Re: Wages, Inflation and Social Security

From: New Dark Ages (nda_at_ignorance.is.bliss.invalid)
Date: 01/20/05 

Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 20:19:50 GMT

jeb@wisc.edu wrote...
>
> "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.

That's true. And unless you can enforce that everyone does what is
in the common good, you really don't have any means of guarding
against selfish misuse of the common resources.

> 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.

So barbed wire is just an enabling technology then. Let's say there
was a technology for, say, electronically fencing off the ocean.

> 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

So 'ownership' of natural resources is a way to provide for their
managed maintenance and use for the common good (eg, living space,
raw materials for economic exchange, food, etc.)?

I'm OK with that. The implication is that for fair economic
compenstation those of The Common have the right to avail themselves
of the benefit provided by those managing that common resource. The
problem I have--and here's where I hail first principles again--is
when exclusion of natural resources is done without regard for the
common good (eg, when a section of beach is marked Private Property,
with violators subject to arrest for trespassing).

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