Originally posted by Exploited
[email protected] 11 2004, 12:46 AM
That is for profit, and that is why they are trying to maximize their sheep's output. You can't give something away for free in a profit oriented economy and not expect it to be abused. Since there is an ability for failure within a capitalist system and competition arises from that, the sheep herder is going to abuse priveliges to win that competition.
It depends on what you mean by 'profit', but basically there has to be some kind of reward system. Because it requires effort (a cost) to work the land, some reward must come out of it otherwise people just won't bother.
For example - see if you would be willing to clean out public toilets or pick up trash from the side of the road for no reward other then an equal subsidy of what you put in. Even if it is for 'the good of everyone else' - you won't be a happy camper.
That is what generally happens in competition, it is an all out win mentality. We've seen it from both sides, N. Korea, USSR, USA, Mexico, S. America and Eurupe and Africa. Africa will wipe out jungles for the short term profits of wood sells, the land becomes unusable and the ecological disasters occure afterwards. S. America has done the samething with the rain forests. USA clear cutting forests all over the Pacific Northwest has caused a lot of ecological disasters with removal of topsoil after mud slides, non diverse replanted forests and removal habitat. Strip minning..ect..ect All at the hands of private industry. N. Korea and USSR's examples are because they were in direct competition with the Western World and cut corners to achieve their desired goals.
Again, a rational corporation who owns a portion of rainforest/mines/etc. will seek to maximise their output (for profit, ie. self-interest). If they don't maintain but just exploit and use up all of their resources they will become bankrupt.
All she is doing is putting in rules where there was no rules before. You had a competition based scenerio above with no rules on how to govern it and with the possibility of failure to spark motivation (motivation directed at personal gain not community gain). If the person above is just wanting to create enough capital to re-invest in another market, she could be more than willing to deystroy the land by maximizing the number of sheep, past the sustaining level of the land, deystroy the land, sell the sheep, make a profit and seek a new market.
Why would she want to destroy the land if she paid for the rights to own it, and could sell the land in the future at a higher price?
All she is doing is putting in rules where there was no rules before. You had a competition based scenerio above with no rules on how to govern it and with the possibility of failure to spark motivation (motivation directed at personal gain not community gain). If the person above is just wanting to create enough capital to re-invest in another market, she could be more than willing to deystroy the land by maximizing the number of sheep, past the sustaining level of the land, deystroy the land, sell the sheep, make a profit and seek a new market.
If the sheep market is not producing enough profit for her to leave that market comfortably, or the price of sheep products falls rapidly, she has an incentive to do the above.
Again why would she destroy her own land? She would be losing an asset meaning even if she did over-graze it to make a profit she would incur a net loss.
Ahh but when something is owned by all and not the few, then people have a much larger stake in what happens to the land that will be handed down to the next generations.
Not a good incentive. If I work solely for the next generation, and the next generation works solely for the generation after that, etc, etc. We are all just slaves to the next generation.
Besides you are hardly going to pass on a very good life if all you ever do is work without any sort of reward.
If there is no profit motive and no do or die market competition, people have a stake in seeing that land survive and the products produced on it survive for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation using it. They also have more say in how well that land is managed, since there is no profit motive to save money, if they desire to dedicate more resources to mainting the land it can be done so through legislative actions.
And how will they decide how to manage the land? Through a democratic system or a massive bureaucracy? The larger the level of management, the greater the difficulty of making any sort of clear cut decision. And if everything is run by democratic means it's going to take an awful lot of time and effort.
Where before it was somebody else's land not theirs, their stake in what happens is less, but now it is their land, they have a greater desire to see to it that it survives. They also have a better means of direct managment that was not before introduced in a private market.
The best form of management is a top-down approach with as few people as possible making the decisions. The greater the level of management, the greater the inefficiency, bureacratic bungles, corruption and game playing.
This is probably why every communist state has always inclined itself towards dictatorship. Because if everything was run by countless management, nothing would ever get done.
Sure, when profit is introduced, it is very hard to get people to be reasonable on what they take for free. Look at what happened to the American Buffalo, free, short term profit, almost extinct.
Another 'commons' problem.
Incidentally, 'crocodile farming' (done for profit) probably saved them from extinction.