Comments (45)

• Stephane

  "the current crisis has arisen, in part, because of the strain imposed by a global population which is [...] beginning to enjoy an even more rapid rise in wealth"

  Something bothers me in this argument. It sounds like "the richer we are, the higher prices rise, so the poorer we get". This is being repeated over and over (Krugman among others) and yet I cannot see the logic of it.

  If food is getting more expensive in real terms, it means that the increase in world production does not meet the consumers' most urgent needs. This can usually be attributed to a problem in the price system. Indeed, your article cites several examples that fit with such a picture. So why blame the increased wealth of emerging countries (among other factors) for the current food strikes?

  Am I missing something?
  Thanks

  Published: April 22, 2008 12:01 PM

• iceberg

  Stephane,

  I think that Sean is covering his bases by pointing out that the rising price of food in this case is likely to be affected by rising aggregate demand for food, not only the direct result of monetary inflation.

  Published: April 22, 2008 2:29 PM

• corrigan

  Stephane, you are quite correct: that was a loose use of words. In a subsequent, better-edited version, I took out the word 'wealth' and substituted the phrase 'monetary income' - clearly NOT the same thing.

  Published: April 22, 2008 2:58 PM

• xg

  Embarrassing article.

  You know, I've always subscribed to idea that if somebody is pro free market, they are either stupid, naive, or dishonest.

  I'd imagine you were a mix of the first two, trying to cover it up with some nice fancy words. I mean, because you can use greek loan words without picking up a dictionary, you must be the sorta guy who reads Kant, right?

  Brazil has one of the freest markets in the world. Norway has a massive welfare state, and has the highest tax of anywhere in the world.

  Let's compare.

  Man, those oppressive market policies are really fucking over those Norwegians, aren't they? I mean, they are practically starving over there.

  Get a grip. Drop the climate change skepticism. I hope you get paid to write this bankrupt drivel, because if you don't - congratulations, you are a fucking moron. You're obviously not good at this pseudo-academia, go outside and grow potatoes.

  Seriously, you could be a good farmer. Shit bloggers are two a penny. People who can grow good beans, now these people are useful.

  Published: April 22, 2008 3:58 PM

• Bystander

  Brazil is one of the freeist markets in the world? Are you kidding?

  Index of Economic Freedom lists Brazil at 101. Norway is 34. Among the many problems in Brazil is a very high amount of corruption. Taxes are "burdensome" an inflation is very high.

  I think you don't know what a free market is.

  Published: April 22, 2008 4:57 PM

• Inquisitor

  Xg, besides factually incorrect ad hominem attacks, do you have much of a case against markets besides ignorant comparisons between hampered market economies? No? Then do us all a favour and shut up.

  Published: April 22, 2008 5:43 PM

• Owen

  It doesn't matter how "market driven" the food production is...if those people in Africa have no Money they will starve.

  The only way to guarantee people food in their mouths is to initiate a Georgist land rent system which ensures that each person has the land and/or resources to provide for their food. In the modern day this takes the form of a land rent - 100% redistribution system.

  If not, then don't bother claiming you can feed starving people because profit driven food production will not necessarily reach people with no money. It will simply make things better for those that have jobs/money.

  Published: April 22, 2008 7:58 PM

• Green-Commie

  xg,

  I've seen some douche bags come here and troll, but you have lowered the bar to new lows of douchebaggary.

  Oh boy, next time why don't you exalt the free market of Venezuela in your example, you retard. At the very least audit a basic-Econ class at your nearest JR College so you can understand what the difference between a"free-market", socialist, coroporatist state is.

  Published: April 23, 2008 12:05 AM

• Owen

  Xg:

  The free-market is the best way to organise scarce resources.

  Socialism is a way to ensure that everyone gets a share.

  Each has their problems. Free-markets are not designed to feed EVERYONE but just everyone with enough resources to pay for it.

  Socialism causes waste and misallocation of resources on a grand scale.

