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Logging= socialist supported institution?

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Logging= socialist supported institution?

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Top 200 Contributor
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Buzz Killington posted on Mon, Jul 23 2012 6:54 AM

The title I picked is a little provocative, I know, but I've recently read something interested about logging and the free market.

This is from an article called "Aggression and the Environment" by Mary Ruwart:

"As subsidies increase, so does environmental destruction. Most of the
trees in our national forests wouldn’t be logged without subsidies, because
the cost of building the roads necessary to transport the timber exceeds
the value of the lumber. Once again, however, the special interests found a
way to use the aggression of taxes to their own advantage.

As a result of subsidies’ adverse influence, the Forest Service uses tax-payer dollars to log the national forests. By 1985, almost 350,000 miles
of logging roads had been constructed in the national forests – eight times
more than the total mileage of the U.S. interstate highway system!13 Con-
struction of roads requires stripping mountainous terrain of its vegetation,
causing massive erosion. In the northern Rockies, trout and salmon streams
are threatened by the resulting silt. Fragile ecosystems are disturbed.14

The Forest Service typically receives 20 cents for every dollar spent on
roads, logging, and timber management.15 Even though the timber com-
panies are charged for the cost of reforestation, 50% of these funds go for
“overhead.”16 Between 1991 and 1994, $1 billion more in taxes were spent
to log the national forests than the loggers paid.17
Although logging is encouraged, hiking is discouraged. The number of
backpackers increased by a factor of 10 between the 1940s and the 1980s,
but trails in the national forests dropped from 144,000 miles to under
100,000.18"

What are your thoughts? Are you in favor of logging or are you against it? Is she right or wrong?

"Nutty as squirrel shit."

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Phi est aureum replied on Mon, Jul 23 2012 8:14 AM

Well, I don't know... I'm sure there is some other business that is less profitable than a road used, but I'm not sure that means there is no way for the free market to find a way. Log flames could be used to transport logs. There might be other means. And of course, if people weren't so heavily taxed (to among other things, build roads) they could afford to pay more to logging companies who could then be profitable enough to get their timber to market more easily.

I am neither against nor in favor of logging. I'm in favor of what the free market favors. Who knows... Hemp is a very strong building material, and had it not been illegal to grow in the united States for most of the 20th century... Maybe it would have become the building material of choice and timber would be for only particular uses. It's hard to know what the free market would have done if left unhampered and what products would have developed.

The only one worth following is the one who leads... not the one who pulls; for it is not the direction that condemns the puller, it is the rope that he holds.

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Bogart replied on Mon, Jul 23 2012 8:26 AM

I am not in favor of any government subsidizing any activities to include but not limited to housing, mining, agriculture, banking, etc.  Also, I am against the US Federal Government or any other government for that matter owning property. 

 

I believe that all property should be in private hands subject to a rational (Free Market) run dispute resolution system.  If an individual wants to "Protect" some body of woodland or part of a body of woodland then that individual should be free to work with others to purchase that land or pay the owners to change their behavior on it. 

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LogisticEarth replied on Mon, Jul 23 2012 8:53 AM

Logging and mining in this country when it comes to National Forests and BLM land are absolutely examples of subsidised, crony industries.  Not exactly "socialistic" but still not part of a freed market.

It's interesting that they say that the price of the lumber isn't worth building the roads.  It sounds like that without government subsidies there wouldn't be much incentive to go "rape the land for profit", which is what most people assume would happen to national parks and forests if the state got out of the way.

The truth is that in industrially developed countries logging is and will be much more profitable on dedicated tree farms, where the process can be more automated and capital intensive.  Agriculture, including tree harvesting, is more productive than the traditional "hunter-gatherer" method of stripping old growth forests.

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