[quote=PithecanthropusErectus]If I have the right to dig a mine, I’ll dig that mine and poison the streams if necessaryt o retrieve my ore and get my drinking water elsewhere with the gold i gather, locals be damned. [/quote]
Someone has rights to that water. You’ll have to buy them first or be punished for vandalism.
[quote=PithecanthropusErectus]Property rights alone are not moral or good and using them efficiently won’t make the earth necessarily better. it might. but i think a little command control might be in order. [/quote]
Property rights alone are not moral or good. Yes. I agree. Neither are they bad. They are cold definitions of ownership of material things.
But when you don’t have them, then things go bad. Do you think if the indigenous people of Brazil were considered the “owners” of the rain forest that we might have a different situation down there ?
A little command and control is in order – I agree with you there, too. But, as I said in another thread, the command and control has to be in command of a small set of rules focusing on keeping fraud, physical violence, and theft in check.
[quote=PithecanthropusErectus]I don’t trust the government on many issues, but i am far more mistrustful of individuals and businesses in this critical area: maximizing personal gain and externalizing costs.[/quote]
As long as hey are maximizing personal gain without violating the rights of others, I have no problem with them. And in todays society, the conduit to externalizing costs is directly through the gov to us.
Americans didn’t flee from England’s property rights, by the way. That is an absurd comment (not by PE).