  The answer is to use the simplicity and power of the free-market whilst adding some small inbuilt protections for those that cannot feed themselves.

  That is where Henry George had the answer. He believed completely in the free-market on one proviso: That each person always has enough resources, enforced by the state, to sustain their own life. Outside of this the free-market is the best option.

  Published: April 23, 2008 4:44 AM

• Juan Fernando C.

  
  Owen:

  Let me comment below your own text:

  The free-market is the best way to organise scarce resources.

  Socialism is a way to ensure that everyone gets a share.

  Each has their problems. Free-markets are not designed to feed EVERYONE but just everyone with enough resources to pay for it.

  *Free-markets are not designed. Plus if you research what Say's Law means plus some observation of history, you will find that feeding others/hiring/partnering is required to make a profit in a way that society goes up the Maslow' pyramid, from "feeding" to education to pure science.

  Socialism causes waste and misallocation of resources on a grand scale.

  The answer is to use the simplicity and power of the free-market whilst adding some small inbuilt protections for those that cannot feed themselves.

  *The family, the charities and similar institutions which are consensual and not coercive (part of the market, not of the State, in sum) do just that. No need to "add" things at gun point.

  That is where Henry George had the answer. He believed completely in the free-market on one proviso: That each person always has enough resources, enforced by the state, to sustain their own life. Outside of this the free-market is the best option.

  *But the State creates misery where there was only poverty throughout human History. Some "option"

  Published: April 23, 2008 8:41 AM

• Juan Fernando C.

  Plus:

  Market driven means: producing at price/quality ratios that enable people to buy. Markets are not about production in a vacuum, they are about production for someone's consumption. When a small farmer goes to the sunday fair, that's the market at work. That simple mechanism has kept humanity alive and thriving.

  Published: April 23, 2008 8:45 AM

• There goest the "G" rating.

  I hope the government censors don't read this as the Mises Institute will have to put a warning on the front page and ask for credit cards to enter.;-)

  Anyway, the current food price increases are simply the product of taking food production the US and making a subsidized product Ethanol.

  THEY ARE NOT CAUSED BY INCREASES IN DEMAND!!!! If people around the world want food then it is GOOD for US, Mexican, Chilean, Brazillian farmers.

  But in the US farmers are stopping making their old crops to grow corn for ethanol and stopping raising cattle to use the corn for ethanol.

  The other major food exporters are scrambling to supply the US with food as food prices rise there at the expense of the less wealthy folks in Mexico, Latin America, Asia and Africa.

  Never forget also that the farmers not growing for ethanol did not expect there to be a big demand as government fiat is hard to predict.

  Published: April 23, 2008 9:21 AM

• Jean Paul

  The Georgist lust to impose land rents is something I will never understand. The land tax is an inescapable debt, effectively an 'existence tax' swelling the cost of every transaction.

  If the objective is to ensure each person has the resources needed to subsist - a goal I can agree with - then putting those resources under indefinite threat of confiscation is a horrible foundation.

  Published: April 23, 2008 9:24 AM

• Scott D

  You know, I've always subscribed to idea that if somebody is pro free market, they are either stupid, naive, or dishonest.

  If ignorance is bliss, you must be grinning ear to ear. Are you one of those morons who came out recently to praise the misunderstood genius of Fidel Castro?

  Published: April 23, 2008 9:26 AM

• Mike

  Yes, the best thing for society is a free market, as long as the market for resources is socialized.

  Serious question for some of you, what do you think resources are and how to they come about?

  Published: April 23, 2008 10:20 AM

• olmedo

  the food crisis, as well as the oil crisis, we are living today is a classic case of the austrian business cycle theory.

  easy money around the world has created massive mal-investments in final production goods (houses, cars, etc) and, are those mal-investments have taken away limited real resources from begining stages of productions (raw materials and commodities) as is the case of agriculture.

  i am a farmer myself ,in panama, and recently i have been desperately looking for a farm tractors and , to make a long history short, they are on waiting lists in factories all aver the world beside having almost doubled in price. (panama has no tariff on farm equipment). however, if you are looking for a house or a car there are plenty f choices and deals available.

  
  clear case of ABCT.

  olmedo

  Published: April 23, 2008 11:00 AM

• Francisco Torres

  It doesn't matter how "market driven" the food production is...if those people in Africa have no Money they will starve.

