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Applying the Lockean framework to climate change

Latest post Thu, Feb 14 2008 7:02 AM by TokyoTom. 0 replies.
  • Thu, Feb 14 2008 7:02 AM

    • TokyoTom
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    Applying the Lockean framework to climate change

    I would like to bring readers' attention to Edwin G. Dolan's "Global Warming: Rethinking the Market Liberal Position", from the Fall 2006 issue of The Cato Journal: www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj26n3/cj26n3-3.pdf.  The fuller piece on my blog: http://mises.com/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/02/14/edwin-dolan-applying-the-lockean-framework-to-climate-change.aspx

    Dolan examines libertarian, "market liberal" reactions to climate change and walks through Lockean provisions that he believes require further consideration and elaboration by libertarians in the context of climate change.

    FWIW, Dolan was the editor of the Austrian classic, The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1976)(online here: http://www.econlib.org/LIBRARY/NPDBooks/Dolan/dlnFMAContents.html), and author of the classic pamphlet TANSTAAFL: An Economic Strategy for the Environmental Crisis (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1971), which outlined Dolan's chief perspective:

    The fundamental principle on which this strategy is built may be expressed in a simple slogan—There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, the "TANSTAAFL principle," for short. The TANSTAAFL principle is closely related to the fundamental theorem of ecological economics, that everything depends on everything else. Everything worthwhile has a cost. Whenever you think you are getting something for nothing, look again—someone, somewhere, somehow is paying for it. Behind every free lunch there is a hidden cost to be accounted for. The task of ecological economics is to figure out how to restructure the economic system so that these hidden costs will be brought out into the open, with the ultimate aim that no one who benefits from the use of the environment will be able to escape without paying in full.

    "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."

    -- Richard Feynman

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