Question 1. Individual Rights

In Atlas Shrugged a number of industrious individuals create factories and industries, and sky is the limit. Suppose, after a period of time, environment is no longer capable of sustaining this kind of development. Rivers and air polluted, oceans and forests destroyed. Everyone is affected, especially those who cant afford breathing masks and water filters. Whose job is it to fix the mess?

Post 1

Saturday, March 26, 2011 - 7:37pm

If someone wants to trash their own property, no problem. When they go to sell it, they won't get much for it. Then the person who purchases it is free to clean it up if they want.

Polluting other people's property and public property is a crime. The person who put unwanted trash or chemicals on another's property is responsible to clean it up.

"Rivers and air polluted, oceans and forests destroyed. Everyone is affected, especially those who cant afford breathing masks and water filters."

Polluting a river is a crime, unless a person owns the entire river. Air pollution: a crime. Fixed volumes of the ocean could conceivably be owned, any pollution that enters another's volume would be a crime. When one is a victim of initiation of force, such as pollution to one's property by another, hopefully the perpetrator is caught soon after he begins. For example in the case of pollution, in many cases the polluter probably won't be able to afford cleaning up. Then the victims of the pollution may be stuck with cleaning it up themselves. A problem common with all sorts of force initiation: the perpetrator is unable to afford restoring the victim's value lost.
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores on 3/26, 7:47pm)

Post 2

Saturday, March 26, 2011 - 9:26pm

Mike,

In Atlas Shrugged a number of industrious individuals create factories and industries, and sky is the limit. Suppose, after a period of time, environment is no longer capable of sustaining this kind of development. Rivers and air polluted, oceans and forests destroyed. Everyone is affected, especially those who cant afford breathing masks and water filters. Whose job is it to fix the mess?

You're making assumptions based on extrapolating current processes and dynamics into the future indefinitely. This is a mistake. If you go back to the time before cars, then you would not be able to breathe well in busy towns -- because of all of the horse manure and poor trash handling, etc. (i.e., because there was less industry).

Now, with a lot more industry, cities like London are cleaner and greener than they were 50-200 years ago. It's not because we have less industry -- we have tons more industry now than we did then. It's because if industrious individuals are left free to create industries, then nearly every old and new human problem gets solved -- or at least gets closer to being solved.

But your question is like the question of the Luddite or the Malthusian, someone who looks at what is before his own eyes or in front of his own nose, and wantonly extrapolates a frozen abstraction of that view indefinitely into the future. On the surface then, it is an arbitrary question. It is a question about something the likes of which has never been seen or shown to proceed in precisely the way that you envision.

So let me ask you this. Let's say it's the year 1665 in London, before "a number of industrious individuals create factories and industries." There is horse shit everywhere. There is trash everywhere. There is disease everywhere (bubonic plague from fleas). There are dead bodies everywhere (literally tens of thousands of corpses).

Whose job is it to fix the mess?

:-)

Ed

Post 3

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 5:48am

If you think about it a little longer, Mike, you'll realize that underdeveloped nations and cultures suffer the most from pollution problems and illness they cause in human beings. Ed is absolutely right.

Post 4

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 8:12am

Dean:

does this mean that a governing body shall exist to oversee the use of natural resources, and which will determine legal framework related to such activities? If this the case how shall such body be formed, and of what kind of people?

Ed:

question is valid, because environment has physical limits. Any philosophy aiming to improve conditions of life in today�s world has to take this into account. During writing of Atlas Shrugged this issue did not exist, but I would like to know in which way Objectivism address this problem?

Teresa:

Cuba is very undeveloped industrially and is still a communist state, which pretty much keeps it away from any kind of progress. I will not bore you with particulars, only that being there I did not get an impression of people suffering from ecologically related illnesses, or anything of the kind. Far from it, everyone is quite healthy, busy diving for sea food and digging for roots. On the other hand it seems like industrial Japan may be facing some serious health hazards, don�t you think?

