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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   27412 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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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.

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