But, jshore, what makes you think that the companies are stupid and refuse to think about their long-term profitability? Are some? Of course; some people are stupid as well. Are all? Of course not. And as long as we’re taking potshots on compensation to CEO’s, I’d like to point out that the CEO’s big fat pension relies on his company being able to make a profit when he retires… so clearly he does have some incentive to leave behind a company profitable enough to keep on paying him. I’m not trying to deny that there are companies out there that think only in the short term, but I do want to point out that you’ve conveniently pointed out bad apples and ignored good apples, which is a rather misleading generalization.
More than 700 million acres of US land is under federal control. At $1,000 an acre the cost would be 700 billion dollars. The land is probably worth considerably more. Therefore, no one organization or group can afford much of it. Secondly, there is no reason why simply has to be highest bidder wins. Percentages can be designated for sale by usage type, and then the highest bidder within that usage type will win.
Since land is valuable, why can’t the Sierra Club and others borrow capital to buy the land and pay off the debt through use fees?
I’m not a member of any group like the Sierra Club, but I’d contribute $$$ in a heartbeat if they used it to buy and maintain land for non-industrial use. I’d rather have them doing it than the fed.
I don’t think libertarians assume that companies are always wise and think about long-term profitability. The evidence is abundant, as you say. Individuals and groups are also often shortsighted in their thinking and planning; governments and politicians included.
Given that everyone is susceptible to thinking in the short-term, what sort of system best assures balance and long-term thinking?
I lean towards private ownership. Though private ownership is not a guarantee of excellent stewardship, at least the private owner directly bears the costs of failure and thus has the most incentive to use care. Government officials rarely bare the cost of government failure; instead, the cost is passed thru to taxpayers. The evidence of this is abundant too.
I don’t know much about the superfund sites, but if taxpayers are now bearing the cost of cleanup for privately owned lands, that indicates to me that government has failed in two possible ways. First, if regulations were in place to prevent the problem, they didn’t work. Secondly, penalties were non-existent for environmental aggression (pollution) or the private owners were able to weasel their way out of penalties through influence and the short-term weakness of politicians. Laws should exist, and be enforced, against pollution that affects the lives and property of people other than the property owners in question.
That short-term incentives exists for managers is a problem for the shareholders of the company in question. You get what you pay for, so to speak. As shareholders become more aggressive about understanding the incentive structure of a company and the more they demand long-term focus, the better the situation will become. But shareholders are often just as guilty of eating their cake and wanting it too. But I digress.
There isn’t much evidence to suggest that government, especially at the federal level, is very effective in solving many problems, including the stewardship of forests. This shouldn’t be surprising because government does not have much incentive to think long-term, most especially at the federal level. The consequences for failure are nearly non-existent and the incentive for short-term profit (money via graft & taxes, political capital) high. We tend to believe that our government officials are the most honorable, egalitarian individuals in society, but the power they wield, and they manner in which they wield it, suggests otherwise.
In the end, only private owners have their best interests at heart, and they have the most incentive to take care of their interests. They may screw up and destroy their interests, and that is unfortunate, but only they should bear the cost. I’m tired of paying for the mistakes of others against my will. My own mistakes cost me enough!
Check out the Nature Conservancy. They raise funds to purchase lands just as you expressed. They maintain many of the acres themselves.
However, they also turn land over to the government because the government holds the land in trust for everyone.
Not completely true. While a private landowner may bear direct economic costs, there are othere costs as well. Bad land management on larege tracts of private lands – because that really is what we are talking about here - affects people, the economy, the environment far from the land in question. Poor mining techniques may mean groundwater is contaminated, poisoning wells far and wide for generations, not to mention runoff contaminates the entire downstream watershed. Erosion and deforestation have local climatic issues. Then there’s the potential for major forest fires.
So who pays for the cleanup? The private landowner claims bankruptcy and walks away. The true costs are borne by the taxpayers. The real incentive to private land ownwership on such a large scale is profit. There are large timber companies owning large tracts of land to grow their products. Many are good at it. But for them, they are raising crops, and maintaining the land to raise those crops.
