site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   25656 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The SEC has proposed a new type of company, a Natural Asset Company (NAC.) As the main proponents, Intrinsic Exchange Group, state:

By taking a NAC public through an IPO, the market transaction will succeed in converting the long-understood – but to-date unpriced – value of nature into financial capital. This monetization event will generate the funding needed to manage, restore, and grow healthy ecosystems around the world and bring us closer to achieving a truly sustainable, circular economy.

While there are also criterion for farmland and mixed use lands to qualify, it sounds like they expect the public to buy shares of land to pay the owners to not develop it in certain ways. I'm not sure how popular this idea will become. Carbon credits are a thing so there might be some buy-in from the public.

Margaret Byfield at Real Clear Markets takes a dimmer view of NACs:

The best comparison would be using the air we breathe as a cryptocurrency of sorts. And, these natural assets that collectively belong to all of us would now belong to corporations run by what many would call environmental special interests.

Based on just this first sentence, I'm not sure she knows what a cryptocurrency is. Maybe she means it will be subject to a speculative bubble. However, the consequence that most concerns her is that other countries could own stakes in our Natural Parks:

Another feature of these new companies is that the land belonging to sovereign nations and private landowners alike can be subject to the control of NACs. Sovereign nations, such as the United States Government, can provide their lands to private investors, including those outside the United States. China, for example, may be able to invest in an NAC and effectively be a stakeholder in our national parks. Russia could assume control of lands currently leased to produce oil and place them off limits for future natural resource development.

Both supporters and critics seem to think that an NAC will be big deal. The IEG believes that, "The financing gap for biodiversity is estimated between US$598-824 billion per year, for climate change about US$5 trillion dollars per year, and for the transition to a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable economy, orders of magnitude larger."

But I have a hard time conceptualizing how a NAC will tap into all that wealth and power. What is the expected impact for the average Joe and for international politics? Will I no longer be able to "breathe the free air," as real life starts to resemble the Lorax movie? Will foreign countries strategically buy land and prevent Americans from accessing resources?

By taking a NAC public through an IPO, the market transaction will succeed in converting the long-understood – but to-date unpriced – value of nature into financial capital.

Do we have to convert every fucking thing in the world into dollars and cents? "Oh, you like looking at the sunset, well now that'll cost you!"

I understand trying to fundraise for conservation and environmental purposes, and using novel methods to do that; I even understand appealing to greed to motivate good causes, but for the love of God: a securities exchange flat-out putting "monetization" into the pitch is too on the nose about "you will live in the pod, you will eat the bugs, you will own nothing, and you will be happy".

I also don't trust "private investors" to give two hoots about "oh yeah so we swore cross our hearts that we'd never develop the land we bought, but that was before [valuable resource] was discovered on/in/under it". If they can't develop it themselves, they will find some loophole to sell it on to someone who will, and good luck with "but you promised!"

EDIT: Swipe me pink, they really do include "you like looking at nature" in the list of things to be assessed for economic value:

Step 4. Identify Ecosystem Services and Conduct a Preliminary Assessment of Their Relative Value

FLOW OF NON-USE VALUES
38 ECOSYSTEM AND SPECIES APPRECIATION/EXISTENCE/BEQUEST
Ecosystem and species appreciation concerns the well-being that people derive from the existence and preservation of the environment for current and future generations, irrespective of any direct or indirect use.

Yeah, we're all going to have to pay into the tree museum to see the trees.

Devil’s advocate: letting people quantify their desire for abstract things can be a really efficient way to defend those things. Something something skin in the game.

In a vacuum, this idea feels kind of dumb and sacrilegious. Compared to the existing regime of carbon taxes, regulatory load, or whatever…maybe it comes out looking okay? I don’t know. Much like the lake next to my neighboring power plant, I’m feeling lukewarm.

Do we have to convert every fucking thing in the world into dollars and cents? "Oh, you like looking at the sunset, well now that'll cost you!"

Most of the time, sunsets are public goods, because it is extremely difficult to generally prevent people from observing them and your observing it does not impinge on my ability to observe it. Obviously, if people think there is a One True Best Location for observing a sunset, but like only ten people can fit there, then it becomes rivalrous and probably excludable, too. At that point, there's going to be some mechanism that meters who can use that particular location at sunset, whether it's people having to spend time by showing up two hours before sunset to grab one of the ten spots or people having to spend money to grab one.

It is also very common in development disputes to contest visual obstructions. If someone wants to build a high rise, but it will block the view of the sunset for a group of folks who used to be able to see it, the building will be contested. Here, the traditional solution is to, again, convert the dispute into dollars and cents, having the developer pay the obstructees to compensate them for their loss. In this case, they're getting a monetary benefit for their loss, rather than having to pay for their privilege, but it's relatively similar.

On a similar note, I just recently listed to this old old podcast, which raised several reasonable sounding concerns about things like National Park schemes for nature preservation. Worth a listen.

That said, this effort is likely as dumb as most carbon offset schemes, which Matt Levine routinely (and hilariously) lambastes. Definitely worth the read regularly if you're not already.

I honestly expected NAC to include various mining and farming companies.

