FA Note: The international
treaties and agreements cited in the ESA, which authorize the Act, were all
negotiated to protect each nation’s agricultural economies and the
communities dependent on them. Simple logic, and basic economics, both
dictate — if a “market” exists/develops for any species, their numbers
will grow.
This Thanksgiving, I give thanks for something our forebears
gave us: property rights. People associate property rights with greed and
selfishness, but they are keys to our prosperity. Things go wrong when
resources are held in common.
Before the Pilgrims were able to hold the first Thanksgiving,
they nearly starved. Although they had inherited ideas about individualism
and property from the English and Dutch trading empires, they tried communism
when they arrived in the New World. They decreed that each family would get an
equal share of food, no matter how much work they did.
The results were disastrous. Gov. William Bradford wrote,
“Much was stolen both by night and day.” The same plan in Jamestown contributed
to starvation, cannibalism and death of half the population.
So Bradford decreed that families should instead farm private
plots. That quickly ended the suffering. Bradford wrote that people now
“went willingly into the field.” Soon, there was so much food that the
Pilgrims and Indians could celebrate Thanksgiving.
There’s nothing like competition and self-interest to
bring out the best in people. While property among the settlers began as an
informal system, with “tomahawk rights” to land indicated by shaving off
bits of surrounding trees, or “corn rights” indicated by growing corn, soon
settlers were keeping track of contracts, filing deeds and, alas, hiring
lawyers to sue each other. Property rights don’t end all conflict, but they
create a better system for settling disputes than physical combat.
Knowing that your property is really yours makes it easier
to plant, grow, invest and prosper. In Brazil today, rainforests are destroyed
because no one really owns them. Loggers take as many trees as they can
because they know if they don’t, someone else will. No one had much reason to
preserve trees or plant new ones for future harvests; although recently, some
private conservation groups bought parcels of the Amazon in order to protect trees.
The oceans are treated as a commons, and they are difficult
to privatize. For years, lack of ownership led to overfishing. Species
will go extinct if they aren’t treated as property. Now a few places
award fishing rights to private groups of fishermen. Canada privatized
its Pacific fisheries, saving the halibut from near collapse. When fishermen
control fishing rights, they care about preserving fish.
Think about your Thanksgiving turkey. We eat tons of them,
but no one worries that turkeys will go extinct. We know there will be more
next year, since people profit from owning and raising them.
As the 19th-century economist Henry George said, “Both
humans and hawks eat chickens — but the more hawks, the fewer chickens; while
the more humans, the more chickens.”
(Sadly, even Henry George didn’t completely believe in private
property. He thought land should be unowned, since latecomers can’t produce
more of it. Had he seen how badly the commonly owned rainforest is treated,
he might’ve changed his mind.)
Hernando de Soto (the contemporary Peruvian economist,
not the Spanish conquistador) writes about the way clearly defined property
rights spur growth in the developing world. Places without clear property
rights — much of the third world — suffer.
“About 4 billion people in the world actually build their
homes and own their businesses outside the legal system,” de Soto told me.
“It’s all haphazard and disorganized because of the lack of rule of law,
the definition of who owns what. Because they don’t have (legally recognized)
addresses, (they) can’t get credit.”
Without deeds, they can’t make contracts with confidence.
Economic activity that cannot be legally protected instead gets done on the
black market, or on “gray markets” in a murky legal limbo in between. In
places such as Tanzania, says de Soto, 90 percent of the economy operates
outside the legal system. So, few people expand homes or businesses. Poor
people stay poor.
This holiday season, give thanks for property rights and
hope that your family will never have to relearn the economic lesson that
nearly killed the Pilgrims.
Source:http://agenda21news.com/2014/12/thanks-property-rights/#more-3910
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