Actually I think that the question of the general honesty of business men and women is irrelevant. Those operating businesses will do what they think is necessary to make the business profitable. In doing this most of them skate pretty close to the line and now and then some of them fall over it through carelessness or through design.
My actual objection to the Bush plan is that I think it is always unproductive to try to piggyback one objective on top of another and then expect the person with “the other” objective to give dilligent care to the piggyback. If the desire is to cut down the amount of fuel available to feed the destructive type of forest fire then that should be the aim of a separate program established for that purpose.
I think that to sell increased timber cutting in national forests on the basis that forest fire provention will be achieved on the cheap borders on fraud. It seems to me that forest fire management and prevention is an entirely separate field from timber production and the two won’t make a good match. I’m willing to be convinced otherwise by forest experts, but generalized appeals to the “free market forces” and the magic of “good old American entrepreneurial know-how” isn’t going to cut it for me.
I do, in fact, think that GW formulates programs, environmental and otherwise in the manner of a preppie sophmore at a frat house beer bust on Saturday night. I would just point to: *Osama bin Laden, we’ll get him dead or alive. If you are not with us then you are against us. We are going to root out terrorists no matter where in the world they are. * These are all extreme statements that seem on our outer margins of possible accomplishments, if they aren’t in fact impossible. They represent to me a “shoot from the lip” approach that borders on juvenile. In the case of his formulation of the supposed “war on terrorism” he seems to ignored completely the advice to “speak softly but carry a big stick.”
And of course we musn’t forget the President and the Attorney General who insist that a number of legal protections must be abandoned in the name of safety from terrorists. Somehow, along the way the words of Patrick Henry (Give me liberty or give me death.) seem to have been thrown in the ashcan. I guess those are just nice words to quote on the 4[sup]th[/sup] of July but have no relevance to the “real world.”
And those are my gentle opinions of the intellectual depth of GW’s policy formulation.
I realize this is off-topic, but to be frank, give me a break.
Can you explain what you mean by “what they think is necessary” and “most” so that I don’t think them you dreamed these statements up at the frat house last night? A little perspective, please!
Likewise, wouldn’t it be nice if a left-leaning politician just once didn’t characterize a tax cut as “only benefiting the wealthiest 1%” or privatization of social security as “hurting seniors.” Wouldn’t it be great that while they pat themselves on the back for helping “America’s Working Families” they somehow sensed the hypocrisy of turning the tax screws on the working families who create most of our jobs?
I can’t think of a way make “what they think is necessary” any clearer. Sorry but you’ll have to make do with that.
An example of business operators doing what they think is required was the case of the first Firestone 500 radial a number a years ago. This is not the same as the recent Firestone/Bidgestone flap over defective tires. Which, by the way, the company is still trying to explain away because they think such action is necessary to keep the business profitable.
Anyway, Firestone built their 500 radial tire and sold it retail themselves and through Sears tire stores. The tire caused all sorts of handling problems and also there were, as I remember it, some quality problems. Sears began to get a lot of Firestone tire returns from dissatisfied customers. So Sears finally went back to Firestone and demanded that Firestone make good to Sears on all the 500’s that had been replaced. Now Sears was a very good customer of Firestone at the time and Firestone indemnified Sears against losses on the tires but never passed the word along to individuals who bought the tire that they, Firestone, agreed with Sears that the tire was a bad one. However, as is always the case, word leaked out. Just the same, the Firestone executives were doing whatever they thought was necessary to cut their losses and maintain profitability by paying off Sears and trying to keep their retail customers in the dark. Illegal, I don’t know about that, but it appears to me that this sort of action isn’t all that uncommon and it isn’t just a new development. I think Adam Smith might have mentioned similar dangers to consumers in the marketplace.
I didn’t bother with a cite to the Sears part but you can probably find it if you look.
Well I’m intrigued. However, I can’t say that I’m enthused about the Fed holding anything in “trust.”
I couldn’t agree more about costs beyond the direct economic ones. All reasonable, measurable costs should be considered.
To minimize the downstream/external harm issues, we need laws that provide for stiff penalties. Or we need to enforce existing laws if they already exist. If we can clearly show that XYZ Corporation (or Joe Private Homeowner) did something on their property that contaminated someone else’s, they should bear full responsibility (aside: have you ever wondered how many problems are a direct result of someone’s failure to take responsibility for their actions? I think this is another thread.)
Undoubtedly preservation of ecology and raising a crop compete against each other. That’s why they shouldn’t. With private ownership, those of us who want to grow trees for harvest can do our own thing, and those of us who want to create a diverse habitat can do our own thing. Like I said in an earlier post, there are 700+ million acres of federal land. I think there is room for both.
Why anyone thinks the federal government can balance these competing interests successfully is beyond me. Are we endlessly naïve in the face of the federal government’s long historical record of botching things up (and here I’m talking everything, not just forests)? You’ve essentially got politicians torn between environmental votes (and money) and logging votes (and money), and there is plenty of evidence that they sell both sides out when necessary. Sure, Republicans may lean one way and Democrats another, but they both cross the line if enough money and votes are at stake.
You seem rather loose with your statements. You generalize. Do you imply that business persons will literally do what they think is necessary to make a profit? Kill? Steal? Cheat? And if so, what percentage? Does Firestone prove the case or the exception? For every Firestone, how many honest businesses are there? Or are there any?
This is a generalization, so I guess anyone can do it.
I believe I said that they “skate pretty close to the line.” You really need to read more carefully. It seems evident to me that competitive pressure forces this.
Some do kill, some do cheat and some do steal. If you are not on your guard in business deals then you are foolish.
It seems to me that the nature of competition forces very narrow interpretations of what is legal and ethical and very few business lean over backward to give themselves a wide margin clearance from the line. To do so might put them at a competivie disadvantage.
A careful reading of recent news about business practices would give you a feel for how widespread such cases are.
You are at liberty to think otherwise, and good luck to you in that course, but this doesn’t have a lot to do with forest fires.-30-
Fair enough. I suppose I just don’t share your cynicism with regards to trying to do compatible but not identical things at the same time. For what it’s worth (I don’t vouch for the accuracy of these claims) it was mentioned even here that the two are not incompatible (see divemaster’s first post in the thread, for instance). Could a company live only on harvest from forest fire prevention? I think I’m probably safe in saying that it couldn’t, but if some of what we’ve been told about the merits of thinning is correct, then there is no a priori reason that this couldn’t work.
I note that you suggested establishing a separate program explicitly to reduce the amount of underbrush and so forth which fuels forest fires… Could you suggest who you would have do this and how it would be funded? Obviously, this would be a good alternative, but would it work (i.e. could you find people to do it and money with which to pay them without shortchanging other worthwhile programs)?
Well, I think the Forest Service and the National Park Service both have forest management programs for fire prevention. The problem is they are drastically under funded. Funding for such programs should be increased and if private companies can be contracted to do the actual work, fine. Provided it isn’t also part of a timbering operation that is.
Setting priorities in the federal budget is somewhat above my pay grade. Rearranging budgets to accomodate expenses for projects that Congress and the Executive want doesn’t ever seem to be an insurmountable problem. I daresay that room could be found for increased forest management funds if those two branches decided, in their collective wisdom as the saying goes, that it was important enough.
I think it’s reasonable to have suspicions of this basically being a giveaway to the timber industry in sheeps clothing of fire prevention, considering that:
the plan basically calls on timber industries (which are already heavily government subsidized, by the way) to simply gain control of vast areas of land in which they decide what to cut both to prevent fires and then what to cut down to pay themselves for their efforts
there is very little in the way of guidelines or regulation: indeed the only real focus in the proposal is on getting rid of old regulations and making it much harder to appeal or protest specific actions
the department that is supposed to oversee and police this is traditionally underfunded, understaffed, and poorly run, and is now seeing its funds slashed
to boot, Bush has appointed a former timber industry lobbist to oversee the department primarily in charge of doing the policing.
Given all this: how likely does any think it will be that anyone in the timber industry is ever going be sanctioned or fined even if they do overcut even the very high limits? How seriously do you think companies will take these limits if they know how ineffectual they will be?
Take a look at the meat industry. They have a set of health, safety, and quality guidelines by which they are supposed to abide. Do they? Well, they say they do. Do we know that they do? No, because there is a ridiculously small amount of inspectors, so small that they couldn’t possibly hope to routinely, or efficiently, inspect all of the different meat factories.
And every time another person gets e.coli from a burger, it just goes to prove that the industry is neglecting safety standards. There are so many food-borne illness that could have more than likely been prevented, if these companies were following the guidelines set up for them.
Now, meat it food, and food (in theory) should be taken very seriously, more seriously then timber. But, look at the exceedingly poor job the meat industry is doing.
You can’t really expect an intelligent person to believe that the timber industry, which has much less direct interaction with the public and probably much looser guidelines than the meat industry, to be environmentally vigilant.