Forest ecology requires diversity of plant and animal life. Often that gets in the way of the profit motive because at the end of the day, the company is raising a crop to sell to market and make money. Everything comes down to the almighty dollar.
g9trguy, you said:
“But, jshore, what makes you think that the companies are stupid and refuse to think about their long-term profitability? Are some? Of course; some people are stupid as well. Are all? Of course not. And as long as we’re taking potshots on compensation to CEO’s, I’d like to point out that the CEO’s big fat pension relies on his company being able to make a profit when he retires… so clearly he does have some incentive to leave behind a company profitable enough to keep on paying him. I’m not trying to deny that there are companies out there that think only in the short term, but I do want to point out that you’ve conveniently pointed out bad apples and ignored good apples, which is a rather misleading generalization.”
“Keeping your company profitable” does not at all equate to “sustainability.”
Please give an example of a natural resources industry that had established and maintained ecological sustainability.
Other than Christmas Trees, there probably isn’t one.
Which is why this has nothing to do with the intelligence of CEOs. If there were companies and industries that proved themselves capable of running a eco-sustainable business, the Sierra Club and others wouldn’t be protesting as loudly as they are.
-TGD
Privatization of land ownership would also end in greater habitat fragmentation. There are many “interior” species, meaning species that need large tracts of one type of land, be it grassland or forest, that would be hurt if land were divvied up and managed on the whim of whoever owned each tract. Many of these species are already endangered, threatened, or at least locally diminished already due to habitat fragmentation. I really can’t imagine the mess of trying to manage for TES (threatened, endangered, and sensetive) species over a landscape that is even more fragmented than at present.
Earth to g8rguy. Companies don’t think about anything. The CEO doesn’t need a big, fat pension or even a surviving company if he or she loots the company of $100 milliuon and then gets a $50 million severance package just before the company goes under.
Duckster wrote:
"Forest ecology requires diversity of plant and animal life. Often that gets in the way of the profit motive because at the end of the day, the company is raising a crop to sell to market and make money. Everything comes down to the almighty dollar."
Very true! The companies are very short-sighted.
And I am saying this, running myself a company in the wooden business!
I am mostly buying logs, (sometimes logging), sawing them etc., but I can clearly see that the profit is the main. It is very important for me too, but if the law is the same to all, I can work on the same basis as the other companies.
If the law does not protect enough the forest, the privet companies would and could not either.
Is there any type of business where 80 - 100 % of the companies are not acting at the edge of the law?
Some are always going even to the grey zone, interpreting law as the devil reads the Bible.
And in all business, if You do not make profit, You’re out!
If the other company can press the prices because it does not care about the law, (if there is any), You’re out!
It is always better if the community sells the right to log forest:
The community can see it in larger perspective: the whole state, the next generations, the needs of urban people, etc. etc.
The nature of any country, is the heritage of its inhabitants. Now and in the future.
There are companies, I think in every country, that cares, but if some heavy money buys shares from that company, change the CEO, and the policy can be gone in a night.
If someone is really interested in these questions about ecology versus wooden business, how to produce furniture, building materials, etc. as ecological as possible, please E-mail me.
I do not want to hijack this tread.
Duckster wrote:
"Forest ecology requires diversity of plant and animal life. Often that gets in the way of the profit motive because at the end of the day, the company is raising a crop to sell to market and make money. Everything comes down to the almighty dollar."
Very true! The companies are very short-sighted.
And I am saying this, running myself a company in the wooden business!
I am mostly buying logs, (sometimes logging), sawing them etc., but I can clearly see that the profit is the main. It is very important for me too, but if the law is the same to all, I can work on the same basis as the other companies.
If the law does not protect enough the forest, the privet companies would and could not either.
Is there any type of business where 80 - 100 % of the companies are not acting at the edge of the law?
Some are always going even to the grey zone, interpreting law as the devil reads the Bible.
And in all business, if You do not make profit, You’re out!