Post 5

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 9:26am

Mike,

Ed:

question is valid, because environment has physical limits. Any philosophy aiming to improve conditions of life in today�s world has to take this into account. During writing of Atlas Shrugged this issue did not exist, but I would like to know in which way Objectivism address this problem?

The question isn't valid because the environment has physical limits.

Take oil. A Saudi official once said that the Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of stones, and the use of oil won't end because we ran out of oil, either. Instead of doing the same, stale, close-minded, short-sighted process -- over and over and over and over again -- until we have gotten ourselves into a position where we run ourselves all the way out of a natural resource (or alternatively, where we run pollution all the way up to levels seen only in dystopic fiction books), we use entrepreneurial discovery and innovation and markets actually solve problems. They always have and, if reason and freedom prevail, they always will.

Now, you still haven't answered my question about whose job it was to clean up the thousands of corpses out of a pre-industrial city, and you still haven't shown that your question is valid, but I'll still go ahead and answer your question about industrial messes and clean-up. Let's grab the Magic Looking Glass and take a look into our future ... [space age music] ... [Captain Kirk from Star Trek talking about boldly going somewhere] ... [explosion sound and flashing light] ...

Whoa, we are now in the future!

Okay, okay. Now where was this problem you envisioned? Oh wait, I see an instance of it right over there! There is a really big building with a really sooty smokestack pumping what appears to be metric tons of pollution into the air! Aha! We have found one of the culprits! But wait, what's that other building over there with a bunch of industrious people in it? Oh my god, it's a near zero-emissions, fast-breeder nuclear reactor! But what is it's purpose? The same purpose as the sooty building? There's no way to tell.

Let's go forward some more into time and see what happens ... [space age music] ... [Captain Kirk from Star Trek talking about boldly going somewhere] ... [explosion sound and flashing light] ...

Oh, crap. The sooty smokestack building is still there and the nuclear reactor has been turned into public/government housing! No, wait, this is a socialist future!

Gotcha!

Okay, okay, okay, let's get serious. Let's use our Magic Looking Glass to take a look into the future as Ayn Rand had predicted (where industry was left alone) ... [space age music] ... [Captain Kirk from Star Trek talking about boldly going somewhere] ... [explosion sound and flashing light] ...

Oh my god, I see the nuclear reactor, but where did the sooty smokestack building go? If industry was allowed to operate, wouldn't there still be a sooty smokestack building indefinitely into the future? Wouldn't the earth just keep getting dirtier and dirtier and dirtier for as long as industry was allowed to operate?

Instead of a sooty building, I only see a clean pond with birds singing and park benches for the industrious people in the nuclear reactor to go out and enjoy nature on their work-breaks! I guess our original question was answered then -- the dirty building and the clean one were freely competing to outproduce each other to provide energy to a nearby town.

Problem solved.

p.s. And as far as the clean-up went, the nuclear reactor people bought the sooty smokestack building and, owning the property now, cleaned it up in order to get more profits (because people like cleaner environments, and they will work for less wages when they are surrounded with clean air and pristine nature). Ecological forces of nature cleaned up 75% of the sooty smokestack pollution -- just as they did in the largest-ever oil spill (in the Gulf of Mexico) -- and man cleaned up the remaining 25%, in order to make more profits.

Post 6

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 11:28am

Hi Mike,

Welcome to RoR! Others have already given some good answers to your questions, but one thing that I think needs to be identified is the importance of rights -- especially property rights. You wrote, "Rivers and air polluted, oceans and forests destroyed. Everyone is affected, especially those who cant afford breathing masks and water filters. Whose job is it to fix the mess?"

If people own land which includes rivers and forests, and others pollute that land, it is the responsibility of the polluters to clean it up, because the pollution violates the property rights of the owners. One of the reasons deforestation occurs is that the forests are not private property. Where forests are privately owned and harvested, the owners plant new trees, just as farmers plant new crops after harvesting. But on forests that are not privately owned, there's no incentive to do this, so deforestation occurs. If you own land including a river, and others dump garbage into your river without your permission, they are violating your property rights, and are responsible for cleaning it up.

