Why do we use our natural resources when we know they’re running out?

My first question would be: which ones? I’m not going to argue climate change. I accept it is happening and also that it is – with difficulty – within our power to do something about it.

Let us look at some resources that are running out: gorillas (on my mind at present); they’re in a warzone in the Congo and get shot for food and sport by wandering bands of raiders … rain-forests; they’re cut down by poor people desperate for grazing land for their cows and with no property ownership possible they just wonder from area to area slashing and burning, trees also logged illegally to get sent to China to get made into cheap chipboard furniture … water (in some places) usually due to poor management and the popular belief that the delivery and maintenance of water systems should not lead to water being charged for. Fish; I’ve already discussed.

Oil? But oil isn’t scarce, just controlled by a monopoly looter – OPEC.

Any shortage is as a result of “the tragedy of the commons”; what we own as a collective resource and where everyone is supposed to be responsible ultimately means that no-one is. You remember that line from the movie The Incredibles “If everyone has super powers and is special, then no-one is.”?

Commonly held grazing land often resulted in starvation as people overgrazed to take “more” than their neighbours did and hoped that others would make the necessary sacrifices.

Gordon Gheko said, “Greed is good.” Which is all well and good, but if your political and economic system encourages people to consume more than they produce the result will be shortages.

Say what you like about the evils of corporations, they don’t tend to run out of the goods they sell and produce from the fair ownership of the inputs they need for production.

It is only where the inputs of production are either stolen or commonly held that we get shortages. Any production based on a lie will result in shortages and deprivations. Consider that when you think about your state pension system.

You might find this piece by Chekov illluminating of that “whole wide world” thing…..

http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/ac/jr/197.htm

BTW, your comments on the nature of “unowned” resources seem to me very reasonable. