interest of conservation.

It's a century-long story of violence and abuse that began in Yosemite Valley in the mid 19th century, when the Ahwahneechee band of Miwoks were chased about, caught on, then forcefully expelled from a landscape they had cultivated for about 200 generations. Militias like the vicious Mariposa Battalion were sent into Yosemite to burn acorn caches and rout native people from remote reaches of the Valley. After the militias came the nature romantics who mythologized the vacated valley as the wilderness it never was, then lobbied state and federal governments to create a national park. They got their wish in 1890, and the remaining Indians were removed from the area, with a few allowed to remain temporarily, as menial laborers in a segregated village of 20-by-20-foot shacks.

Yosemite's Indian policy spread to Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Mount Ranier, Zion, Glacier, Everglades, and Olympic National Parks, all of which expelled thousands of tribal people from their homes and hunting grounds so the new parks could remain in an undisturbed "state of nature." Three hundred Shoshone Indians were killed in a single day during the expulsion from Yellowstone. This was the birth of what would come to be known, worldwide, as the Yosemite model of wildlife conservation. In Africa it would be renamed "fortress conservation," and like so many other products from the North, the model would be exported with vigor to all other continents. ...

Teddy Roosevelt also proclaimed that "the rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him… It is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners and become the heritage of the dominant world races."

What indigenous peoples in their right minds would not be opposed to the complicity of conservationists in continuing the process of the older colonial theft of their lands, even if the purpose was to "save" the land? I won`t explore this now, but the record of "development" is replete with many examples - old and new - of such kinds of theft, with local ownership replaced by government ownership and a resulting "tragedy of the commons"-type of race to plunder "government" lands for valuable resources - oil and gas, minerals and timber.

Dowie notes the natural rise of indigenous opposition to "conservation" projects:

One consequence of creating a few million conservation refugees around the world has been the emergence of a vast and surprisingly powerful movement of communities that have proven themselves stewards of nature (otherwise conservationists would have no interest in their land), but were turned by circumstance into self-described "enemies of conservation."

In early 2004, a United Nations meeting was convened for the ninth year in a row to push for passage of a resolution protecting the territorial and human rights of indigenous peoples. During the meeting, one indigenous delegate rose to state that extractive industries, while still a serious threat to their welfare and cultural integrity, were no longer the main antagonist of native cultures. Their new and biggest enemy, she said, was "conservation." Later that spring, at a meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, of the International Forum on Indigenous Mapping, all 200 delegates signed a declaration stating that "conservation has become the number one threat to indigenous territories."

Then in February 2008, representatives of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB) walked out of a Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) annual meeting, condemning the convention for ignoring their interests. "We found ourselves marginalized and without opportunity to take the floor and express our views," read their statement. "None of our recommendations were included in [the meeting's report]. So we have decided to leave this process…"

These are all rhetorical jabs, of course, and perhaps not entirely accurate or fair. But they are based on fact and driven by experience, and have shaken the international conservation community. So have a spate of critical studies and articles calling international conservationists to task for their historical mistreatment of indigenous peoples.

The Mother Jones article looks like an excerpt from Dowie`s new book, which MIT describes as follows:

Since 1900, more than 108,000 officially protected conservation areas have been established worldwide, largely at the urging of five international conservation organizations. About half of these areas were occupied or regularly used by indigenous peoples. Millions who had been living sustainably on their land for generations were displaced in the interests of conservation. In Conservation Refugees, Mark Dowie tells this story.

This is a "good guy vs. good guy" story, Dowie writes; the indigenous peoples’ movement and conservation organizations have a vital common goal—to protect biological diversity—and could work effectively and powerfully together to protect the planet and preserve species and ecosystem diversity. Yet for more than a hundred years, these two forces have been at odds. The result: thousands of unmanageable protected areas and native peoples reduced to poaching and trespassing on their ancestral lands or "assimilated" but permanently indentured on the lowest rungs of the economy.

The punch line of the book summary?

When conservationists and native peoples acknowledge the interdependence of biodiversity conservation and cultural survival, Dowie writes, they can together create a new and much more effective paradigm for conservation.

I am quite sympathetic with Dowie`s thinking, but it seems to me that he could make us of a little more intellectual framework, such as the Austrian awareness of the frequently negative role played by the state and the usefulness of property rights (such as noted in this earlier post about the destruction of the Amazon, and Elinor Ostrom`s research into successful management of open-access, common-pool resources by communities, including natives.

I left the following comments for Dowie at Mother Jones:

Mark, great article. It`s good to hear that the broader conservation community is waking up, but groups like Survival International have always tried to protect indigenous peoples`s rights.

I`m afraid the headline is a bit of a distraction, because of course the broader development effort as a whole has been much more destructive, by even more widely putting power into the hands on central elites, who often behaved kleptocratically.

Regardless of the broader background, it`s surprising that you didn`t see fit to link your topic to the whole problem of the "tragedy of the commons", which is often tied to the nationalization of resources, which deprives users of any control over the resources they depend on. Elinor Ostrom has extensively studied this problem in developing countries and elsewhere, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics precisely for pointing out how "government" is often the problem and not the solution:

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=ostrom

I commend this effort by Dowie, and note some other interesting articles at Mother Jones:

GM's Rainforest Racket: People with some of the world's smallest carbon footprints are being displaced—so their forests can become offsets.

Better REDD Than Dead: The byzantine politics of paying countries to save trees.cial-reports/2009/11/climate-countdown">Our best chance to fix global warming begins on December 7. Tick. Tick. Tick.

A few more comments to John Quiggin on climate, libertarian principles and the enclosure of the commons

TokyoTom — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:41:00 GMT

I note first that I am reminded by a pithy comment from someone else that, despite the length of my previous post addressing John Quiggin`s post on libertarian delusion, sometimes less is more.

Writes commenter "ABOM", in a comment made elsewhere and linked back in to Quiggin`s thread (done for the purported reason that Quiggin was deleting some of ABOM`s comments) (emphasis added):

I found it ironic that JQ (an economist) was using a scientific hypothesis (climate change) as a litmus test to determine whether Austrians were “serious” economists. JQ (1) assumes he knows about climate science (he doesn’t) (2) assumes anyone who questions climate science is mad (they may not be) (3) thinks anyone who questions the govt’s solutions to the “problem” is also mad (even if you accept the science, govt may not be the answer – raising interest rates to their ‘natural’ level and a simple “depression” in consumption may be a simpler solution) (4) isn’t allowing an open debate (he keeps censoring me for some bizarre reason) and (5) to top it off accuses Austrians of being part time scientists – when he is the King of Part Time Amateur Science ...

Being verbose, this and a review of Quiggin`s post prompts me to write more.

I`m not sure I agree with ABOM`s initial comment; while Quiggin might be implicitly using Austrian`s behavior regarding climate change to question whether they are "serious" economists, more straightforwardly he`s questioning why on climate they seem not to care to show it.

I failed to address the following points from John:

1. " it seems clear that, if mainstream climate science is correct, neither anarcho-capitalism nor paleolibertarianism can be sustained. The problem with anarcho-capitalism and other views where property rights are supposed to emerge, and be defended, spontaneously, and without a state is obvious. If states do not create systems of rights to carbon emissions, the only alternatives are to do nothing, and let global ecosystems collapse, or to posit that every person on the planet has right to coerce any other person not to emit CO2 into the atmosphere."

First, the alternatives to states creating systems of rights to carbon emissions (or imposing carbon taxes, funding energy alternatives etc.) are NOT simply to do nothing, or to assume that all individuals will be left to try to coerce everyone else. While I agree that an-caps typically do not stress the desirability of undoing statist actions that feed into the climate problem, of course this is something which can and should be done, as I have tried to point out. And there are many voluntary and organized responses now underway that address climate change: organizations that cater to people (and firms) who want to track and lower their carbon footprint or buy offsets, firms that are competing to monitor and control their carbon footprint, both to lower costs and to stay ahead of competitors in the marketplace for consumer favor, voluntary corporate-oriented carbon trading/offset programs underway, insurance companies and others projecting and publicizing risks, etc.

Ancaps and other libertarians may be wrong, but they essentially conclude that the large information and transaction costs that society faces in dealing with climate change cannot be overcome by fiat, which clearly is not simple. Using government typically brings a whole host of problems. Viz., the knowledge problem, rent-seeking and -farming, bureaucratic mal-incentives, & enforcement.

2. "For paleolibertarians, the fact that property rights must be produced by a new global agreement, rather than being the inherited ‘peculiar institutions’ of particular societies seems equally problematic."

Yes. But there`s also the problem of justice in the original allocation. Why should the new property rights in the atmosphere be allocated to corporations, as opposed to citizens?

3. "For more moderate libertarians, who accept in principle that property rights are derived from the state, I think the problem is more that the creation of a large new class of property rights brings them face to face with features of their model that are generally buried in a near-mythical past.

"To start with, there’s the problem of justice in the original allocation. Until now, people [in] developed countries have been appropriating the assimilative capacity of the atmosphere as if there was always “enough and as good” left over. Now that it’s obvious this isn’t true, we need to go back and start from scratch, and this process may involve offsetting compensation which effectively reassigns some existing property rights."

I don`t think moderate libertarians so much "accept in principle that property rights are derived from the state," as they recognize that the state has codified, circumscribed and enforces such rights. Right now, there are simply NO "existing property rights" regarding climate, other than the shared right to exhaust CO2 (and other GHGs) into the atmosphere, and to engage in other activities that alter albedo. Starting from scratch in the sense you use it, especially the "compensation" aspect, means governments taking property from some and giving it to others

4. "Then there is the problem that the emissions rights we are talking about are, typically time-limited and conditional. But if rights created now by modern states have this property, it seems reasonable to suppose that this has always been true, and therefore that existing property rights may also be subject to state claims of eminent domain."

"Property rights" are essentially a portfolio of formal and informal institutions that communities have devised, over long periods of trial and error. Most such "rights" - whether informal or state-recognized - are time-limited and conditional. That states have always and continue to alter, and take, property rights tells us nothing about the justice or efficacy of such actions - and you might have noticed that Elinor Ostrom and the progressives (some of whom I quoted in my prior post) who want to "take back the commons" argue very strongly about both.

Where our fisheries are collapsing, they are doing so chiefly because our governments have trampled native rights or community-developed practices in favor of bureaucratic management and the resulting tragedy of the commons. While the solution in such cases appears to be the re-creation of property rights that give fishermen a stake in preserving the resource they rely upon, such situations are hardly akin to the worldwide creation of CO2 emission rights, which present much more severe difficulties in allocating and enforcing.

John Quiggin plays Pin-the-tail-on-the-Donkey with "Libertarians and delusionism"

TokyoTom — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:59:00 GMT

John Quiggin, a left-leaning Australian economist and professor at the University of Queensland, has noted my recent post on the penchant for bloggers and readers at the Mises Blog to attack climate science - are "almost universally committed to delusional views on climate science", as he puts it - though these are not words fairly put into my mouth. Like me, though, Quiggin wonders why wonders why libertarians focus on climate science at the near-exclusion of policy discussions, since (1) he sees "plenty of political opportunities to use climate change to attack subsidies and other existing interventions" and (2) he supposes that the environmental movement`s widespread shift "from profound suspicion of markets to enthusiastic support for market-based policies such as carbon taxes and cap and trade" seems like a big win for libertarians.

Quiggin previously commented on "Libertarians and global warming" last June; this seems to be a follow up.

Quiggins posits that Austrians/libertarians exhibit a "near-universal rejection of mainstream climate science," and asserts that:

we can draw one of only three conclusions
(a) Austrians/libertarians are characterized by delusional belief in their own intellectual superiority, to the point where they think they can produce an analysis of complex scientific problems superior to that of actual scientists, in their spare time and with limited or no scientific training in the relevant disciplines, reaching a startling degree of unanimity for self-described “sceptics”
(b) Austrians/libertarians don’t understand their own theory and falsely believe that, if mainstream climate science is right, their own views must be wrong
(c) Austrians/libertarians do understand their own theory and correctly believe that, if mainstream climate science is right, their own views must be wrong

John concludes:

"Overall, though I, think that acceptance of the reality of climate change would be good for libertarianism as a political movement. It would kill off the most extreme and unappealing kinds of a priori logic-chopping, while promoting an appreciation of Hayekian arguments about the power of market mechanisms. And the very fact of uncertainty about climate change is a reminder of the fatality of conceits of perfect knowledge."

While John asks a good question and reveals some appreciation of markets, it`s clear that he is still pretty much groping in the dark when it comes to understanding libertarians` concerns about climate policy, indeed, even as to libertarian aims and concerns generally. He also overlooks various cognitive/psychological factors that appear to be at play. Naturally, I appreciate the opportunity for discussion.

1. Before addressing his three possible conclusions, let me note that while "market-based policies such as carbon taxes and cap and trade" may seem to John "like a big win for libertarians", this is most definitely NOT the case for most libertarians in the context of climate change, as these "market-based policies" represent an enormous expansion of government that libertarians feel very strongly, based on past experience, will be profoundly porky, counterproductive and costly. In the face of the fight for favor in Washington and the choice of opaque cap-and-trade over a more open rebated carbon tax and other deregulatory options, there is good reason to believe that libertarians are right.

2. Regarding conclusion (a), let me first note that John reveals the self-same "conceit of perfect knowledge" that he accuses Austrians/libertarians of having: the "acceptance of reality of climate change" would undoubtedly be good for everyone, but just what is that reality, and how can a layman of any stripe confirm himself that climate is changing and that man is responsible? The very fact that this "reality" is nearly impossible to confirm personally (even over the course of a lifetime) means that even those whom John considers as having "accepted reality" have basically just adopted a frame of reference, on the basis of the consistency of the AGW frame with other previously established mental frames, a reliance on authority, peer-group acceptance, etc.

"Reality" in this case inevitably, for most people, has very large personal and social components; accordingly, both "acceptance" and "skepticism" of it may look like a group belief, which may help to explain why it is possible to perceive "a startling degree of unanimity" of views on climate science, the contents of such views varying by group.

As for Austrians/libertarians, while I don`t think it is fair to conclude they (we) are characterized by delusional belief in their own intellectual superiority, but that many do have a belief, not so much in the superiority of their intellect, but in the correctness of their views on political science and economics (this is common in other groups, of course). This may affect their views on climate science, for several reasons that I have noted to John previously, and may be related for some of them to his conclusions (b) and (c).

3. Concerning conclusions (b) and (c), these are both over-generalizations; libertarians are a heterogenous bunch. But if I may generalize myself, to me there appears no conflict whatsoever between Austrian views, which are primarily about interpersonal relations and the role of government, and climate science. "Mainstream science" has nothing to do with these views, so if Austrians are wrong about "mainstream climate science", this does not imply that any Austrian views must be wrong. So Quiggins` (c) is wrong.

Quiggins`(b) - that Austrians may not understand their own theory and may falsely believe that, if mainstream climate science is right, their own views must be wrong - may be right for some Austrians, but certainly not generally. Rather, what I suspect is going on is much more ordinary, as I previously noted to Quiggin as a comment on his related June post; that I need to repeat myself indicates that maybe John is having cognitive difficulties of his own (emphasis added):

John, thanks for this piece. As a libertarian who believes that climate change IS a problem, I share some of your puzzlement and have done considerable commenting on this issue [see this long list]. Allow me to offer a few thoughts on various factors at work in the general libertarian resistance to taking government action on climate change:

– As Chris Horner noted in your linked piece, many libertarians see “global warming [as] the bottomless well of excuses for the relentless growth of Big Government.” Even those who agree that is AGW is a serious problem are worried, for good reason, that government approaches to climate change will be a train wreck – in other words, that the government “cure” will be worse than the problem.

– Libertarians have in general drifted quite far from environmentalists. Even though they still share a mistrust of big government, environmentalists generally believe that MORE government is the answer, while ignoring all of the problems associated with inefficient bureaucratic management (witness the crashing of many managed fisheries in the US), the manipulation of such managment to benefit bureaucratic interests, special interests and insiders (wildfire fighting budgets, fossil fuel and hard rock mining, etc.) and the resultant and inescapable politicization of all disputes due to the absence of private markets. Libertarians see that socialized property rights regimes can be just as “tragedy of the commons” ruinous as cases where community or private solutions have not yet developed, and have concluded that, without privatization, government involvement inevitably expands. Thus, libertarians often see environmentalists as simply another group fighting to expand government, and are hostile as a result.

– Libertarians are as subject to reflexive, partisan position-taking as any one else. Because they are reflexively opposed to government action, they find it easier to operate from a position of skepticism in trying to bat down AGW scientific and economic arguments (and to slam the motives of those arguing that AGW must be addressed by government) than to open-mindedly review the evidence. This is a shame( but human), because it blunts the libertarian message in explaining what libertarians understand very well – that environmental problems arise when property rights over resources are not clearly defined or enforceable, and also when governments (mis)manage resources.

I`ve discussed a number of times how we all easily fall into partisan cognitive traps, as summarized here.

A related piece of the dynamic is that some libertarians may feel that if they agree that AGW may be a problem, that this will be taken - wrongly - by others in the political arena as a conclusion that the libertarian message is no longer relevant.

4. Some support for these points can be seen in Edwin Dolan`s 2006 paper, "Science, Public Policy and Global Warming: Rethinking the Market Liberal Position" (Cato), in which Dolan suggests that many libertarian climate skeptics are acting quite as if they are "conservatives" of the type condemned by Friedrich Hayek. Dolan cites Hayek’s 1960 essay, “Why I am Not a Conservative” (1960), in which Hayek identified the following traits that distinguish conservatism from market liberalism:

• Habitual resistance to change, hence the term “conservative.”
• Lack of understanding of spontaneous order as a guiding principle of economic life.
• Use of state authority to protect established privileges against the forces of economic change.
• Claim to superior wisdom based on self-arrogated superior quality in place of rational argument.
• A propensity to reject scientific knowledge because of dislike of the consequences that seem to follow from it.

Further support is provided by Jonathan Adler, a libertarian law professor at Case Western who focusses on resource issues, and who has concluded that climate change is a serious concern, and that man is contributing to it. His February 2008 post, "Climate Change, Cumulative Evidence, and Ideology" (and the comment thread) is instructive:

"Almost every time I post something on climate change policy, the comment thread quickly devolves into a debate over the existence of antrhopogenic global warming at all. (See, for instance, this post on "conservative" approaches to climate change policy.) I have largely refused to engage in these discussions because I find them quite unproductive. The same arguments are repeated ad nauseum, and no one is convinced (if anyone even listens to what the other side is saying). ...

"Given my strong libertarian leanings, it would certainly be ideologically convenient if the evidence for a human contribution to climate change were less strong. Alas, I believe the preponderance of evidence strongly supports the claim that anthropogenic emissions are having an effect on the global climate, and that effect will increase as greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere. While I reject most apocalyptic scenarios as unfounded or unduly speculative, I am convinced that the human contribution to climate change will cause or exacerbate significant problems in at least some parts of the world. For instance, even a relatively modest warming over the coming decades is very likely to have a meaningful effect on the timing and distribution of precipitation and evaporation rates, which will, in turn, have a substantial impact on freshwater supplies. That we do not know with any precision the when, where, and how much does not change the fact that we are quite certain that such changes will occur.

"So-called climate "skeptics" make many valid points about the weakness or unreliability of many individual arguments and studies on climate. They also point out how policy advocates routinely exaggerate the implications of various studies or the likely consequences of even the most robust climate predictions. Economists and others have also done important work questioning whether climate risks justify extreme mitigation measures. But none of this changes the fact that the cumulative evidence for a human contribution to present and future climate changes, when taken as a whole, is quite strong. In this regard, I think it is worth quoting something Ilya wrote below about the nature of evidence in his post about 12 Angry Men":

People often dismiss individual arguments and evidence against their preferred position without considering the cumulative weight of the other side's points. It's a very easy fallacy to fall into. But the beginning of wisdom is to at least be aware of the problem.

"The "divide and conquer" strategy of dissecting each piece of evidence independently can make for effective advocacy, but it is not a good way to find the truth"

I noted the following in response to Adler:

I think that there are many Austrians who understand WHY there might be a climate change problem to which man contributes, as the atmosphere is an open-access resource, in which there are no clear or enforceable property rights that rein in externalities or that give parties with differing preferences an ability to engage in meaingful transactions that reflect those preferences.

But, flawed human beings that we are, we have difficulty truly keeping our minds open (subconscious dismissal of inconsistent data is a cognitive rule) and we easily fall into tribal modes of conflict that provide us with great satisfaction in disagreeing with those evil "others" while circling the wagons (and counting coup) with our brothers in arms.

Sadly, this is very much in evidence in the thread to your own post.

5. I have pulled together a post that indicates that a number of libertarians are trying to engage in good faith on climate change, and which may also serve as a good introduction for interested readers to libertarian thinking on environmental issues.

6. Finally, let me note that many of the problems that concern libertarians also concern progressives, chief of these being the negative effects of state actions on communities, development and on open-access (and hitherto local, indigenous-managed) commons. This is the same concern that the Nobel Prize committee expressed when extending the prize in Economics to Elinor Ostrom, signalling their desire for a change in international aid policy.

You might find these remarks by Nicholas Hildyard, Larry Lohmann, Sarah Sexton and Simon Fairlie in "Reclaiming the Commons" (1995) to be pertinent; domestic cap-and-trade is an enclosure of the atmospheric commons, for the benefit of firms receiving grants of permits and costs flowing regressively to energy consumers, and internationally represents a vast expansion of state authority and bureaucracies, with attendant enclosure of local resources:

The creation of empires and states, business conglomerates and civic dictatorships -- whether in pre-colonial times or in the modern era -- has only been possible through dismantling the commons and harnessing the fragments, deprived of their old significance, to build up new economic and social patterns that are responsive to the interests of a dominant minority. The modern nation state has been built only by stripping power and control from commons regimes and creating structures of governance from which the great mass of humanity (particularly women) are excluded. Likewise, the market economy has expanded primarily by enabling state and commercial interests to gain control of territory that has traditionally been used and cherished by others, and by transforming that territory - together with the people themselves - into expendable "resources" for exploitation. By enclosing forests, the state and private enterprise have torn them out of fabrics of peasant subsistence; by providing local leaders with an outside power base, unaccountable to local people, they have undermined village checks and balances; by stimulating demand for cash goods, they have impelled villagers to seek an ever wider range of things to sell. Such a policy was as determinedly pursued by the courts of Aztec Mexico, the feudal lords of West Africa, and the factory owners of Lancashire and the British Rail as it is today by the International Monetary Fund or Coca-Cola Inc.

Only in this way has it been possible to convert peasants into labour for a global economy, replace traditional with modern agriculture, and free up the commons for the industrial economy. Similarly, only by atomizing tasks and separating workers from the moral authority, crafts and natural surroundings created by their communities has it been possible to transform them into modern, universal individuals susceptible to "management". In short, only by deliberately taking apart local cultures and reassembling them in new forms has it been possible to open them up to global trade.[FN L. Lohmann, 'Resisting Green Globalism' in W. Sachs (ed), Global Ecology: Conflicts and Contradictions, Zed Books, London and New Jersey, 1993.]

To achieve that "condition of economic progress", millions have been marginalized as a calculated act of policy, their commons dismantled and degraded, their cultures denigrated and devalued and their own worth reduced to their value as labour. Seen from this perspective, many of the processes that now go under the rubric of "nation-building", "economic growth", and "progress" are first ad foremost processes of expropriation, exclusion, denial and dispossession. In a word, of "enclosure".

Because history's best-known examples of enclosure involved the fencing in of common pasture, enclosure is often reduced to a synonym for "expropriation". But enclosure involves more than land and fences, and implies more than simply privatization or takeover by the state. It is a compound process which affects nature and culture, home and market, production and consumption, germination and harvest, birth, sickness and death. It is a process to which no aspect of life or culture is immune. ..,

Enclosure tears people and their lands, forests, crafts, technologies and cosmologies out of the cultural framework in which they are embedded and tries to force them into a new framework which reflects and reinforces the values and interests of newly-dominant groups. Any pieces which will not fit into the new framework are devalued and discarded. In the modern age, the architecture of this new framework is determined by market forces, science, state and corporate bureaucracies, patriarchal forms of social organization, and ideologies of environmental and social management.

Land, for example, once it is integrated into a framework of fences, roads and property laws, is "disembedded" from local fabrics of self-reliance and redefined as "property" or "real estate". Forests are divided into rigidly defined precincts - mining concessions, logging concessions, wildlife corridors and national parks - and transformed from providers of water, game, wood and vegetables into scarce exploitable economic resources. Today they are on the point of being enclosed still further as the dominant industrial culture seeks to convert them into yet another set of components of the industrial system, redefining them as "sinks" to absorb industrial carbon dioxide and as pools of "biodiversity". Air is being enclosed as economists seek to transform it into a marketable "waste sink"; and genetic material by subjecting it to laws which convert it into the "intellectual property" of private interests.

People too are enclosed as they are fitted into a new society where they must sell their labour, learn clock-time and accustom themselves to a life of production and consumption; groups of people are redefined as "populations', quantifiable entities whose size must be adjusted to take pressure off resources required for the global economy. ...

enclosure transforms the environment into a "resource" for national or global production - into so many chips that can be cashed in as commodities, handed out as political favours and otherwise used to accrue power. ...

Enclosure thus cordons off those aspects of the environment that are deemed "useful" to the encloser -- whether grass for sheep in 16th century England or stands of timber for logging in modern-say Sarawak -- and defines them, and them alone, as valuable. A street becomes a conduit for vehicles; a wetland, a field to be drained; flowing water, a wasted asset to be harnessed for energy or agriculture. Instead of being a source of multiple benefits, the environment becomes a one-dimensional asset to be exploited for a single purpose - that purpose reflecting the interests of the encloser, and the priorities of the wider political economy in which the encloser operates....

Enclosure opens the way for the bureaucratization and enclosure of knowledge itself. It accords power to those who master the language of the new professionals and who are versed in its etiquette and its social nuances, which are inaccessible to those who have not been to school or to university, who do not have professional qualifications, who cannot operate computers, who cannot fathom the apparent mysteries of a cost-benefit analysis, or who refuse to adopt the forceful tones of an increasingly "masculine" world.

In that respect, as Illich notes, "enclosure is as much in the interest of professionals and of state bureaucrats as it is in the interests of capitalists." For as local ways of knowing and doing are devalued or appropriated, and as vernacular forms of governance are eroded, so state and professional bodies are able to insert themselves within the commons, taking over areas of life that were previously under the control of individuals, households and the community. Enclosure "allows the bureaucrat to define the local community as impotent to provide for its own survival."[FN I Illich, 'Silence is a Commons', The Coevolution Quarterly, Winter 1983.] It invites the professional to come to the "rescue" of those whose own knowledge is deemed inferior to that of the encloser.

Enclosure is thus a change in the networks of power which enmesh the environment, production, distribution, the political process, knowledge, research and the law. It reduces the control of local people over community affairs. Whether female or male, a person's influence and ability to make a living depends increasingly on becoming absorbed into the new policy created by enclosure, on accepting -- willingly or unwillingly -- a new role as a consumer, a worker, a client or an administrator, on playing the game according to new rules. The way is thus cleared for cajoling people into the mainstream, be it through programmes to bring women "into development", to entice smallholders "into the market" or to foster paid employment.[FN P. Simmons, 'Women in Development', The Ecologist, Vol. 22, No.1, 1992, pp.16-21.]

Those who remain on the margins of the new mainstream, either by choice or because that is where society has pushed them, are not only deemed to have little value: they are perceived as a threat. Thus it is the landless, the poor, the dispossessed who are blamed for forest destruction; their poverty which is held responsible for "overpopulation"; their protests which are classed as subversive and a threat to political stability. And because they are perceived as a threat, they become objects to be controlled, the legitimate subjects of yet further enclosure. ...

People who would oppose dams, logging, the redevelopment of their neighbourhoods or the pollution of their rivers are often left few means of expressing or arguing their case unless they are prepared to engage in a debate framed by the languages of cost-benefit analysis, reductionist science, utilitarianism, male domination -- and, increasingly, English. Not only are these languages in which many local objection -- such as that which holds ancestral community rights to a particular place to have precedence over the imperatives of "national development" -- appear disreputable. They are also languages whose use allows enclosers to eavesdrop on, "correct" and dominate the conversations of the enclosed. ...

Because they hold themselves to be speaking a universal language, the modern enclosers who work for development agencies and governments feel no qualms in presuming to speak for the enclosed. They assume reflexively that they understand their predicament as well as or better than the enclosed do themselves. It is this tacit assumption that legitimizes enclosure in the encloser's mind - and it is an assumption that cannot be countered simply by transferring what are conventionbally assumed to be the trappings of power from one group to another....

A space for the commons cannot be created by economists, development planners, legislators, "empowerment" specialists or other paternalistic outsiders. To place the future in the hands of such individuals would be to maintain the webs of power that are currently stifling commons regimes. One cannot legislate the commons into existence; nor can the commons be reclaimed simply by adopting "green techniques" such as organic agriculture, alternative energy strategies or better public transport -- necessary and desirable though such techniques often are. Rather, commons regimes emerge through ordinary people's day-to-day resistance to enclosure, and through their efforts to regain livelihoods and the mutual support, responsibility and trust that sustain the commons.

That is not to say that one can ignore policy-makers or policy-making. The depredations of transnational corporations, international bureaucracies and national governments cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. But movements for social change have a responsibility to ensure that in seeking solutions, they do not remove the initiative from those who are defending their commons or attempting to regenerate common regimes -- a responsibility they should take seriously.

Might there be good reason NOT to rush into a vast expansion of government world-wide?

A libertarian immodestly summarizes a few modest climate policy proposals

TokyoTom — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:52:00 GMT

[Folks, I hope you do a better job than I do at saving draft posts before they`re finalized; I just lost alot of work. This will necessarily be shorter.]

Rather than simply pointing out how unproductive the approach of Mises Blog posters has been on climate issues, I want to get started with a list of policy changes that I think libertarians can and should be championing in response to the climate policy proposals of others.

Comments, suggestions and criticisms are welcome. I will return and work on this later.

From my earlier comment to Stephan Kinsella:

As Rob Bradley once reluctantly acknowledged to me (in the halcyon days before he banned me from the "free-market" Master Resource blog), "a free-market approach is not about “do nothing” but implementing a whole new energy approach to remove myriad regulation and subsidies that have built up over a century or more." But unfortunately the wheels of this principled concern have never hit the ground at MR [persistently pointing this out it, and questioning whether his blog was a front for fossil fuel interests, apparently earned me the boot].

As I have noted in a litany of posts at my blog, pro-freedom regulatory changes might include:

accelerating cleaner power investments by eliminating corporate income taxes or allowing immediate depreciation of capital investment (which would make new investments more attractive),
eliminating antitrust immunity for public utility monopolies (to increase competition, allow consumer choice, peak pricing and "smart metering" that will rapidly push efficiency gains),
ending Clean Air Act handouts to the worst utilities (or otherwise unwinding burdensome regulations and moving to lighter and more common-law dependent approaches),
ending energy subsidies generally (including federal liability caps for nuclear power (and allowing states to license),
speeding economic growth and adaptation in the poorer countries most threatened by climate change by rolling back domestic agricultural corporate welfare programs (ethanol and sugar), and
if there is to be any type of carbon pricing at all, insisting that it is a per capita, fully-rebated carbon tax (puts the revenues in the hands of those with the best claim to it, eliminates regressive impact and price volatility, least new bureaucracy, most transparent, and least susceptible to pork).

Other policy changes could also be put on the table, such as an insistence that government resource management be improved by requiring that half of all royalties be rebated to citizens (with a slice to the administering agency).

I`m not the only one - other libertarian climate proposals are here:

Jonathan Adler at Case Western (2000); he has other useful commentary here, here,
Bruce Yandle, Professor Emeritus at Clemson University, Senior Fellow at PERC (the "free market" environmentalism think tank) and a respected thinker on common-law and free-market approaches to environmental problems, has in PERC's Spring 2008 report specifically proposed a "A No-Regrets Carbon Reduction Policy";
Iain Murray of CEI; and
Cato`s Jerry Taylor is a frequent commentator and Indur Goklany has advanced a specific climate change-targeted proposal.
AEI`s Steven Hayward and Ken Green together have provided a number of detailed and relatively balanced analyses.

Several libertarians have recently been urging constructive libertarian approaches to climate change:

Edwin Dolan, in his Fall 2006 Cato Journal essay, "Global Warming: Rethinking the Market Liberal Position", analyzes relevant Lockean considerations and cautions that market liberals appear to be hamstringing their own analytic strengths by falling into a reflexive and conservative mind-frames that benefit established economic interests.
Sheldon Richman of the Foundation for Economic Education also recommends Dolan's essay and calls for less wishful thinking and greater engagement by libertarians in the December 8, 2006 edition of The Freeman: The Goal Is Freedom: Global Warming and the Layman.
Gene Callahan makes a similar warning in his essay "How a Free Society Could Solve Global Warming", in the October 2007 issue of The Freeman.
Ron Bailey, "Congratulations to Al Gore; But be wary of the man's proposed solutions for global warming", October 12, 2007.

These discussions and exchanges of view are also worthy of note:

The Cato Institute has dedicated its entire August 2008 monthly issue of Cato Unbound, its online forum, to discussing policy responses to ongoing climate change. The issue, entitled "Keeping Our Cool: What to Do about Global Warming", contains essays from and several rounds of discussion between ato Institute author Indur Goklany; climate scientist Joseph J. Romm, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress; and Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, the co-founders of The Breakthrough Institute. My extended comments here.

Reason Foundation, Climate Change and Property Rights June 12th, 2008 (Reason's Shikha Dalmia, Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan H. Adler, and author Indur Goklany); discussed by Ron Bailey of ReasonOnline here; here`s my take.

Debate at Reason, October 2007, Ron Bailey, Science Correspondent at Reason, Fred L. Smith, Jr., President and Founder of CEI, and Lynne Kiesling, Senior Lecturer in Economics at Northwestern University, and former director of economic policy at the Reason Foundation.

Reason Foundation, Global Warming and Potential Policy Solutions September 7th, 2006 (Reason's Shikha Dalmia, George Mason University Department of Economics Chair Don Boudreaux, and the International Policy Network's Julian Morris)

Finally, I have collected here some Austrian-based papers on environmental issues that are worthy of note:

Environmental Markets? Links to Austrians

Ones such paper is the following: Terry L. Anderson and J. Bishop Grewell, Property Rights Solutions for the Global Commons: Bottom-Up or Top-Down?

[Update] Bob Murphy & Gene Callahan flesh out the "objective" moral order: it applies only to those able to perceive it?

TokyoTom — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:58:00 GMT

[Update: Bob Murphy sends in an email comment, copied (in relevant part) at the bottom of this post.]

I`ve addressed here on five different threads the question of whether there is an "objective moral order", which Gene Callahan broached in a May blog post. I`ve commented here mainly because I find the subject interesting, but the subsequent discussions at Gene Callahan`s blog and at Bob Murphy`s blog to be rather unproductive, if not frustrating and disappointing. However, I note that Bob Murphy, bless his soul, has kindly emailed me a comment for me to post on one of my recent threads, in which Bob refers to a recent relevant comment elsewhere by Gene.

Allow me to repost here Bob Murphy`s comment, and my response, but first here`s some context from the post that Bob Murphy is responding to:

1. Me:

While I certainly agree that man has an exquisite moral sense, my own view is that that sense and capacity are something that we acquired via the process of evolution, as an aid to intra-group cooperation,

- as Bruce Yandle has suggested,

- as argued by Roy Rappaport (former head of the American Anthropology Assn.) in his book "Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity" (which I have discussed here) and - as I have recently discovered -

- as David Sloan Wilson has argued in his book "Darwin`s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society".

I note that the NYT has recently run a series of posts on related topics.

In my view, our moral sense, rituals and "sacred postulates" (later, religions) have played a central role in the evolution of man as a social animal, by providing a fundamental way of ordering the world, the group`s role in it, and the individual`s role in the group - thereby abating commons problems both within and created by the group. The religious lies at the root of our human nature, even as its inviolable, sacred truths continue to fall by the wayside during the long march of culture and science out of the Garden of Eden. While we certainly have made progress (partly with the aid of "universal" religions) in expanding the boundaries of our groups, we very much remain group, tribal animals, fiercely attentive to rival groups and who is within or outside our group, and this tribal nature is clearly at work in our cognition (our penchant for finding enemies, including those who have different religious beliefs that ours).

But I didn`t really kick off this discussion - why are Callahan and Murphy so reticent to describe what it is they think they mean when they assert that there are "objective moral truths" and an "objective moral order"? (I can understand why I seem to have earned the clear hostility of one them; after all I have proven by my persistence and/or thickheadedness to be, if not an "enemy", then in any case not one of the august clear-sighted.)

Here are a few questions I left with them at Bob`s most recent post:

- Are those who believe that there is an objective "moral" order asserting that, for every being - regardless of species - that there is a uniform, objective moral order in the universe? Or is the argument that there is an object moral order only for conscious and self-aware beings, and none for organisms that are not conscious, or are conscious but not self-aware?

- Or is the argument that the "objective" moral order exists only for humans, and perhaps someday can be identified and located in universally shared mental processes, based on brain activity and arising from shared genes? Will such objective moral order still exist if all mankind ceases to exist?

- Or is the objective moral order one that exists for some humans, but not all - depending on physical development of the brain as we mature (with the development of some being impaired via genetic or other defect)?

- Is the human "objective" moral order universal, for all individuals - of whatever, gender or age - across all history?

- Is an objective moral order something real that can be tested for despite the inability of a particular observer to perceive directly - like beings that can`t directly perceive light (or like us who can`t personally physically observe much of what technology allows us to)?

- And if the objective moral order is a part of the universe, can we apply the scientific method to confirm its existence of and explore its parameters, and to explain (and test) it with "laws"?

- What are some of the parameters and laws governing the moral order?

