This first chapter is also of particular interest to me, as I traveled extensively through the State of Montana two years ago while retracing the Lewis and Clark Trail - and I'll additionally find myself in the town of Big Sky, MT next week on business for work. The chapter certainly held my interest, and was a good read, but the more I reflect on it, the more it has left me unsatisifed. In fairness, we probably shouldn't expect a steak in the first chapter of a 500-or-so page book, but I'll see if I can express some of these iniital thoughts.
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > A similarity to my home town of Morgan Hill, Ca. to the Bitterroot Valley > is the contrast in attitudes of the old timers; farmers and ranchers with > sizeable land holdings and upper-middle class to upper class professionals > with a fondness for the small town atmosphere in close proximity to a > major metropolitan area. Morgan Hill has a slow-growth policy that allows > a limited number of new housing units per year. This is frustrating to > landowners because there is a huge demand for housing in the area. It seems to me that this policy is a boon for existing landholders in Morgan Hill, due to the artificially limited supply of housing. The big losers are anyone who wants to move to Morgan Hill, as they will find the price of housing there artificially inflated. > One interesting conundrum he discusses is the conflict between businesses > that exist to make money and "moral obligations" to clean up after > themselves. Is this a good argument against the preeminence of a free > market economy or can we have both a strong economy and a clean > environment? I don't think so. First, I think that Diamond unwittingly expresses some bias by using business as his primary example. I think a strong case could be made that it is simply a human tendency to avoid wanting to clean up after onesself. For example, one need only drive through West Virginia and see the instances of household trash being dumped on public lands by those who don't want to have to pay for trash removal. Likewise, Diamond's examples of householders who are unwilling to pay for the removal of decrepit dams located on their property also indicates that this phenomenon is hardly limited to businesses. Secondly, I think it is important to distinguish from a laissez-faire economy and a free market economy. Only the most strident anarcho-libertarians truly believe that government should have no role in the economy. Instead, I would say that at a minimum, most believers in the free market believe that the government has a role in enforcing property rights in the free market. In particular, this would include either prohibiting persons and businesses from dumping waste in a way that negatively affects the property of others, or at least requiring persons and businesses who do so to compesnate those who are affected for those negative effects. > Another interesting point that he raises is the fact that while native > Montanan's are extremely suspicious of government and especially > Washington, they are heavily subsidized by the federal government; "If > Montana were an isolated island, as Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean was > in Polynesian times before European arrival, its present first world > economy would already have collapsed, nor could it have developed that > economy in the first place." Is it hypocritical of Montanaâs people to be > unsupportive of the Federal Government while they have their hand in the > till? This was one of the bigger objections I had to this chapter. Although I don't recall the exact quote you have cited, this is certainly a theme of the chapter. In the setion on forest fires, for example, he contrasts Montanans desiring the US Forest Service to put out any fire that threatens any home - or even any view from a home with some Montanan's "rabidly anti-government attitudes that don't want to pay taxes towards the cost of fire-fighting." The problem here is that Diamond is mixing anecdotal and statistical evidence. For example, in the 2004 Presidential election, John Kerry still received nearly 40% of the vote in the State. I'd argue that this is evidence that it is entirely possible for separate significant groups of Montanans to hold all of the views that Diamond described - without there necessarily being a group of Montanans that hold paradoxical or hypocritical views. Thinking more about the quote you provide from Diamond, I'm not sure that Diamond really does establish that Montanan civilization would never have developed without subsidy from the federal government, nor that Montanan civilization would collapse if this subsidy was removed. Certainly, if Montana were an isolated island, it might never have developed its current civilization - but given that we don't really understand what produces economic development in the first place, that is hardly surprising. At the end of the day, this chapter seems like a laundry list of environmental problems facing Montana. That's all well and good, but a similar list of problems could probably be produced for almost any location you care to name. What doesn't happen is that this list of problems isn't really connected to collapse. I think it would be more surprising if any civilization did not have any problems, but the existence of imperfection hardly implies potential collapse. JDG _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