  There is always SOMETHING to trade, even in the absence of currency. The problem is that most starving people live in places where trade is discouraged.

  The only way to guarantee people food in their mouths is to initiate a Georgist land rent system which ensures that each person has the land and/or resources to provide for their food. In the modern day this takes the form of a land rent - 100% redistribution system.

  .... with the result that HUGE tracks of land will be wasted. Already tried - "been there, done that" - in Russia, China, Mexico, take your pick. Not everybody can be a farmer.

  If not, then don't bother claiming you can feed starving people because profit driven food production will not necessarily reach people with no money

  Again, there is always something to trade.
  

  Published: April 23, 2008 8:27 PM

• Francisco Torres

  Brazil has one of the freest markets in the world. Norway has a massive welfare state, and has the highest tax of anywhere in the world.

  Brazil exports food. People in Brazil are not poor because of a lack of a welfare state, but because of a lack of property rights. Even in Norway, what's yours IS yours, even if you are taxed. Imposing a welfare state on a country like Brazil would drive its tenuous economy to the ground, since there would be too many tax consumers and very little tax producers.

  Published: April 23, 2008 8:31 PM

• Owen

  Francisco Torres:

  "there is always something to trade."

  And what a poor person can gain from trade is not guaranteed in the free-market to be able to satisfy their basic needs.

  Only Georgism or socialism of some sort can achieve that.

  Published: April 23, 2008 11:38 PM

• Daniel

  
  The article is somewhat okay. It does show how intricate is the subsidy/tarifs state mess deep to the problem. But it misses to show the figures of world/US food production and biofuel influence on that. If biofuel production divertion is small and food production/world trade is similar than the fault is on the ABCT as olmedo put it. I was looking up some article that would show this figures but apparently reporters can't do the minimum besides writing opinion rather than facts.

  Oh the misery! Georgian socialism and outright anti-market ignorance? What does this article have to atract people who never read Mises right here at Mises blog?

  To Olmedo:
  My intuition was on inflation as the cause for this crisis but your arguments feels right too. What is still uncertain is how US inflation (recently sky-high and causing ABCT effects as the morgage-crash credit-crunch) affects those countries Central Bank inflation. This could be the main ingredient in food prices. I am still looking the numbers to see if that's the case.

  Published: April 24, 2008 12:53 AM

• Owen

  Daniel:

  I read Mises. So what's your point? Someone cannot read something without agreeing 100% exactly with every single minute piece of it (like that has ever been the case in politics)?

  Published: April 24, 2008 4:43 AM

• fundamentalist

  Daniel: "What is still uncertain is how US inflation (recently sky-high and causing ABCT effects as the morgage-crash credit-crunch) affects those countries Central Bank inflation."

  One way it works is like this: the US buys something from say a Brazilian. The Brazilian changes the dollars into Brazilian currency (I'm sorry I forgot the Brazilian currency) at the bank. Since most banks use dollars as reserves, the new dollars increase the reserves of the bank so the bank loan out more or its own currency. Because the dollar is a reserve currency, the US spreads its inflation around the world.

  Another way it works is that by increasing demand in the US, prices rise in the US. But since we have such an integrated world market, the US price for food is the world price. For example, poor people in Africa pay the same price for corn as rich people in Houston.
  

  Published: April 24, 2008 6:49 AM

• TokyoTom

  Sean, you are exactly right in your chief diagnosis and prescriptions, but naturally I have a few observations about your rhetoric and side issues.

