{"id":591,"date":"2012-10-04T02:43:24","date_gmt":"2012-10-04T02:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/?p=591"},"modified":"2014-02-09T05:03:53","modified_gmt":"2014-02-09T05:03:53","slug":"are-we-destroying-the-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/blog\/2012\/10\/are-we-destroying-the-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Are We Destroying the Earth? – Article by Sanford Ikeda"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"The<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Sanford Ikeda
\n<\/big><\/big><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
October 3, 2012<\/big><\/span><\/div>\n
Recommend this page<\/a>.<\/strong><\/div>\n
******************************<\/div>\n
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People often complain that mankind is destroying the earth: that insatiable consumption and relentless production have laid waste to irreplaceable swaths of our planet, and that these activities have to stop or someday it will all be gone.<\/p>\n

Which raises the question: What does it means to \u201cdestroy\u201d something?<\/p>\n

When you burn a log, the log is destroyed but heat, light, smoke, and ashes remain.\u00a0 It\u2019s in that sense that physics tells us that matter is neither created nor destroyed. \u00a0Similarly, cutting down a forest destroys the forest but in its place are houses and furniture and suburbs.<\/p>\n

The real question is: Is it worth it?<\/p>\n

Value Can Be Both Created and Destroyed<\/strong><\/p>\n

What people usually mean when they say mankind is destroying the earth is that human action causes a change they don\u2019t like.\u00a0 It sounds odd to say that my wife, by eating a piece of toast for breakfast, is \u201cdestroying\u201d the toast.\u00a0 But if I wanted that toast for myself, I might well regard her action as destructive.\u00a0 Same action, but the interpretation depends on purpose and context.<\/p>\n

When a missile obliterates a building and kills the people in it, it may serve a political purpose even though the friends and family of those killed and the owners of the building are harmed.\u00a0 The perpetrator\u2019s gain is the victim\u2019s loss.\u00a0 In the political realm, one person\u2019s gain is necessarily another person\u2019s loss.\u00a0 You rob Peter to pay Paul; you kill Jack to appease Jill.\u00a0 It\u2019s a \u201czero-sum game.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the economic realm, however, a thing is destroyed to the extent that it loses its usefulness to somebody for doing something.\u00a0 Someone may want to bulldoze my lovely home just for fun.\u00a0 If she pays me enough I may let her do it and be glad she did.\u00a0 When not physically coerced, a trade won\u2019t happen unless each side expects to gain.\u00a0 If it does happen, and if the people who traded are right, then all do in fact gain.\u00a0 Each is better off than before. The trade has created something\u2013value.\u00a0 If they are wrong they destroy value and suffer a loss, which gives them an incentive to avoid making mistakes.<\/p>\n

Profits and Losses Help to Minimize the Destruction of Value<\/strong><\/p>\n

In free markets gains manifest themselves in profit, either monetary or psychic.\u00a0 (In the short run, of course, you can sustain a monetary loss if you think there\u2019s a worthwhile nonmonetary aspect to the trade that will preserve the profit.)\u00a0 Now, the free market is not perfect, despite what some economics professors say about the benefits of so-called \u201cperfect competition.\u201d \u00a0People don\u2019t have complete or perfect knowledge and so they make mistakes.\u00a0 They trade when they shouldn\u2019t, or they don\u2019t trade when they should.\u00a0 Fortunately, profits and losses serve as feedback to guide their decisions.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another source of market imperfection.\u00a0 People may be capable of making good decisions but they don\u2019t trade, or trade too much, because the property rights to the things they would like to trade aren\u2019t well-defined or aren\u2019t effectively enforced.\u00a0 In such cases their actions or inactions create costs they don\u2019t bear or benefits they don\u2019t receive.\u00a0 The result is that their decisions end up destroying value.<\/p>\n

If I free-ride off the oceans, if for example I don\u2019t pay for dumping garbage into it, then the oceans will become more polluted than they should be.\u00a0 If there is a cleaner, more efficient source of energy than fossil fuels, but no one can profitably use it because the national government prevents anyone from doing so (for example by prohibitions or excessive taxation), then again the value that would have been created will never appear.<\/p>\n

Aesthetics or Economics?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our esthetic sense of beauty is part of what makes us human.\u00a0 If we wish to protect a lake or a valley from development because we think it beautiful, how do we do that?<\/p>\n

To some extent it\u2019s possible to do what the Nature Conservancy<\/a> does, and purchase the land that we want to protect.\u00a0 But that\u2019s not always possible, especially when the land is controlled not by private persons but by the national government, which makes special deals with crony capitalists in so-called public-private developments.\u00a0 In any case, even the free market is not perfect.\u00a0 Economic development and material well-being mean that some beautiful landscapes and irreplaceable resources will be changed in ways not everyone will approve.<\/p>\n

Remember, though, that economics teaches us that an action is always taken by someone for something<\/em>. \u00a0There are no disembodied costs, benefits, and values.\u00a0 In a world of scarcity, John believes saving rain forests is more important than saving the whales.\u00a0 Mary believes the opposite.\u00a0 If we are to get past disagreements on esthetics\u2013essentially differences of opinion\u2013that can turn into violent conflict, we need to find some way to settle our differences peacefully, some way to transform them into value-creating interactions.<\/p>\n

Imperfect though it may be, the free market has so far been the most effective method we know of for doing that.<\/p>\n

Sanford Ikeda<\/a> is an associate professor of economics at Purchase College, SUNY, and the author of <\/em>The Dynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This article was published by The Foundation for Economic Education<\/a> and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution United States License<\/a>, which requires that credit be given to the author.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sanford Ikeda October 3, 2012 Recommend this page. ****************************** People often complain that mankind is destroying the earth: that insatiable consumption and relentless production have laid waste to irreplaceable swaths of our planet, and that these activities have to stop or someday it will all be gone. Which raises the question: What does it means to \u201cdestroy\u201d something? When you burn a log, the log is destroyed but heat, light, smoke, and ashes remain.\u00a0 It\u2019s in that sense that physics…<\/p>\n

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