Similarly, if companies are polluting the air and causing health problems to others, they are violating the rights of the people adversely affected by it and the companies are responsible for curtailing the pollution, and the government for enforcing that requirement.

However, as others have pointed out, industrialization has gradually reduced the level of pollution people have been forced to bear, so there's less pollution today than there was centuries ago. I don't know why you bring up Cuba as an example to be emulated. What good does less pollution do people who are forced to live under a dictatorship? Human Rights Watch is but one international organization among others that has accused the Cuban government of systematic human rights abuses, including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, unfair trials and extrajudicial execution. Emigration is also illegal in Cuba. If people were free to emigrate, do you think they'd choose to remain in Cuba versus coming to the United States?

Assuming that Cuba has somewhat less pollution than the U.S., in which country would you prefer to live?

Post 7

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 1:51pm

Ed, you wrote, "A Saudi official once said that the Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of stones, and the use of oil won't end because we ran out of oil, either."

Wouldn't the use of oil end if we ran out of oil?

Post 8

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 2:21pm

Haha, The idea of running out of stones is considerably more silly than the idea of running out of oil.

We'd develop new technologies to satisfy our energy needs before we "run out of oil". Or rather, as oil becomes more expensive due to its increased difficult to find and lower purity, other technologies (nuclear fission most likely) will become more economical.

We may still end up using nuclear energy to create hydrocarbons for situations where we need to power untethered devices. Unless battery technology exceeds the energy density of hydrocarbons, or nuclear energy systems can be made small enough.
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores on 3/27, 2:22pm)

Post 9

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 3:01pm

I checked and here's what the Saudi official, Sheikh Yamani, actually said: �The stone age didn�t end because we ran out of stones. And the oil age won�t end for a lack of oil, either.� So he was referring to the oil age, not to our use of oil. I still don't understand what that means. What does the "oil age" mean if not the period during which people used oil as their primary source of energy? If we truly ran out of oil, such that there was no more to be found or produced, wouldn't that signal the end of the oil age?

(Edited by William Dwyer on 3/27, 3:06pm)

Post 10

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 3:23pm

I'm guessing you already know this...

"no more to be found or produced"

There tons of hydrocarbons currently stored in the earth that vary in purity. Its not so much that it wont be found, but that its found in such poor purity that its not worthwhile to extract it from the earth.

Hydrocarbons can always be produced. Trees make hydrocarbons with the sun's energy. Man can make nuclear reactors that they can then use to power chemical reactions that create hydrocarbons.

Post 11

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 3:41pm

Sure. So what you're saying is that the oil age won't end, because we never will run out of oil, since we'll always be able to produce it. Also, whether or not it's economical to mine petroleum deposits would depend on the level of technology, which theoretically has no limit.

Post 12

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 3:42pm

Bill,

Dean is right about the imperfectly-obvious meaning of the analogy. I got it from Bjorn Lomborg's 2001 book: "The Skeptical environmentalist." A little context might help (p 118-120):

Today, our civilization is heavily dependent on the adequate supply of energy. By the end of the nineteenth century human labor made up 94 percent of all industrial work in the US. Today, it constitutes only 8 percent.

If we think for a moment of the energy we use in terms of "servants," each with the same work power as a human being, each person in Western Europe has access to 150 servants, in the US about 300, and even in India each person has 15 servants to help along.(854) ...

Many have pointed out the apparent problem that -- to uphold our civilization -- we consume millions of years' resources in just a few hundred years. ...

Even if the world used just one barrel of oil a year this would still imply that some future generation would be left with no oil at all.(856)

... this way of framing the question is too simple. According to the economics Nobel laureate Robert Solow, the question of how much we can allow ourselves to use of this or that resource is a "damagingly narrow way to pose the question."(857) ...

Sooner or later it will no longer be profitable to use oil as the primary fuel for the world. The price of oil will eventually increase and/or the price the other energy sources will fall. ...