The EU had a set aside policy in order to reduce over-production and help environmental issues; very broadly, farmers were paid for taking some of their land out of cultivation.

It eventually ended due to shortages of cereal crops (and so they needed the land back in production) and of course, some people will always try to game the system: large producers entering and leaving set aside as suited their financial needs, only marking the unproductive land they wouldn't grow anyway for set aside, etc.

The emphasis now is on "sustainable development" and eco-schemes, rather than plain "money not to grow crops".

...

Why can't the EU make work what the US does as standard procedure since the 30s? Why does it get its own wiki article? Weird.

I think Conservation Easements are worth examining in the context of this announcement.

For the unfamiliar, a conservation easement is an agreement where a landowner sells/donates the development rights of their land, and the receiving organization promises to never develop it and to prevent anyone else from developing it either.

Instead of trying to get capitalists involved in common goods, it sticks with charity.

This amounts to permanently burning land value, and therefore seems like a terrible idea. Just because I own some property and like it undeveloped doesn't mean I should be able to keep it undeveloped in perpetuity (long after my death).

Instead of trying to get capitalists involved in common goods, it sticks with charity.

And thus it'll never work as well as making people do "good" for more selfish reasons like financial gain. Even the Effective Altruists don't outspend the cosmetics industry.

If there's a latent demand for nature/environmentalism/conservation, and a mechanism for making people who care about them willing to pay instead of using legislative means to strong-arm those who don't, and vice versa, you'll have the more hard-nosed simply buy up empty land because they can make money off being paid not to exercise their right to do other things with it.

If someone wants to prevent me from turning my grassy knolls into a parking lot, they'd better pay me more than I'd get by doing so, or at least the same amount.

I have far more confidence in rational self-interest than in expecting people to "do the right thing" for its own sake when it costs them. I know which one works better at scale.

Not that I'm against Conservative Easements, it's a mutually positive sum trade, or at least I'd hope so. Doesn't mean there aren't benefits to expanding on it and streamlining things.

I don't see how it would receive funding other than "expecting people to 'do the right thing' for its own sake".

In a normal company, the flow of money goes:

  1. Investors invest
  2. Customers buy things
  3. The investors receive a fraction of the customers' money (aka Profit!)

In a NAC (as far as I can tell), it goes:

  1. Investors invest
  2. ???
  3. Profit!

Even their summary is just:

Listed NACs can convert the long-understood – but to-date unpriced – value of nature into equity capital which can generate the financial capital needed to manage, protect, and restore healthy ecosystems over the long term.

Skimming through the linked PDF, it appears that step 2a) is "write down a number" and 2b) is "write down a bigger number" (they're even putting a dollar sign in front of the big numbers!). The only two ideas I have for 2c) are to take a charitable purchase and print an Impact Certificate (or similar), or else to build a pyramid scheme and resell it to another investor.

Your steps "2a" and "2b" sound like a good fit for non-fungible tokens and other cryptocurrency ideas.

I don't see how it would receive funding other than "expecting people to 'do the right thing' for its own sake".

Doesn't matter so much whether or not it's the "right thing" as much as whether it's something people will pay for.

To the extent that many/most people value environmental protection or nature, for whatever reason, those two can be aligned.

I don't have a strong opinion on whether NACs have any value outside of being a speculative asset, I'm making a more general point about getting people to buy out others who would do something they didn't prefer they do, with the additional considerations of more universal externalities.

As someone who considers themself an environmentalist, my view on this entire phenomena is that it is western financial powers using the environment as an excuse for further profiteering. There's nothing at all in this proposed mechanism that would actually ensure good stewardship over the environment, but plenty of opportunities for the financial class to make a bunch of easy money.

it sounds like they expect the public to buy shares of land to pay the owners to not develop it in certain ways.

So a write off to meet sustainability goals?

Ohhhh. I expect Texas will be quick to jump on this train.

Will we have to shoot the exotic animals and prevent further energy development first, though?

Seriously; letting hunters shoot exotic game animals(axis deer, nilgai, aodad, blackbuck, gemsbok, mouflon, oryx, etc) and building wind farms are two of the main revenue sources for owners of otherwise worthless land in Texas right now. A write off would have to beat those two to make it worth it.

... can you give up development rights to all of the land except the little patches you actually want to put windmills on?

Generally, but I guess it depends how NAC’s are structured.

A NAC’s business model is to actively manage the licensed area, which includes activities that generate traditional cash flows (e.g., revenues from carbon credits, crops, fisheries, ecotourism). In addition, NACs will support the generation and growth of ecosystem services that, while not currently monetized, can be valued via a market transaction and considered as part of the overall value of a NAC’s equity.

Nature’s Non-Use Value – The less tangible inherent value of nature, including people’s value for species and ecosystems in and of themselves. This category includes:

Bequest Value – The value of preserving nature for future generations.

Existence Value – The value people place to ensure the continued existence of ecosystems and/or the species that live within them.

This is very strange to me, how can you measure these things that are explicitly non-economic? It's like expecting economic returns from a charity, a fundamentally different concept to a corporation that exists to make money. If you want to preserve the environment, legislate restrictions. Don't try to marketize things that don't produce returns like ecosystem services, that's a recipe for unintended consequences. What happens once some company releases tens of millions of bees and demands to be paid for all this pollination (far in excess of what is needed) even as they damage whatever ecosystem they're in?

Humphrey: Bernard, what happens at the moment if there is some vacant land plan in say Nottingham and there arrive proposals for its use. You know, a hospital, a college or an airport.

Bernard: Well, we set up an interdepartmental committee. Department of Health, Department of Education, Department of Transport, Treasury, Environment. Ask for papers, hold meetings, propose, discuss, revise, report back, redraft. The whole thing.

Bernard: Precisely, months of fruitful work, leading to a mature and responsible conclusion. But if you have a regional government they decide it all in Nottingham. Probably in a couple of meetings, complete amateurs!

The fact that they are near impossible to measure is not a bug, it's a feature, because it means you'll have to hire a bunch of experts to figure out a way of doing it, which means more sinecures for friends, more places to decide exceptions and treat friends well and enemies poorly.

This whole idea is just one more power grab from the managerial class.

This is very strange to me, how can you measure these things that are explicitly non-economic?

Presumably by measuring how much people will pay to have them?* In other words, how much in taxes or fees people are willing to pay for a national park, a normal park in their neighborhood, for avoiding industrialization and so on.

I suspect that's the point of the NAC, to find out that value.

*when there's an actual risk of them being taken away

What happens once some company releases tens of millions of bees and demands to be paid for all this pollination (far in excess of what is needed) even as they damage whatever ecosystem they're in?

Do your best to compute net impact, and if the benefits of pollination are exceeded by the damage, fine them for the cost?

At any rate, I'm not opposed in principle to NACs, even if I'm cynical on their outcomes or the intentions behind many advocating for them. From a libertarian perspective, I think that if people want a say in what people do on private land, such as wanting your neighbor not to build a high rise next to your bungalow, they should be willing to pay them off instead of restrict their rights legislatively. There are cases where more general externalities hold, such as for pollution, but for mere aesthetic preferences, my preferences are "fuck you, pay me".

From a libertarian perspective, I think that if people want a say in what people do on private land, such as wanting your neighbor not to build a high rise next to your bungalow, they should be willing to pay them off instead of restrict their rights legislatively.

You are perfectly free to build a high-rise beside my bungalow, it's your land and I don't get to say what you can do with your own things.

By the same token, I am perfectly free to hold our brass band practice sessions in my living room at 3:00 a.m. just when you got your colicky baby off to sleep. You can't tell me what to do with my own things on my own land.

Or the pair of us could agree not to be assholes and try to find a compromise where both of us get to enjoy what we possess without inconveniencing the other too much.

(Libertarian arguments do seem to have the flaw of swerving too easily and too soon into "I have the right to be an asshole so long as I don't step one inch off my own possession, and you just have to suck my chocolate salty balls, loser").

Or the pair of us could agree not to be assholes and try to find a compromise where both of us get to enjoy what we possess without inconveniencing the other too much.

Except that never works out. The "compromises" end up being a matter of who/whom. I end up not being able to play loud videogames at 6pm because my neighbor does shift work and is sleeping at that time, while the other neighbor keeps me up at 3am with his colicky baby and I have no recourse. Both actual examples, by the way.

You can turn off a videogame, you can't turn off a baby. The parents of the screaming kid would love to do that, but infanticide is generally frowned upon.

Loud noise is a nuisance regardless of its source, and should be penalized.

You are perfectly free to build a high-rise beside my bungalow, it's your land and I don't get to say what you can do with your own things.

I don't think there is a right to have an unrestricted view of the horizon. If you want to buy the air above my land in order to preserve your view of the horizon, then of course that's fine. And you can sue the "economically disadvantaged" "urban youths" who move into my apartment building if they trespass on your land or play their boomboxes too loud.

By the same token, I am perfectly free to hold our brass band practice sessions in my living room at 3:00 a.m. just when you got your colicky baby off to sleep. You can't tell me what to do with my own things on my own land.

Noise loud enough to extend onto someone else's property and interfere with his enjoyment of that property is a valid subject of a lawsuit, I'm pretty sure.

What is and is not a valid basis for a lawsuit is a political decision, just as whether or not you can build a high rise next door is a political decision. There's no principled difference.

Fortunately I am an unprincipled person and happily say that I want the high rise and not the noise.

They took all the trees put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar an' a half just to see 'em

Adjusted for inflation, whatever that comes to in current prices, of course.

Adjusted for inflation, whatever that comes to in current prices, of course.

A lyrical finesse on a par with the original.

I do not have much to contribute analytically but this seems tailor made to cater to the kind of financial engineering in ESG investing that I often read about in Money Stuff. Maybe the SEC creating some standards here will cut down on some of the shadiness (heh) in the industry? Also seems like it's of a piece with the trend towards the financialization of everything. On the one hand it's good to be able to have some sense of the value of things for the purpose of analyzing tradeoffs. On the other hand there's a lot of power (and controversy) in doing that valuation.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats