brown trout and roads
The Washington Post's top story (on the web this morning) is a major road that threatens environmental damage. Major decisions like this require environmental assessments. That is a good thing. But under our present system, these assessments are highly flawed:
- How do you compare highly complicated choices where every decision affects every other decision?
- How do you measure value when someone can make a fortune by dumping waste or monopolizing land, but peace and harmony have no market value?
- If we allow people to choose their own form of government, we create numerous real alternative communities with different strategies and different value systems. Each community has clearly defined borders, so it is easy to compare the results of one strategy with another.
- The freedom to move between communities means we can calculate the market value of each decision by looking at property values.
- Nobody can benefit from monopolizing land or dumping waste, so there are no market distortions.
posted by Chris Tolworthy at 7:06 AM
2 Comments:
It's kind of removed from your point, but U.S. environmentalists have had some major successes in stopping road projects in fragile habitats--the best example being the Legacy Highway in Utah, which would have gone right through the salt marshes along the Great Salt Lake. If there's trout in the way of that Maryland highway, there's a pretty good chance the highway won't happen.
Great news. Credit where it is due. Environmental audits, however slow and inefficient, are a big step in the right direction.
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