If the other company can press the prices because it does not care about the law, (if there is any), You’re out!
It is always better if the community sells the right to log forest:
The community can see it in larger perspective: the whole state, the next generations, the needs of urban people, etc. etc.
The nature of any country, is the heritage of its inhabitants. Now and in the future.
There are companies, I think in every country, that cares, but if some heavy money buys shares from that company, change the CEO, and the policy can be gone in a night.
If someone is really interested in these questions about ecology versus wooden business, how to produce furniture, building materials, etc. as ecological as possible, please E-mail me.
I do not want to hijack this tread.
I appear to be giving my fellow Dopers far too much credit; I’d assumed my meaning would be obvious to the rudest intelligence, but as we have an example of a (somewhat rude, in the other sense of the word) intelligence to whom my meaning was not, in fact, obvious, I’ll clarify.
Quite obviously a company is not capable of thought. I may not know much, but even I, in my infinity credulity, recognize that. However, given that jshore used the word “company” in connection to the point with which I was quibbling, I felt justified in doing the same. I’d have thought it obvious that what I (and, I assume, he) meant is “whatever person or group of people it is that makes the decisions for said companies,” but since this is cumbersome I substituted my choice of words for brevity. Is that clear enough, or is there some further pedantry up with which I must put?
All that said, you are making the same fallacy that jshore is making; namely, imputing to all businessmen the bad character seen in some. It’s an idiotic generalization, which was the entire point of my first post in this thread.
TGD, what has that to do with anything? Once more, with feeling: my point is merely that ascribing bad faith to the timber industry as a whole on the basis of a part is bad logic.
Quite plainly, a forest products company (or, for David Simmons, the person or group that runs said company) is not interested in maintaining a forest ecosystem on privately owned land, but only in maintaining a sustainable harvest of trees. Some people don’t seem to buy even this much, one assumes under the supposition that businesses (or, for David Simmons, the people or groups that run said businesses) are inherently incapable of longterm thinking, thus conveniently ignoring all businesses that have in fact been around for the longterm.
Nor are the managers of companies interested in maintaining a sustainable ecosystem on national forest lands. Unless there is something in it for them why should they? It seems to me then, that any deal that a business person makes with the government for underbrush clearance has to be examined carefully to make sure it is “win-win” and needs to be policed constantly.
It always surprises me that people agree that we need constant police patrols and citizen vigilance to prevent someone from robbing a convenience store of $50, but will assume that business executives can be trusted to handle millions, or even billions of other peoples’ money with no supervision except a lap-dog board of directors.
It gets a little old to listen to people spouting Econ 101 theory when it is discovered if you take Econ 201 that all the 101 stuff was a just simplified approximation for the purpose of introducing the subject and getting the terminology in place.
Of course the deal needs to be examined carefully and the businesses need to be policed constantly; I’m not advocating otherwise, because I’m not that naive.
I’m merely saying that it is an ill founded generalization to suggest that being in business somehow means that a person is greedy and shortsighted, and that it can hence be assumed that he or she will mismanage his or her company’s property. Equally, it would be an ill founded generalization to suggest that being in business somehow means that a person is noble and forward-thinking, and that it can be assumed that he or she will perfectly manage his or her company’s property. All of this is aside from what a business would do with someone else’s property. But businessmen no more come in neat little boxes than do any other segment of society, and I would suggest that people who nevertheless try to put them in neat little boxes are being silly.
Paul Krugman weighs in here
As Woody Allen said, “The battle is not always to the strong or the race to the swift - but that’s the way to bet.”
The temptation to cut corners when the prospective gain is big enough has been demonstrated over many years to be so strong as to make reasonable the expectation that there will be a lot of dishonesty.
I think that generalization is valid enough that it becomes difficult for me to trust GW to make sure that those administering the contracts for private forest thinning are well financed and well supported from the top in the job of policing the job.
