If you enjoyed Dances
with Wolves or the sci-fi remake, Avatar (dances with blue people),
you will believe that property rights are the evil ways of the white man. But if you’ve researched the history of that
time, you will find that it was, in fact, the practice of common ownership of
land and animals that was most harmful.
The natives could practice harmful agricultural techniques on the land
which affected more than just themselves and no one could rightly stop
them. And when the Europeans appeared
and heard that no one actually owned the buffalo herds, they took as much as
they could in far more effective ways than the natives were capable of,
technologically speaking.
You see, when you have common ownership of something, like a
pizza open in the middle of a table of a children’s party, there is greater
incentive to grab all you can, while you can; there is almost no incentive to
think about the future. If you don’t
take all you can, then someone else will.
So, compare the buffalo’s situation, a phenomenon which is economically
referred to as ‘the tragedy of the commons’, with the introduction of private property
rights and the plenitude of cows we continue to see today in North America.
What then of the cow of the sea, the whale? To be able to properly seastead and to actually own and/or farm whales would result in far greater numbers of whales and greater living conditions for them.
We can say with absolute confidence that Libertarianism could save the
whales.
But, furthermore, private ownership of any piece of land
creates an incentive to protect what you own.
For example, if you owned a piece of the rainforest, the economic
incentive would be to replant trees and even have the plants and life their
studied for potential medicinal or other productive means. As things are, there is a tragedy of the
commons situation with people clearing as many trees as they can, while they
can. So we can equally say with
confidence that Libertarianism could save the Rainforest too.