  First, you might ask Jeffrey Tucker to fix the link so that those who read your article can click straight to this page rather than having to look through all of the blog posts.

  Second, you almost sound like a radical enviro here, or at least acknowledge that there are some problems for which Austrian economics has solutions to offer - good for you!

  Political short-termism, together with poorly defined or non-existent property rights, have led, in too many potentially fertile parts of the world, to a "tragedy of the commons," often leading to maltreated topsoil, which have been stripped of nutrients and allowed to become dispersed in the dust storms or flash flood run-offs which typically ensue. A little scrutiny will often reveal that, in many instances, the "desertification" which the Malthusians so frequently include in their litany of woe is little more than a characteristic failure of either collectivism or banditry.

  The same "tragedy of the commons" phenomenon is one Mises himself noted with respect not merely to "collectivism", but more generally for unowned resources and resources where ownership is incomplete and actors are allowed to generate external costs. Can I venture to offer a few examples? Might the problems you point to relating to inefficient water usage have something to do with poorly defined water rights, government subsidies and regulation of distriibution? How about the exploitation of tropical forests, the oceans, even the atmosphere?

  Third, I think it is interesting that you can on the one hand declaim the "whole mummery of the biofuel movement represents", then refer to "politicians' feather-bedding of relatively well-off Western farmers ... [for the benefit of] giant agribusiness concerns", the "loot of consumers' and taxpayers' pocket books", but instead of talking how ADM and others have so neatly manipulated government to produce the highly profitable "bio-fuel" policies that suit them, you prefer to focus your scorn on "the self-haters in the left-wing commentariat" and "well-nourished, tax-sheltered Über-eaucrats". I have no problem with you pointing to foolish policies; indeed, you do us a service. But how about saving all of your sneers about fools on the left - who are not skimming form consumers - and actually paying a little more attention to our rent-seekers at home who have done so well at getting everyone to dance to their tune?

  Fourth, as for the "Carbophobics", even if it is rather too late to do much to forestall the climate changes that are already upon us via "mitgation" measures, surely you might also note that we need to adapt to climate change, including its likely affect on water supplies and growing conditions. http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5h5FlWAdkq64cLClU_kXJnQeYiAMQ; http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1097594;

  Fifth, while you are of course exactly right here: "let farmers plant for food and feed and let the fruits of their labors circulate unhindered around the world, absent tariffs, quotas or subsidy payments, so ensuring both their most equitable distribution and the least possibility of giving off false signals and creating perverse incentives to mislead either consumers or producers," why do you feel it necessary to blunt the force of your own arguments (for the need for freer markets and clearer property rights to put an end to "rtagedies of the commons" by capping it all off with "hateful shrilling" about "the eco-eugenicists who positively ache for great swathes of that "pest species"?

  Is it the hateful, or the greedy, who are running and mismanaging our ships of state?

  Why can't Austrians realize how much common cause they have to make with these others - the contemptible environazis - who share with them pretty much the same concerns about resource mismanagement, but haven't yet grasped that it is government and its misuse by greedy insiders that are the real problem? Is is so much easier to hate than to find and makes allies and actually be effective?

  Published: April 24, 2008 7:27 AM

• Mike

  I'll tell you what Tom. Paul Ehrlich has two upcoming seminars here in the near future. I'll try to attend at least one and report back on whether there is any validity to the statement about "eco-eugenists who positively ache for great swaths of that "pest species", humanity, to perish."

  Published: April 24, 2008 9:49 AM

• Inquisitor

  First Georgist I've seen to admit they're a socialist.

  Published: April 24, 2008 10:26 AM

• N. Joseph Potts

  . . .a starving, frightened world fills the sea with grain.
  Just heard that one (again) today. Then as now.

  Published: April 24, 2008 1:57 PM

• Owen

  Inquisitor:

  So if someone said the Russians helped beat the Germans...that person is Pro-Russian?

  If someone says that China has a strong economy they support the Chinese Government?