“Difficult to trust GW…?” Hell, it is impossible because I think GW conned his way up the ladder and thinks that is the way business is normally conducted. I can’t prove this, of course, but then I don’t have to in order to always be wary of anything he proposes, do I? Is that biased? Of course it is. So sue me.
shrug Just so long as you’re aware that it’s sloppy thinking. It’s no skin off my nose if you wish to engage in it nevertheless. In fact, I suspect that you would find that a rather substantial majority of businessmen are honest, but of course that doesn’t make the news, does it? “Headlines at 6:00 - the CEOs of these 14269 companies are still honest!” Doesn’t make good copy. The fact that honesty among business people is not reported suggests that it’s not news, i.e. that it’s what we would expect.
Written contracts are based on the presumption that things have got to be spelled out exactly with penalties attached for not doing the work as specified. This presumption is a result of long experience in the practice of businessmen bidding low to get the job and then trying to get by doing the least amount possible for the most money they can get. The courts are overloaded by businessmen suing each other over failure to perform.
I fully expect that if GW’s plan is implemented there will be a big fanfare and lots of TV coverage of happy free enterprisers out clearing away the bad old fuel while salvaging thousands of board feed of timber that would otherwise have been wasted.
Then, when the politicians have finished their speeches, the speakers stands have been torn down, the bunting stored away and the spotlight shifts to something else (maybe Bin Laden will have been tracked down by then) somehow the “fire prevention” effort will shift to areas where the timber profits are higher and the need for fuel reduction will become secondary.
Of course, by that time GW will have been retired, I hope, and people will have forgotten all about forest fires. The Forest Service will still be under funded and under staffed and the only thing left to do when fires come will be to say, “Oops,” because the timber industry was after timber, naturally, and not national forest fire prevention.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I absolutely believe, as I think I stated in the related Pit thread on this subject, that if this were to go through, the timber industry would have to be policed. Would that be sufficient? I don’t know. Would merely clearing away the stuff that really ought to be cleared away be economically feasible for the logging companies? I don’t know (I suspect that in fact it wouldn’t be). Is this plan workable? I don’t know. In part that’s due to me not having seen it (let alone seeing the details), and in part that’s due to me not being an expert on these issues anyway.
What I object to are some of the assumptions that I see here, like
(a) Businessmen (or at the very least those in the timber industry) are greedy and unethical[sup]1[/sup]
and
(b) Bush is incapable of coming up with a good plan where environmental policy is concerned.
I agree that the track record is not great and in all probability in learning a bit more about this plan I’ll oppose it. But the rush to judgment I’m seeing here is bothering me; the devil is in the details, and it’s possible (even if unlikely) that in fact the entire idea is not a bad one.
[sup]1[/sup]We continue to disagree on this issue, but it’s a fairly major hijack, so unless you feel the discussion should continue elsewhere I’ll leave you to have the last word on it.
Not to beat a dead horse here, but here is the original quote from me that started this subdebate about the ethics of businessfolk:
This hardly seems like such a radical statement to me. All that I said is: (1) History shows that private ownership of land does not necessarily cure the problem of people doing bad things to said land (not to mention adjacent land, waters, etc.) (2) People react to the incentives they are actually given which is not necessarily the ideal incentive of long-term sustainability that one can dream up as being the goal of a company if one is sufficiently naive about it.
I am not saying businesspeople are innately evil. All that I am saying is that the wonderful invisible hand whereby people’s own desire to advance themselves advances the interests of society as a whole works quite imperfectly and is thus a naive picture (as Adam Smith himself seemed to recognize much more than those who have evoked his name afterwards).
You gotta respect Krugman’s ability to get to the bottom of an issue…And you gotta love his final sentence:
Amen!!!
Hmm… I suppose I misinterpreted you, jshore (continuing to beat the dead horse, but wanting to be honest), in that I read what you were saying as a statement to the effect of “companies are not wise and do not think about their long term profitability,” when the truth is, as you said, somewhere between the two extremes. Mea culpa.
<<As Woody Allen said, “The battle is not always to the strong or the race to the swift - but that’s the way to bet.” >>
Actually it was Damon Runyan. http://www.judoinfo.com/quotes3.htm