On 2009-01-19, Jeff > wrote:
> On Jan 18, 1:58*pm, John David Galt >
> wrote:
>> Jeff wrote:
>> > Certainly, the price of buying houses in the Silicon Valley Area and
>> > San Fransisco are amoungst the highest in the nation. But this has
>> > very little to do with the environmental regulations. It has a lot
>> > more to do with people love the climate and people like to work for a
>> > lot of money in the electronics and biotech industries as well as at
>> > some world-class universities.
>>
>> Bull. *There's still plenty of vacant land there; the only reason
>> housing is expensive is that the eco-nut movement "protects" most of
>> it in order to MAKE it expensive.
>
> No, they preserve the land so that there will be nature there in the
> future, like a national forest is preserved to keep the forest.

If you want to preserve land you buy it add rules to the title and pass
it on in your family or to a group that will preserve it by obeying your
legally binding wishes.

A national forest or other government controlled land is protected so
long politics make it so. Those in government will gladly lease the land
to their friends to exploit the natural resources. Not being owners but
merely renters of 'public land' they will destroy it entirely.

Passing laws to restrict your neighbors from building on their land
after you built on yours is just plain incompatible with liberty.

>> The other is that the movement explicitly rejects the only
>> two mechanisms that could solve such a problem if it did exist -- the
>> free market and new technology.

> The free market system doesn't work properly unless the enviornmental
> cost is included. I see what you mean. It is not like any
> environmentalists are suggesting people use electric cars, hybrid
> cars, solar power, wind power, nuclear power, power from waves,
> improved computer efficiency, flourescent lights or anything like
> that.

The free market does include the environmental cost. Except there hasn't
been a free market in the modern age. What was decided is that
certain people were allowed to foul their neighbors' and public lands
and waterways. A true free-market property rights system would have
requred that the pollution remain on the property of those creating it
or otherwise safely disposed of.

The system that is in place is one where the government allows those
with the right connections in the political system can dump a particular
amount of their wastes into the waterways, are allowed to have so much
pollution damage their neighbors' property and so on. Then instead of
actually going to a property rights point of view environmentalists want
to tax end users for the 'environmental cost' of the products. The
tax is placed on products that are made regardless of how
responsible the manufacturer is and favors the politically connected
persons (who are favored by the existing regulations). It's absurd.

True environmental costs will be reflected once we have system
based on property rights instead of political power.