2. Bob Murphy`s comments: (emphasis added)

On the general issue of "are morals objective for everyone?" I refer to this excellent discussion by Gene Callahan:

www.gene-callahan.org/.../freedoms-just-another-word-for.html

[Here is Gene`s relevant comment:

"Something that is correct only 'to' someone is subjectively, not objectively, correct. What 'objective' means is precisely 'to any and all possible perceivers.' And, of course, it is simply a further muddle to introduce beings incapable of perceiving the objective item in question, as if that raised doubts about its objective status. 'Would this be objectively correct for ants?' makes no more sense than 'Is it objectively true for ants that Mars has two moons?' It is objectively true, not 'for' anyone, that Mars has two moons, and it is also objectively true that ants are a kind of being that cannot peer through telescopes or count to two. It is objectively true that murder is wrong, and if ants were the sort of being capable of murder, which they are not (as far as we know!), it would be wrong for them to commit murders."]

When I say that I think morality is objective, what I mean is that a statement such as "it is better to kiss an infant than to drown it" is a different type of thing from the statement "chocolate ice cream is better than vanilla." The latter is clearly stating a subjective preference, whereas the former is (I claim) reflecting an objective truth about reality.

Note that to say morality is objective doesn't necessarily mean that 'the same rules' apply to everybody, at least not in the sense that I think you mean. It might not be immoral for Eskimos to euthanize old people, whereas it could be considered murder in Manhattan. But this doesn't actually prove morality is subjective. By the same token, it's OK for me to eat the food in my fridge. But if somebody else wandered into my house and did the 'same thing,' it would be theft.

I'm a Christian so if you ask me for a list of these rules, a good start is the Ten Commandments. And then if you want to know how to apply these rules, I'd tell you to read the gospels and study the life of Jesus.

As far as your specific questions, I don't want to bother trying to answer them. I admit I can't give you great answers on some. But to me, that doesn't show that morality is subjective after all. There are plenty of non-material things (like mathematics etc.) that are rock-solid objectively true. So I think our difference here is much deeper than an issue of mere morality. I think you are a materialist and I'm not, which is influencing our discussion on morality.

3. My response: (emphasis added)

Bob, thanks for troubling to visit and read, but your comments are obviously a disappointment - as you`ve simply done none of the heavy lifting that you have implied by insisting on various occasions that there is an "objective" moral order.

All that you`ve done here is to make a very weak argument that MAN has a moral sense regarding how we treat others. But this is not only obvious, it is also something that I have asserted all along. While it tells us something I agree is objectively true generally about man - something that I have made various attempts to explore here and to sketch out on your blog and Gene`s - it tells us essentially nothing about an objective moral order to the universe, that is applicable to other life forms, and that will survive mankind if we were all ever to perish.

I`m afraid I have to disagree with you about Gene`s post, which in fact illustrates the weakness of his position regarding "objective truth". While he suggests that by "objectively correct" we mean something that is correct for `any and all possible perceivers' (so far, so good), he then presents the example of ants, for whom he asserts it would be wrong for them to commit murder IF THEY WERE CAPABLE of committing murder. But he`s failed to notice that he`s not only begged the question about what we mean by saying that "it is objectively true that murder is wrong", but he`s suggested that because ants lack a capacity to perceive moral strictures against murder, they are unable to commit it. By doing so, he`s just invited in all of the questions that I`ve outlined above [in item 1 here], plus questions of culture and exigency that you have pointed out by your reference to Eskimos. Can any animals or life forms other than man commit murder? Do moral restrictions against murder require some threshold level of self-reflection, intellectual capacity, typical social structure, physical and social maturity, or upbringing?

So there IS an objective moral order, but it only applies to those able to perceive it? This is both a very modest position, as well as one that oddly smacks of belief in Leprechauns.

Rather than arguing that still undefined but "objective" moral rules are embedded in the structure of the universe but have only limited application, isn`t it easier to acknowledge that man has a moral sense, observe that it enhances our ability to cooperate, observe that other animals also exhibit patterns of reciprocal behavior and posit that our moral sense is something that we have evolved, as it enhanced our ability to survive and procreate?

# re: Evolution, religion and our insistence on a still undefined "objective" moral order

[Remove this Comment] Tuesday, September 08, 2009 4:27 AM by TokyoTom

By the way, I note that fellow Community blogger lilburne and I agree generally about morality*

"There is a burgeoning school of thought in evolutionary biology and the cognitive sciences (led by Marc Hauser and Steven Pinker) which contends that morality is not just cultural artifice, but that it is an intrinsic feature of the human mind which evolved over the countless millennia of humans living together."

mises.org/.../245211.aspx

If anyone is still reading, let me note that I posted a week or so ago further thoughts on the evolution of moral codes and why we fight over them (rarely applying to those outside our group the same moral standards that we apply to those within our groups).

[Update:] Further email comment from Bob Murphy (posted with approval):

I'm going to have to punt on this debate for now. If you agree that
"Bob should not kill an infant" has a truth value more significant
than "Bob should not wear a dress to work" than I'm happy. I think
maybe when I say "morality is objective" you are interpreting it to
mean something more than what I do mean. After all, you are saying
moral rules apply to all humans, so I don't know what our difference
is at this point. I thought originally you were saying you were a
moral relativist.

A few simple thoughts on the evolution of moral codes, and why we fight over them (and religion, liberty and the state)

TokyoTom — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:14:00 GMT

A recent post on the Mises Daily pages on the "Religious Roots of Liberty" by the late Congregationalist minister Rev. Edmund Optiz (1914-2006) (originially published in The Freeman, February 1955) provides an opportunity to restate and discuss some of the thoughts I`ve been working though on evolution, group dynamics, religion and on the assertions of some that there is an "objective moral order".

It seems like quite a bit to chew, I know, but I dared (with the modesty and boldness of the inexpert, of course) to venture a few thoughts.

I copy below some of my comments and related dialogue on the comment thread (minor edits):

TokyoTom
I see I`m late to this discussion, but I`ll note I was thinking related thoughts and just put up a blog post on the subject of evolution, group dynamics, religion and an "objective moral order" of the type that Gene Callahan and Bob Murphy assert but won`t trouble themselves to spell out; it`s here for those interested:
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/08/28/fun-with-self-deception-those-who-espouse-an-quot-objective-quot-moral-order-act-refuse-to-elucidate-or-act-as-if-there-is-none.aspx

Briefly as to this piece by Rev. Optiz: while religion has undeniably played a crucial historical role in organizing Western society, and still plays an important role in the voluntary organization of society and, at times, in opposing state tyranny, we should try to understand the roots of religions, how they have been employed to organize us and how they have been abused to control us and to lead us into conquering and/or slaughtering rival groups, whether "heathen" or merely of a different sect.

Organized religions sprang from less-organized tribal faiths, and, like those faiths, served to improve group cooperation and cohesion. Groups successful in intergroup conflicts - largely by ruthlessly putting to sword those with different gods - brought their religions with them. This was certainly the case of the Hebrews; Christianity spread because an opportunistic Constantine found in it a useful way to enhance his power and to improve the cohesion of his troops and empire. Mohammed likewise saw in his visions and his experience with "people of the Book" a way to expand his own power and to unite Arabs (later Caliphs took this further to build empires).

Rev. Optiz is clearly right that, within religious societies, "the Book" served as a check on unwary secular leaders, who nevertheless always strove to coopt religious leaders. But modern secular society and the US political system are both far away from the Book, whether Biblical prescription or the Constitution. This leaves us vulnerable to the continued growth of the state, and to potential conflict as people look for group protection, inevitably in some in groups that preach exclusion rather than inclusion.
Published: August 28, 2009 11:23 AM

TokyoTom
"tyranny is always a denial — or a misunderstanding — of the mandates of an authority or law higher than man himself." [a quote from Rev.　Optiz]

Sorry, but while I believe in the laws of physics and am aware of the deep evolutionary roots of our need for various but mutually contradictory faiths, I see no "law" higher than man.

Rather, there has always been a tension between the individual, his needs for groups, and the restrictions and demands that others - including the leaders of the groups - wish to impose on him. What we call "tyranny" is simply the condition when individuals (and sub-groups) find the demands of the larger group (and those who marshall force) to be intolerable.
Published: August 28, 2009 11:33 AM

fundamentalistf
TT: " But modern secular society and the US political system are both far away from the Book, whether Biblical prescription or the Constitution. This leaves us vulnerable to the continued growth of the state..."

Very true. That's why we have witnessed the growth of the state correlating with the decline of traditional Christianity in the West. Unfortunately, atheists and agnostics are not siding with freedom; they are overwhelmingly socialist. So far, atheists and agnostics have faile miserably since the enlightenment at establishing freedom.

TT: “While I certainly agree that man has an exquisite moral sense, my own view is that that sense and capacity are something that we acquired via the process of evolution, as an aid to intra-group cooperation…”

So what you’re saying is that random mutations occurred that gave some individuals a moral code which in turn gave them a survival advantage. However, if you want to be scientific about it, you have to have some kind of evidence. Has anyone found the “morality” gene? Where is the evidence that morality has certain groups an advantge over those without the “morality” gene? It seems to me you are swallowing a great deal on pure faith.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume you’re correct that morals are nothing but a random mutation that gave some humans an edge in surviving. Why are we bound to follow today such accidents that gave humans that advantage millions of years ago? That doesn’t mean they’ll give us an advantage today.

Besides, there has been some variation in morality over the centuries. Genghis Khan took great pride in slaughtering every person in a city he conquered and making mountains out of their skulls. Of course, there was the morality of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Is it possible that several different genetic mutations occurred and caused these differing views on morality? If so, that means that our genes can’t claim that Hitler’s genes were immoral; they were just different.

As you can see, claiming genetic status for morality does not help escape the problems involved in moral relativity. If morality isn’t transcendant, that is, doesn’t come from some one with greater authority than man (or in your case an accident inside of man), then everyone is free to choose his own morality, even one that elevate murder to a sacred act.
Published: August 28, 2009 1:37 PM
fundamentalistf
PS,
TT, you'll find the answers to the questions you posted on your blog in the works of natural law philosophers. A good intro is "Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume" by Stephen Buckle.
Published: August 28, 2009 1:40 PM

TokyoTom
Roger, thanks for your comments.

That's why we have witnessed the growth of the state correlating with the decline of traditional Christianity in the West.

While I agree about the vulnerability, I wouldn`t lay that as a principal cause for the growth of the Western state, for which I would simply point to a loss of control by Rome and greater technological means for coercion and influence. See Hayek.

atheists and agnostics are not siding with freedom; they are overwhelmingly socialist.

An interesting thought, but who supported all of nonsense of the Bush administrations? And certainly the vast majority of voters wouldn`t touch an atheist with a 10-foot pole. Anyway, what brings you to your conclusion?

So what you’re saying is that random mutations occurred that gave some individuals a moral code which in turn gave them a survival advantage. However, if you want to be scientific about it, you have to have some kind of evidence.

It doesn`t seem you`ve looked at my links; Yandle might make the most agreeable start.

Obviously things are more nuanced than your statement; we are close cousins of highly social animals (bonobos, chimpanzees and gorillas) that are highly socialable and display much of the same reciprocal behavior, including the means of enforcing it, and the disparate treatment of those less closely related or familiar and of those entirely outside the group (viz., the other or "enemies").

I`m merely postulating that human groups that proved better at internal cooperation were more likely to be successful when faced with environmental challenges and opportunities, and to pass their genes along, which gave rise to our innate sense of "fairness" and to tribal rules and religions. We clearly have much greater inherent abilities to cooperate; indeed, the relatively longer infancy and childhood of our species requires such cooperation. We are good not only at reading faces and the intentions of others, but signalling our own via various clues - including being unique among mammals in having white sclera, the better to show others what we`re thinking about: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/opinion/13tomasello.html. The fact that we give so much away is a strong indicating that doing so was to our advantage; viz., that we benefit from cooperation.

More proof of course can be easily seen in the fact that societies groups with greater internal cohesion tend to do well in inter-group competion. Such cohesion was foster by religions (which also fostered the formation of larger societies that were better able to engage in specialization), as well as by more basic tribal reactions that put group pressure on dissenting individuals.

Why are we bound to follow today such accidents that gave humans that advantage millions of years ago? That doesn’t mean they’ll give us an advantage today.

We can`t change human nature, but we can be aware of it, and we do, via culture (and formal/informal institutions, such as property) try to channel it productively and to dampen socially costly excesses. Much of this has not been a deliberate process, but simply a process of the survival of successful societies.

there has been some variation in morality over the centuries. Genghis Khan took great pride in slaughtering every person in a city he conquered and making mountains out of their skulls. Of course, there was the morality of Hitler, Stalin and Mao.

A close look at what you call variation in morality seems to me to be purely a cultural advance as societies extends their boundaries by created wider, more inclusive bonds, both through religion and law. But we have ALWAYS treated outsiders differently from insiders; moral codes were group codes that created few if any rights to or responsibilities towards outsiders. Few societies have blinked an eye at the slaughter of those considered to be outsiders; the same can still be seen in our blase lack of concern for the deaths of Iraqis generated by our toppling of Saddam (which has surely been orders of magnitude greater than ours), or for "collateral damage" in our pursuit of those whom we sometimes called "freedom fighters".

Has there been a continued evolution of man in the past few thousand years? Surely; we can see it the spread of lactose tolerance, for example. But as cultural standards are so important to morality, it is impossible for now to tease out a biological evolution in morality.

If so, that means that our genes can’t claim that Hitler’s genes were immoral; they were just different.

This is confused; we all have different genes, and the expressing of those genes (phenotype) is strongly influenced by culture, up-bringing and experience. But we do see generalizable differences in male and female behavior, for example; females had the job of raising children and protecting the hearth, while men and less to risk in struggles for power and more to gain in confronting out-groups.

Thus our societies have always had different moral codes for men and women, and our cold, mass-murdering marauders have always been men.

claiming genetic status for morality does not help escape the problems involved in moral relativity.

Agreed!

If morality isn’t transcendant, that is, doesn’t come from some one with greater authority than man (or in your case an accident inside of man), then everyone is free to choose his own morality, even one that elevate murder to a sacred act.

First, our undeniable reliance on communities for support is not an "accident", but is something that proved powerfully advantageous, just as it remains part of our genetic make up.

Second, certainly in many (if not most), killing outsiders (what we even today loathe to call "murder") has been sanctioned, perhaps even "sanctified" (an certainly the slaughter of outsiders has been frequently blessed by in-group moral/religious authorities) - which of course implies a group ethic and not a purely personal choice.

But of course, the looser societies are, the weaker the formal and informal group sanctions and more individuals are left to their own decisions. Thus, as the state has coopted and supplanted voluntary society, the more "immoral", licentious and selfish behavior that we see.

Finally, in my view morality has never truly been "transcendent", but is derived from a shared inheritance of strong interpersonal cooperation, further shaped by the groups within which we "grow up", which groups all have their own (and mutually contradictory) "sacred postulates".

TT

PS: Thanks for pointing to Buckle; my quick question would be whether "natural law" is something that applies to the behavior of all life forms, or simply man (and would blink out of existence if man were to).

Link to this post.

Tragedy of the panicked enviro IV: not capitalism, but intensive use of unowned resources is the problem

TokyoTom — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:03:00 GMT

This is my third follow-up post to "Grist and the tragedy of the panicked enviro", where I try to clarify the institutional frameworks for understanding and addressing resource problems, in response to confusion in comments by others.

cyberfarer Posted 9:26 pm
27 Aug 2009

... [addressed to T Worstall]

In fact I do understand what Hardin was saying. Hardin sets up a hypothetcial situation and then sets about knocking it down. We call that a strawman argument.

But you didn't address my salient point. We live in an era of the ascendency of private property and yet we have witnessed an acceleration of the destruction of our natural heritage. Under the management and control of private interests, we can witness the remaining rain forests of south east Asia being raised for palm oil plantations. Under the control and and management of private interests we can witness boreal forests being decimated. In fact, over the past fifty years as control and managenment of resources to pass to private interests, we witness the acceleration of the their destruction.

The reality puts the lie to Hardin's strawman argument.

The issue of sustainability is not one of private or public ownership as The Church and its followers would prefer to frame it. The issue is the central role of profit above all else in our culture.

The free market economy generates wealth by converting a living planet to a dead planet; that is, by converting living ecosystems into commodities for trade and profit. To the free market and its economists, a forest which provides erosion control, flood control, climate and water conditioning, habitat, sustenance, and any number of other services not only to humans but all other species is only valuable in our free market system when it has been converted to lumber or pulverized for paper or some other use. That is the true tragedy of the commons. Not ownership, but the short-sighted stupidity of people and especially of those worship wealth without understanding its source.

TokyoTom Posted 2:29 am
29 Aug 2009

cyberfarer, I`m sorry, but this couldn`t be more wrong in its understanding of WHY messes happen (and they undeniably do); the result is that you (and Sacks) have no clue where to start in trying to solve problems:

The free market economy generates wealth by converting a living planet to a dead planet; that is, by converting living ecosystems into commodities for trade and profit.

The free market system is really simply people trading what they have to others for what they want, and it works quite well where resources are owned (either privately or by communities). It can, however, be a powerful engine of destruction for resources that are not owned - such as for resources sourced where property rights are not protected or the government (elites) "own" too much. Thus our continued political struggles over giveaways of public resources, the destruction of the Amazon/Indonesian forests (and Philippine under Marcos), and the collapse of fisheries that fishermen - often just guys trying to make a living - have no rights to actually protect the resource.

To the free market and its economists, a forest which provides erosion control, flood control, climate and water conditioning, habitat, sustenance, and any number of other services not only to humans but all other species is only valuable in our free market system when it has been converted to lumber or pulverized for paper or some other use. That is the true tragedy of the commons.

You are only right in part, as all of these things have obvious value, and people protect them privately or band together as groups to manage them wherever they desire and can (and are not prevented by the government). There is an awful lot of private and community conservation going on around the world. The absolute worst cases are where the resources are owned by governments, with rights to exploit being leased to companies that have no properyt and thus no longer rights or obligations.

Not ownership, but the short-sighted stupidity of people and especially of those worship wealth without understanding its source.

No, absolutely ownership; people and groups compete for resources, and can preserve valuable ones only when they can PROTECT them by excluding others (i.e., owning) them

You, like Sacks, think that the only way to solve problems is to radically change either capitalism (while ignoring worse destruction takes place outside of free market regimes) or human nature. Sorry, but this is blind and stupid, and ignores the fact that local traction is available for most problems.

See the case of the Amazon, for example:

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/05/24/capitalism-the-destructive-exploitation-of-the-amazon-and-the-tragedy-of-the-government-owned-commons.aspx

I highly recommend you start studying (not simply free thinking), which will make your very legitimate concerns much more effective. I mean, even the environmental groups are calling for better property rights/protection for fisheries, species, forests and water. Are they stupid and evil too?

Tragedy of the panicked enviro III: learning from Elinor Ostrom about cooperative action

TokyoTom — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:53:00 GMT

This is the second follow-up to my post "Grist and the tragedy of the panicked enviro", where I try to clarify the institutional frameworks for understanding and addressing resource problems, in response to confusion in comments by others.

T Worstall Posted 5:27 pm
27 Aug 2009

TokyoTom makes most of the points I would wish to make. Except for this one: you clearly do not understand what Hardin was saying about the tragedy of the commons. For example, he made very clear that there are two possible solutions to the degradation of an open access resource. We can have social (socialist) regulations and limitations or we can have private (capitalist) property solutions. Those are his descriptions BTW. Which works best depends upon the society and the resource. He emphatically did NOT say that pricvate property sultions were the only ones possible. And nor does any economist say that private property solutions are the only ones either possible or desirable. Try reading some Ronald Coase on transaction costs to see why.

TokyoTom Posted 10:03 pm
27 Aug 2009

Let me add some further nuance to Mr. Worstall`s comment by saying that Hardin`s fertile observations have fuelled extensive further research on common property problems, with Elinor Ostrom being recognized as a leading light.

Here is one general bibliography on commons research: http://www.indiana.edu/~workshop/wsl/tragedy.htm

Ostrom has refined Hardin`s work in the following way (quoting from a review of Ostrom`s 1990 ground-breaking and extensively researched book, GOVERNING THE COMMONS, The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action):

Ostrom uses the term "common pool resources" to denote natural resources used by many individuals in common, such as fisheries, groundwater basins, and irrigation systems. Such resources have long been subject to overexploitation and misuse by individuals acting in their own best interests. Conventional solutions typically involve either centralized governmental regulation or privatization of the resource. But, according to Ostrom, there is a third approach to resolving the problem of the commons: the design of durable cooperative institutions that are organized and governed by the resource users themselves.

"The central question in this study," she writes, "is how a group of principals who are in an interdependent situation can organize and govern themselves to obtain continuing joint benefits when all face temptations to free-ride, shirk, or otherwise act opportunistically."

The heart of this study is an in-depth analysis of several long-standing and viable common property regimes, including Swiss grazing pastures, Japanese forests, and irrigation systems in Spain and the Philippines. Although Ostrom insists that each of these situations must be evaluated on its own terms, she delineates a set of eight "design principles" common to each of the cases. These include clearly defined boundaries, monitors who are either resource users or accountable to them, graduated sanctions, and mechanisms dominated by the users themselves to resolve conflicts and to alter the rules. The challenge, she observes, is to foster contingent self-commitment among the members ....

Throughout the book, she stresses the dangers of overly generalized theories of collective action, particularly when used "metaphorically" as the foundation for public policy. The three dominant models — the tragedy of the commons, the prisoners's dilemma, and the logic of collective action — are all inadequate, she says, for they are based on the free-rider problem where individual, rational, resource users act against the best interest of the users collectively. These models are not necessarily wrong, Ostrom states, rather the conditions under which they hold are very particular. They apply only when the many, independently acting individuals involved have high discount rates and little mutual trust, no capacity to communicate or to enter into binding agreements, and when they do not arrange for monitoring and enforcing mechanisms to avoid overinvestment and overuse.

Ostrom concludes that "if this study does nothing more than shatter the convictions of many policy analysts that the only way to solve common pool resource problems is for external authorities to impose full private property rights or centralized regulation, it will have accomplished one major purpose."

A profile of Ostrom, who is a member of the National Academies of Science and and Editor of its Proceedings, is here: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1748208

Her work can be found here: http://scholar.google.co.jp/scholar?q=Ostrom,+Elinor&hl=en&btnG=Search and

here: http://de.scientificcommons.org/elinor_ostrom

One thing worth noting is that the historical and ongoing records are rife with examples - such as our crashing local fisheries - where government intervention has done more harm than good. In these cases and in others, Ostrom introduces an analytical approach that is acceptable widely across the political spectrum, even if differences in opinion will remain. See, for example, this discussion at libertarian-leaning George Mason U: http://www.theihs.org/bunnygame/

The tragedy of the panicked enviro II; understanding the "tragedy of the commons"

TokyoTom — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:40:00 GMT

This is the first of several follow-up posts to my post "Grist and the tragedy of the panicked enviro", where I try to clarify the institutional frameworks for understanding and addressing resource problems, in response to confusion in comments by others.

cyberfarer Posted 2:58 am
27 Aug 2009

I'm sorry, but the "tragedy of the commons" is utter B.S. The Western world has pursued a course of private property and has managed to leave ecological catastrophe in its wake. The "tragedy of the commons" and other simplistic market morality fail to understand the essence of that which it seeks to moderate, the capitalist consumer market premised on profit and only profit.

The rate of exploitation and the decline of resources, water, energy, fisheries, soil, minerals, etc., all occured under a free market, private property paradigm. That is the facts and the reality. Pretending it isn't true and wishing for a morality that doesn't exist within the free market is juvenile and counter-productive.

The "tragedy of the commons" represents a hypothetical situation that does not occur in real life. In real life, corporations own, or vie to own, resources or access to them for the purpose of extraction and profit and they seek to maximize profits through economies of scale, that is industrial extraction methods, drift netting, blowing up mountains, tossing mining waste into clear, pristine lakes. The money is in the resource and when the resource is exhausted they will move on to the next one.

TokyoTom Posted 1:38 pm
27 Aug 2009

Cyberfarer,

Thanks for your comments on the "tragedy of the commons". Though you are way off base, you provide an opportunity for deeper discussion.

The tragedy of the unmanaged commons paradigm is BS? My flip response? Go tell it to Gavin Schmidt at Real Climate, who posted a perceptive essay in May on the tragedy of the commons dynamics that are affecting climate and global climate policy coordination. Did you miss this and the relatively productive discussion thread?

Sure, the Western world has managed to create many environmental problems, but we`ve largely cleaned up our own messes, haven`t we? While it by no means excuses our own faults, far worse environmental problems have been created and are still stewing in Russia and other state-directed economies, and it`s no coincidence that the vast pollution being created in China and India are tied to governement-owned enterprise and an inability of injured people to sue for damages or to stop harmful activities. And the great waves of extinctions created as man spread around the globe tens of thousands of years ago can hardly be laid at the foot of either the Western world or of private property rights (nor can the collapse of earlier civilizations).

The "tragedy of the commons" is NOT a "simplistic market morality", but a description of cooperation problems and incentives relating to shared. open-access resources. The tragedy of the commons and problems of cooperation - and theft - are not even limited to mankind, but permeate nature. This perceptive article by Bruce Yandle touches on competition in nature, and links the ascendance of man to our evolution of relatively enhanced cooperation: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-commons-tragedy-or-triumph/

The "tragedy of the commons" paradigm is useful to analyze, but the paradigm doesn`t "seek to moderate" anything, and is just as useful in looking at the ways Western nations still contribute to environmental problems around the world (as I point out here: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/09/28/too-many-or-too-few-people-does-the-market-provide-an-answer.aspx) as it is in examining:

- environmental devastation in Haiti (which has little or no property rights, and vast free-for-all "government" holdings),

- deforestation in Indonesia and the Amazon: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/05/24/capitalism-the-destructive-exploitation-of-the-amazon-and-the-tragedy-of-the-government-owned-commons.aspx,

- pollution in China: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=china, and

- crashing fisheries around the world as a result of government of marine resources (producing free-for-alls and fleet subsidies) and a free-for-all for other unowned or unprotected resources: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=fish.

On fish, you might note what the organization Defying Ocean's End (cofounded by Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Ocean Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, The World Conservation Union, and World Wildlife Fund) recently said:

http://www.defyingoceansend.org...

"Overfishing, high bycatch rates, the use of gear types that damage habitat (like trawls and dredges), and the large subsidies supporting fisheries (totally over $15 billion per year) are all symptoms of an underlying problem. In most fisheries that are exhibiting declines in landings and revenues, overfishing, bycatch, and habitat damage, actions that result in the symptoms are actually rational given the way the fisheries are managed. In these fisheries, secure privileges to catch certain amounts of fish are not specified, so naturally individual fishermen compete to maximize their individual shares of the catch. No incentives for conservation exist in this situation, because every fish conserved can be caught by another fisherman. The competition to maximize catch often results in a fishery "arms race", resulting in the purchase of multiple vessels, the use of powerful engines and large vessels, and the use of highly efficient gear like trawls.

"Most of the solutions that have been implemented or proposed to fix the world's fisheries center on command-and-control measures: regulators or courts telling fishermen how to fish through the imposition of controls on effort (e.g., fishing vessel length, engine horsepower, gear restrictions, etc.). Prescriptions like these work against strong economic incentives for maximizing catch, which are not addressed by such measures, and are of course usually resisted by fishermen. Often, prescriptions create incentives for "work-arounds" and set up a cat-and-mouse game between fishermen and regulators - for example, if regulators impose a restriction on vessel size, fishermen may purchase two vessels to maintain high catch levels.

"As in most natural resource problems, more effective solutions will address the fundamental drivers of unsustainable fisheries. In this case, the key necessary reform will be to designate secure catch privileges."

You say: "The rate of exploitation and the decline of resources, water, energy, fisheries, soil, minerals, etc., all occured under a free market, private property paradigm." This is clearly demonstrably wrong, and draws entirely the wrong lessons. While private property is certainly no panacea, neither are they what is wrong. Very often, is is governments that have been and are wrong, though there is certainly some learning going on.

While Garrett Hardin`s "The Tragedy of the Commons" certainly represents a hypothetical situation, it is actually a very powerful analytical tool for understanding and fashioning solutions to countless "real life" problems. See Elinor Ostrom et al., Revisiting the Commons: Local Lessons, Global Challenges, Science, 04/09/99 http://conservationcommons.org/media/document/docu-wyycyz.pdf

"In real life, corporations own, or vie to own, resources or access to them for the purpose of extraction and profit and they seek to maximize profits through economies of scale, that is industrial extraction methods, drift netting, blowing up mountains, tossing mining waste into clear, pristine lakes."

What you describe here is a conflict between preferences over how resources are used. Do you prefer a free-for-all, or a situation where those who use a resource can protect it, negotiate with others who wish to see other values preserved, and who are responsible for negative consequences caused to others (not always a part of some property rights systems), or perhaps a situation where governments make all resource exploitation decisions?"

"The money is in the resource and when the resource is exhausted they will move on to the next one."

The money is never in the "resource", but in the ways that people can use it or otherwise value it (and of course people also value pristine environments).

Grist and the tragedy of the panicked enviro: stop and think, about whether resources are OWNED and protected

TokyoTom — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:42:00 GMT

The Grist online environmental magazine lent its pages this week to a pessimistic climate change activist, Adam D. Sacks, former director of the Center for Democracy and the Constitution. Mr. Sacks, echoing a despairing piece ("Beyond the point of no return") by Ross Gelbspan in Grist in Novermber 2007, in a piece entitled "The fallacy of climate activism" paints a remarkably grim and obviously heart-felt picture about the prospect of unstoppable climate change and other environmental challenges.

While we may indeed be irretrievably embarked on what prove to be a very bumpy climate voyage, it`s Sack`s policy prescriptions that are most startling. Here are excerpts of the chief points:

In the 20 years since we climate activists began our work in earnest, the state of the climate has become dramatically worse, and the change is accelerating—this despite all of our best efforts. Clearly something is deeply wrong with this picture. ...

Climate activists are obsessed with greenhouse-gas emissions and concentrations. Since global climate disruption is an effect of greenhouse gases, and a disastrous one, this is understandable. But it is also a mistake. ...

The first error is our failure to understand that greenhouse gases are not a cause but a symptom, and addressing the symptom will do little but leave us with a devil’s sack full of many other symptoms, possibly somewhat less rapidly lethal but lethal nonetheless.

The root cause, the source of the symptoms, is 300 years of our relentlessly exploitative, extractive, and exponentially growing technoculture, against the background of ten millennia of hierarchical and colonial civilizations. This should be no news flash, but the seductive promise of endless growth has grasped all of us civilized folk by the collective throat, led us to expand our population in numbers beyond all reason and to commit genocide of indigenous cultures and destruction of other life on Earth.

To be sure, global climate disruption is the No. 1 symptom. But if planetary warming were to vanish tomorrow, we would still be left with ample catastrophic potential to extinguish many life forms in fairly short order: deforestation; desertification; poisoning of soil, water, air; habitat destruction; overfishing and general decimation of oceans; nuclear waste, depleted uranium, and nuclear weaponry—to name just a few. (While these symptoms exist independently, many are intensified by global warming.)

We will not change course by addressing each of these as separate issues; we have to address root cultural cause. ...

The second error is our stubborn unwillingness to understand that the battle against greenhouse-gas emissions, as we have currently framed it, is over.

It is absolutely over and we have lost.

We have to say so.

There are three primary components of escalating greenhouse-gas concentrations that are out of our control ...

The most expert scientific investigators have been blindsided by the velocity and extent of recent developments, and the climate models have likewise proved far more conservative than nature itself. Given that scientists have underestimated impacts of even small changes in global temperature, it is understandably difficult to elicit an appropriate public and governmental response....

Bitter climate truths are fundamentally bitter cultural truths. Endless growth is an impossibility in the physical world, always—but always—ending in overshot and collapse. Collapse: with a bang or a whimper, most likely both. We are already witnessing it, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

Because of this civilization’s obsession with growth, its demise is 100 percent predictable. We simply cannot go on living this way. Our version of life on earth has come to an end.

Moreover, there are no “free market” or “economic” solutions. And since corporations must have physically impossible endless growth in order to survive, corporate social responsibility is a myth. The only socially responsible act that corporations can take is to dissolve. ...

Some of our most important thinking happens while developing the problem statement, and the better the problem statement the richer our responses. That’s why framing the global warming problem as greenhouse-gas concentrations has proved to be such a dead end.

Here is the problem statement as it is beginning to unfold for me. We are all a part of struggling to develop this thinking together:

We must leave behind 10,000 years of civilization; this may be the hardest collective task we’ve ever faced. It has given us the intoxicating power to create planetary changes in 200 years that under natural cycles require hundreds of thousands or millions of years—but none of the wisdom necessary to keep this Pandora’s Box tightly shut. We have to discover and re-discover other ways of living on earth.

We love our cars, our electricity, our iPods, our theme parks, our bananas, our Nikes, and our nukes, but we behave as if we understand nothing of the land and water and air that gives us life. It is past time to think and act differently.

If we live at all, we will have to figure out how to live locally and sustainably. Living locally means we are able get everything we need within walking (or animal riding) distance. We may eventually figure out sustainable ways of moving beyond those small circles to bring things home, but our track record isn’t good and we’d better think it through very carefully.

Likewise, any technology has to be locally based, using local resources and accessible tools, renewable and non-toxic. We have much re-thinking to do, and re-learning from our hunter-gatherer forebears who managed to survive for a couple of hundred thousand years in ways that we with our civilized blinders we can barely imagine or understand

Desperate hopes notwithstanding, there are no high-tech solutions here, only wishful thinking—the tools that got us into this mess are incapable of getting us out.

All that being said, we needn’t discard all that we’ve learned, far from it. But we must use our knowledge with great discretion, and lock much of it away as so much nuclear weaponry and waste.

Time is running very short, but the forgiveness of this little blue orb in a vast lonely universe will continue to astonish and nourish us—if we only give it the chance.

Our obligation as activists, the first step, the essence, is to part the cultural veil at long last, and to tell the truth.

Wow. It strikes me that though Sacks might very well be right the we have irreversibly embarked on a bumpy climate ride, are we to conclude not only that the best solution is to abandon civilization as we know it and live as hunter-gathers, but that we can actually persuade anyone to abandon the use of energy? Not only does Sacks offer no prescription from getting here to where he thinks we need to go, but he completely ignores the institutional setting of the problems that concern him (tragedy of the commons), and thus any discussion of potential solutions (fprivate or community property institutions). Certainly environmentalists may wish to start experiments in alternative living - this might provide useful knowledge or even necessary in dire situations - but unless such experiments prove that they can provide shelter and sustenance for the world`s population, they will not address the needs of others who will make their own choices, based on modern civilization and technology.

I left a short message on the Grist comment thread, as follows:

ATokyoTom Posted 2:32 am
27 Aug 2009

I`m with Dave, and more so. There are no useful takeaways from thise piece, because the author, while showing an understanding of climate science, evinces no understanding of the institutional factors that are driving climate change and other resource problems.

Garrett Hardin largely nailed the problem decades ago - the "Tragedy of the Commmons" that results when there are no clear or enforceable property rights (private or communmity) that enable users to protect resources from destructive exploitation.

(Examining the environmental nightmare of the formerly communist countries, the resource abuse in kleptocratic developing countries, and incompetent bureaucracies, sweet insider deals and poorly managed "public" lands and fisheries have subsequently informed us of the corollary problem - the tragedy of the government commons.)

We understand both the nature of our problems, and the directions in which solutions lie. Let`s have at at `em.

BTW, I realize that we have barely begun to scratch the surface on addressing climate change; this is a tragedy of the commons problem on which it appears we can have only marginal impacts at best.

Evolution, religion and our insistence on a still undefined "objective" moral order

TokyoTom — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:48:00 GMT

I refer to my previous posts on the interesting subject of whether there is an "objective moral order", which Gene Callahan broached in a May blog post, returned to in a subsequent post but abandoned, to be picked up but ultimately punted by Bob Murphy (and again by Gene when he visited Bob`s thread).

- as Bruce Yandle has suggested,

- as David Sloan Wilson has argued in his book "Darwin`s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society".

I note that the NYT has recently run a series of posts on related topics.

But I didn`t really kick off this discussion - why are Callahan and Murphy so reticent to describe what it is they think they mean when they assert that there are "objective moral truths" and an "objective moral order"? (I can understand why I seem to have earned the clear hostility of one them; after all I have proven by my persistence or thickheadedness to be, if not an "enemy", then in any case not one of the august clear-sighted.)

Here are a few questions I left with them at Bob`s most recent post:

- And if the objective moral order is a part of the universe, can we apply the scientific method to confirm its existence of and explore its parameters, and to explain (and test) it with "laws"?

- What are some of the parameters and laws governing the moral order?

If I`m being self-deluded about the willingness of those who believe that there IS an objective moral order to explain it (and to evidence it in their actions), I hope a good reader or two will let me know.

Climate/Oceans: A brief reminder to Ron Bailey that, even though models aren`t always right, the atmosphere and oceans remain open-access commons

TokyoTom — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:24:00 GMT

Ron Bailey , science correspondent for ReasonOnline , on July 1 noted in a Hit & Run post that " Models Aren`t Always Right ". I left the following comment, which I copy here since I didn`t see it post: "Ron, of course models aren`t...(read more)

Evolution & religion: Idle hands express idle thoughts about Bob Murphy`s determination to apply reason to his insistence that "non-believers burn in hell"

TokyoTom — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:45:00 GMT

...(read more)

Question at Bob Murphy`s: can ending a tragedy of the commons create jobs / enhance wealth?

TokyoTom — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:42:00 GMT

Check out the comments to Bob Murphy`s post that rightly but shallowly criticizes the "green jobs" mantra, EDF Summarizes Bastiat in One Picture . I refer to Rockwell and Block....(read more)

Overlooked by those warmed by climate rhetoric ("alarmist" or "denialist") - the fact that our most important commons have NO property rights rules

TokyoTom — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:16:00 GMT

...(read more)