Asking whether we will run out of oil in the long run is actually a strange question. Of course, in the long run we will undoubtedly rely on other energy sources. The reason why the question nevertheless makes us shudder is because it conjures images of energy crises and economic depression. ... we will see that ... there are good reasons to expect that when the transition happens it will happen because it actually makes us better off.

As Sheik Yamani, Saudi Arabia's former oil minister and a founding architect of OPEC, has pointed out: "the Stone Age came to an end not for a lack of stones, and the oil age will end, but not for a lack of oil.(858) We stopped using stone because bronze and iron were superior materials, and likewise we will stop using oil, when other energy technologies provide superior results.

Post 13

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 4:03pm

The production of synthetic oil was introduced in the 30s and 40s. The technology exists to make long-chain hydrocarbons from esters, or from different petroleum bases than we currently use (partially synthetic). We may discover cheaper methods for synthesizing fuels or find replacements (shale oil), or invent entirely new fuel sources. As has been mentioned, oil won't go away, at worst, it will just become more expensive and we will use if differently.

Gold, for example, would be used as ballast in sail boats if it was cheaper than lead, and for rain gutters, if was cheaper than plastic or tin.

Post 14

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 5:10pm

Ed:

I may not get you right here, so help me out.
Are you saying that people who have complete freedom will always act as you expect them to - in honest and honourable way? If so, then why should they? Historical account shows that many, NOT ALL, individuals who went for profit, had little concern for the environment. Cod is gone, bison is gone, forests are largely gone, indians were displaced, it goes on. This was done largely by private enterprises.
Issue of cleaning up medieval London does not exist, unless you were building a time machine, and therefore I consider it irrelevant to this discussion. Issue of environmental degradation does exist today, and a question of personal accountability too. WHO and HOW must regulate the use of natural resources?

Hi William, thanks for the greeting:

TODAY, I would go for Cuba and here is why. Cuba is a dictatorial State without pretence. There is none of that nonsense talk of freedom and democracy, everyone knows where he stands. There is little incentive to work, but people have LOTS more fun then they do in States. You should see how much time they have on their hands, and what they can do with it! Once again, TODAY.
Regarding levels of pollution - any kind of activity creates waste. Just because shit isnt flooding London does not indicate the great advancement of technology. Any jungle tribe will explain to you why they remove waste from their village.

I would like to ask this question again. Who is responsible for the use of natural resources and how it shall be done?

Post 15

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 6:07pm

Who is responsible for the use of natural resources and how it shall be done?

Well apparently you think it should be a dictator. And you apparently also hate freedom and prefer the prison camp called 'Cuba'.

By all means, make your way to the gulag. Is there any point in convincing you otherwise?

Are you saying that people who have complete freedom will always act as you expect them to - in honest and honourable way? If so, then why should they? Historical account shows that many, NOT ALL, individuals who went for profit, had little concern for the environment.

And why would a dictator be better? Would you expect a dictator to act in an honest and honorable way? If so, then why should he? Historical accounts show just about every single dictator opted for looting and murder, and had little concern for the environment.

(Edited by John Armaos on 3/27, 6:13pm)

Post 16

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 6:10pm

Oh, geez, I'm embarrassed! I completely misread the quotation. The statement -- �The stone age didn�t end because we ran out of stones. And the oil age won�t end for a lack of oil, either.� -- is saying that our use of stones didn't end because we ran out of stones. It ended, because we developed better, cheaper materials for construction. Similarly, our use of oil won't end because we run out of oil; it will end when we find better, cheaper sources of energy.

Duh! :-P

Thanks, Ed, for your explanation and for pointing out the obvious! :-/

Post 17

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 6:17pm

ye know - we haven't run out of whale oil either, as far as that goes... [nor, for that matter, buggy whips]...........

Post 18

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 6:18pm

I would like to ask this question again. Who is responsible for the use of natural resources and how it shall be done?

Again, whoever owns them, and by free market trade, which is exactly how you got here to even ask the question.

Post 19

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - 6:18pm