mangoe@MIMSY.UMD.EDU (01/20/87)
Barry Fagin writes: >> Would Barry Fagin therefore agree that >> -Clean water be restricted only to those who can afford to buy >> bottled water? >No, although I do think that the right way to get clean water is to >use the market and property rights. Allow cities to own their own >water supplies, allow people to own them and have governments pay >them fair market value, and so on. And, of course, I'd be delighted >to hear your suggestions for providing "clean water for all". There are too many senses in which many water supplies can't be owned. For instance, around here we have a combination of wells and reserviors. As it stands, these are very sensitive to anyone who uses "his" section of the river as a dumping ground for chenicals or sewage. As a result, the legal system gets involved to give us anti-pollution and, more importantly, laws requiring easements along property to prevent the sort of damage that a purely privatized system would have to be content with mopping up after perhaps irreperable damage had been done. Water rights are really the only way to talk about ownership of water. As such they imply that the river or aquafer isn't ownable. >> -Nature be restricted to private parks for a select elite that pays >> high membership fees to protect the parks from commercial >> development? >This is almost what we have now, actually. Our national parks are >paid for by the many, enjoyed by the few. People who enjoy nature >should be the ones to bear the costs of owning and maintaining the >land in a pristine state. The right way to enjoy nature is to do it >through a framework of liberty: privately owned parks financed by >user's fees and contributions. And this isn't so bad, Rich. You >might even like it; the hiking and camping permits issued by the >Nature Conservancy are cheaper than those at Yellowstone. Ah, but now Barry is discounting a really important benefit which nearly everyone accrues from the national parks: the notion that *they*, through the proxy of the government, are protecting this stuff. There's a tremendous amount of national pride bound up in the government's possession of the park system. This is a benefit that everyone in the country gets. The same is true of the Smithsonian and the monuments in downtown DC, which, even if people don't ever get to visit them, afford great satisfaction from knowing that they are being kept as a national treasure. And the selling off of those national assets cannot look anything but commercial. >In fact, private ownership as the best way to environmental >protection is the wave of the future; the previously mentioned Nature >Conservancy, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Audobon Society, and >the Center for Political Economy and Natural Resources are all >embracing private ownership as the best way to preserve and protect >nature. Well, it seems to me that this isn't an either/or situation. I might add that some of this private ownership advocacy comes from a fear that the government cannot be trusted to hold onto the national system. How a private system is immune to this is not explained. Neither public nor private ownership is a panacea; there are times when one is more appropriate than the other. C. Wingate -------