Talk:Free-market environmentalism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is within the scope of the Economics WikiProject, an effort to create, expand, organize, and improve economics-related articles.. |
| Start | rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale |
| Mid | rated as mid-importance on the importance scale |
 |
This environment-related article is part of the Environment WikiProject to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the environment. The aim is to write neutral and well-referenced articles on environment-related topics, as well as to ensure that environment articles are properly categorized. See WikiProject Environment and Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ. |
| Start | This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale. |
An example is the recent destruction of the once prosperous Grand Banks fishery off Newfoundland. Once one of the world's most abundant fisheries it has been almost completely depleted of fish. If the fishery had been owned by a corporation it would have had an engrained interest in keeping a renewable supply of fish to maintain profits over the long term. They would thus have charged high fees to fish in the area sharply reducing how many fish were caught. They also would have closely enforced rules on not catching young fish. Instead ships from around the world raced to get the fish out of the water before competitors could include catching fish that had not yet reproduced.
Some people maintain that this is not so: to rephrase "The limits to growth" (Meadows et al.), the fishing industry is just a quantity of capital which seeks to maximize return; given a choice between making 10% profit keeping the fishery healthy and 15% profit exterminating the fish in 10 years, the capital will choose the latter, and after 10 years move elsewhere.
Contents |
[edit] Bias
The article seems a tiny bit biased, particularly in the "criticisms" section, where criticisms are given to essentially be rebutted like:
an assumption which is not unproblematic, relying as it does on a conception of natural rights which has been comprehensively rebutted by thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham (who famously described the idea of inalienable natural rights as "nonsense on stilts").
and also statements like:
Economists argue
Presumably we mean neo-classical economists, yet supposedly economists don't make normative judgements, so the cannot really give an opinion on the subject, other than with regards of course to positive judgments. There are a lot of unquestioned assumptions made here, as is often the case in economics.
- Matthew238 23:48, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
this is an interesting topic indeed.
[edit] Eco-capitalism
Is there a difference between eco-capitalism and free-market environmentalism? Shouldn't the two pages be merged? -- C mon 18:04, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Pigovian taxation?
Does the concept of pigovian taxation fall within free-market-environmentalism or is it classified as "government intervention"? (If the latter, then why is auctioning off EM spectrum rights (and then enforcing those auctioned off rights) not also government intervention? Jurgen Hissen 05:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Reversion of edits to objections to tragedy of the commons
I added a comment to the objections section, suggesting that Elinor Oslom's paper is not a denial of tragedy of the commons but merely a solution to it. And the solution she proposes is equivalent to (local) government intervention. This edit was removed, saying that a reference was required. If you read through her paper, I don't even think you'd regard this comment of mine as controversial. Surely we do not require references for everything we put into wikipedia. What's the story? Jurgen Hissen 05:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Related to this, the passage I edited begins with the phrase "countering the tragedy of the commons claim", yet there is no tragedy of the commons claim anywhere in this article. Does anyone know whether this "objection" is still relevant? Jurgen Hissen 05:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Global warming
Are there any free-market proposals to tackle global warming? upsidown 9:49pm, 15 April 2007 (CET)
[edit] More Bias
The article's use of the word "firm" implies that only companies pollute, while governments are historically some of the most egregious polluters. Governments and unincorporated individuals have incentives similar to companies to pollute when goods are public. Landfills and ocean dumping are examples. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aisarosenbaum (talk • contribs) 17:46, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Featured article
Now that my most recent project, United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, seems to be nearing completion, I am ready to turn my attention to this article. I intend to do a comprehensive rewrite to get it to Featured Article status. Sarsaparilla (talk) 12:59, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