  If someone says that John McCain has a the strongest Military history out of the three candidates...they are pro-john McCain?

  That's pretty screwey logic mate.
  Ever heard of a fallicious argument? Well guess what? You just made one!!

  Another Gem from Unquizita

  Published: April 24, 2008 7:37 PM

• TokyoTom

  "a starving, frightened world fills the sea with grain."

  It's a Question of Balance, Joe, and a very good one. How is it we are here?

  Because most of us don't realize that our governments are machines of plunder on behalf of elites, who are happy to milk us and shift costs to us and others.

  Published: April 24, 2008 10:38 PM

• TokyoTom

  Mike, I hope that when you listen to what Ehrlich and other scientists have to say about man's impact on the natural world, you will consider how it might be that the lack of clearly defined or enforceable property rights in the third world (and to some extent even closer to home) results in, as M E Hoffer put so well on another thread, "the literal destruction at the end of many of the chains of demand most of us are pulling." http://blog.mises.org/archives/005667.asp#comment-103260

  Shall Austrians leave to scientists and enviros any concern about the destruction of resources elswhere produced when Western demand is coupled with a lack of effective property rights, and focus instead on hating those obvious misanthropes?

  Is that the clear-sighted strategy you are suggesting?

  Published: April 24, 2008 11:13 PM

• Grant

  I'm not seeing the point of using Georgism to feed people? No one in a free-market economy goes hungry anyways. The homeless in America likely eat better than the people did under communist agricultural polices (where tens of millions died).

  If the third world had freer markets, they wouldn't be starving. Forced redistribution isn't going to work, because third world citizens don't vote in the first world, and therefore cannot gain political control of its resources. If they were a part of first-world electorates they have better policies, better immigration opportunities and wouldn't be so poor to begin with.

  Published: April 25, 2008 12:40 AM

• Owen

  Grant:

  "The homeless in America likely eat better than the people did under communist agricultural polices"

  MMmmm MMMmmm....you are referring to the hegemonic superpower currently the richest of any country that has ever graced this earth. The one that is home to immense natural and human resources.

  A country that is by no means free-market as is meant in the way people mean it on this board?

  That same one?

  ...and you are astounded that their well-subsidized "poor" are well fed?

  Um, try Africa, South east asia and parts of South America...but even then you will struggle to find a tryly free-market state. For if you did find true 100% free markets states, there you would find some of the greatest wealth but also the most poorest of poor living a much ruder existence than you have so far imagined.

  You are right that the resources that could be used to feed and enrich the poor have been stolen from them. But that is not a fault of redistribution, in fact it is the exact opposite.

  Published: April 25, 2008 1:54 AM

• Inquisitor

  Owen, if someone says a resource should be socialized, they are a socialist to that extent. Pretty sound logic.

  Published: April 25, 2008 8:33 AM

• Mike

  Tom,

  During the past several years of post-graduate education in a natural resource field, I've thought often about the problems caused by lack recognition of just property rights. To suggest that Ehrlich or most of those who consider themselves environmentalists really care about, or even recognize, this is truly naive (I sure haven't met any in my program or others I have worked with). The lesson of the Tragedy of the Commons is utterly lost on them and their bizarre conclusions are what is taught to undergrads (too many people, no regulation). When it comes to the "greatest problems of the day", I've yet to attend a seminar where "too many people" was not generally considered the ultimate cause (usually with palpable disdain for the species). To bring up property rights is to invite blank stares if not derision (they despise all property rights, minus the ones they claim).

  Austrians haven't and won't leave so-called environmental concerns to enviros because their contribution to the field already dwarfs the work of establishment environmentalists. I'm suggesting that we continue that course _while_ hating those that would have us dead if they had a choice. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

  As far as "destruction of resources" in the "natural world" (whatever that is) I really don't give a damn. My only concern is just property rights. What is commonly referred to as destruction of resources (e.g., clearing a virgin forest to put up a Super Wal Mart) is simply an excuse for exercising state power. My concern is theft of resources (e.g., if Wal Mart acquired the property through eminent domain), not what is done with them.

  Published: April 25, 2008 11:14 AM

• Mike

  Owen,

  Wow, I thought even the Marxists gave up decades (a century?) ago on the claim that the poor would become poorer, in real terms, in free market economies. Maybe you didn't get the memo; that was yet another thing Marx didn't really mean.

  Published: April 25, 2008 11:21 AM

• Owen

  Mike:

  There is no guarantee in a pure free market that the poorest will be fed.

  With minimal redistribution in order to ensure necessities...they would definately get fed.

  That is the difference. And it is huge.

  Published: April 25, 2008 6:14 PM

• IMHO

  A few visits ago, Mises published postings by someone who bragged about how they would shoot people in the head if they trespassed and made comments about how I was a statist (I am a minarchist) who wasn't going to leave Mises peacefully. Now you publish posts such as xg's which are insulting and contain obscenities. I didn't find the postings of either of these individuals to be particularly civil or intelligent.

  But you won't publish a post that focused on some basic applications/observations of economic issues concerning the food supply.

  Sorry I don't live up to your standards, but I don't believe in trying to frighten people away from the website or the use of obscenities as a means of expressing oneself.

  Published: April 25, 2008 7:41 PM

• Inquisitor

  IMHO, could be an issue with the site rather than anyone blocking your post.

  Published: April 25, 2008 7:55 PM

• greg

  Green-Commie> At the very least audit a basic-Econ class at your nearest JR College so you can understand what the difference between a"free-market", socialist, coroporatist state is.

  Perhaps you are too optimistic about what they teach at the local JC. But I suppose it is better than nuttin.

  Published: April 25, 2008 8:07 PM

• IMHO

  Hi Inquisitor,

  Hope you're doing well.

  When I submitted the post, I received a message that it was accepted and subject to review by the "owner of the blog."

  I spent over an hour putting that post together!

  Published: April 25, 2008 8:55 PM

• TokyoTom

  IMHO: You might very well have run into a problem with the new blog filters, which automatically withhold posts that have more than a link or two in them (and flag such posts to the thread owner as "likely spam"). When this first happened to me, I simply put up the post on my blog, and Jeffrey Tucker took note, explained the situation and let my initial comment through. The thread owner can also let such comments through, but I guess not everyone wants to bother looking through what is likely to be spam.

  For this reason, you should definitely save copies of any posts that have more than a link or two.

  Regards,

  TT

  Published: April 25, 2008 9:42 PM

• TokyoTom

  Mike:

  "I've thought often about the problems caused by lack recognition of just property rights. To suggest that Ehrlich or most of those who consider themselves environmentalists really care about, or even recognize, this is truly naive."

  Naive? Did I suggest that Ehrlich or most enviros understand that property rights issues lie at the bottom of environmental problems? Heck, most folks don`t understand this, much less the enviros. They just think pollution is evil and that governments let polluters get away with too much. I agree that their lack of understanding itself presents a problem, but also an opportunity to educate. There are of course many enviros who do understand, and support property rights approaches.

  The rest of your comments are similarly muddled:

  - environmentalism is the child of the heavy pollution and obvious misuse of government in the 60s and 70s, both of which resulted from corporate statism in subverting common law protections for property rights and from a military-industrial complex run amok. Enviros didn`t create the big government that they needed to fight. What they did do was to inadvertently add to it. Is hating enviros a good way to make them see where they went wrong?

  - Yes, Austrian insights, as applied by "free-market" environmentalists like John Baden, Terry Anderson and Don Leal have proven useful domestically. But these folks are, like Cordato and other Austrian urge, problem-solvers, not haters.

  - You say, "As far as "destruction of resources" in the "natural world" (whatever that is) I really don't give a damn. My only concern is just property rights. What is commonly referred to as destruction of resources (e.g., clearing a virgin forest to put up a Super Wal Mart) is simply an excuse for exercising state power. My concern is theft of resources (e.g., if Wal Mart acquired the property through eminent domain), not what is done with them."

