Re: Wages, Inflation and Social Security

From: Jim Blair (jeb_at_wisc.edu)
Date: 01/20/05 

Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:16:56 -0600

"New Dark Ages" <nda@ignorance.is.bliss.invalid> wrote in message
news:MPG.1c5721b754a4d8bb98a053@news.verizon.net...
> I guess it's just a good thing for us that some enterprising little
> *** didn't think to claim ownership of the ocean, 300 or 400 years
> ago. Think of the usage fees and rents they could have racked up!
> Why, their decendents would have been the very wealthiest and most
> powerful people on earth today.
>
> And, if it had happened during that time period, they'd probably be
> French to boot!

Hi,

The British did establish some ownership rules for the oceans, when they had
the navy to enforce them. Remember the old "Three mile limit"? But more
recently that has been expanded to the 200 mile economic exclusion
zone--with some countries claiming 300 miles. And that is likely a good
thing. Having the oceans as a "commons" has resulted in overfishing and has
made it a garbage dump for anyone.

And I think open water is different from open land. It is harder to fence
off. The open range in the US west didn't end until barbed wire was
invented.

Open range worked in the West as long as the population density was low and
cattle could overgraze an area and just move on to another. But when there
were enough people that it would take agriculture to feed them, the open
range had to be replaced by farms and managed land use.
>
> The notion of land ownership is just as goofy, if you argue from
> first principles.

I think that it is less "first principles" than economic necessity: farms
and owned-managed land is more productive than open range-commons, which has
the Tragedy of the Commons problem.

http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/4834/common.htm

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