  Well, you don`t give a damn, you say. That`s YOUR preference; others have theirs.

  You say your concern is about the theft of resources in a domestic context - good for you, but does the world end at our borders? I am very obviously speaking primarily of (and Ehlrich is concerned about) the destruction outside the West, which results from the very real theft of resources by the state and elites, as as from the lack of effective property rights in open-access commons. As a result of these property rights problems, Western market demands contribute to resource destruction abroad. Ehrlich and others are perfectly right to be concerned about such destruction, even as they fail to understand the institutional underpinnings - and your hatred of such people does nothing to address the underlying institutional failures, does it?

  Sure, we should also care about domestic resource theft and bureaucratized mismanagement, but in my view it is a drop in the bucket. Feel free to have your own perspective, and to hate me for mine.

  TT

  Published: April 25, 2008 10:55 PM

• TokyoTom

  Mike, FWIW, you are obviously not alone in thinking that the best way to solve problems of property rights, statism and government mismanagement is to hate enviros and worry about Green fascism.

  Ron Bailey at Reason does just that in the food shortage/population context, as I note here: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/04/25/food-shortages-ron-bailey-takes-up-the-cry-are-malthus-and-quot-green-fascism-quot-on-the-march.aspx.

  Further, of course you also fit neatly into the grand tradition of informed commentary here: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/04/17/nick-kristof-on-politics-why-we-conclude-that-i-m-right-and-you-re-evil.aspx.

  TT

  Published: April 25, 2008 11:21 PM

• Owen

  Tokyo Tom:

  There is just one problem with the idea that international waters or the atmosphere could be turned into private property.

  Property is a right. A right must be enforced by laws. Since there is no such thing as effective international law, a property right in those "commons" cannot yet be established. Maybe sometime in the future it could happen though.

  There are international treaties but these are just treaties at the moment.

  Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ)'s are different and are recognized as the sovereign jurisdiction of a government. Therefore a government is able to protect and enforce property rights in it's own waters...as is already done to a limited extent. The government could go further and allow the assets themselves to be "owned" but at the moment, erring on the side of caution, most governments "lease-out" the use of their waters in the way of quotas and fishing rights for defined periods.

  Published: April 28, 2008 4:12 AM

• TokyoTom

  Owen, yes there are difficulties with resources that are not effectively owned. We should be aware of such difficulties and instead of looking for ideological enemies should be thinking about how to address real problems.

  Austrian economics doesn`t insist that purely private rights are the end or or be all, much less insist that the state play a role in creating, clarifying or enforcing such rights. It may be helpful if state does, but any state action carries risks of rent-seeking and incompetence.

  Within their own EEZs, the US and many other governments have done a predictibly poor job of resource management, precisely because the government trumped private property rights. Fortunately after free-market enviros started studying and writing about what has worked, things are now swinging back in the right direction in the form of ITQs or individual transferrable quotas.

  Governments could expressly recognize such rights in fisheries on the high seas, which might help to end the destructive free-for-all now underway. Such rights would certainly be a good way to step away from the politicized nonsense over whaling.

  As for the atmosphere, clearly it cannot be privatized. But just like ranchers who share a range, it is possible for large users to reach shared agreements about how to use the atmosphere. Perhaps it might even be possible to concede that our governments have to act as our proxy in international discussions.

  TT

  Published: April 29, 2008 2:48 AM

• Owen

  TokyoTom:

  EEZ = good work done in many countries so far with tradeable quotas.

  High Seas = ineffectual agreements so far because governments cannot yet agree.

  Atmosphere = Kyoto Agreement which is gathering momentum slowly.

  Antarctica = great success so far with all countries recognising it as a natural reserve to be free (so far) from mineral exploration or destructive scientific experiments.

  Published: April 29, 2008 5:26 AM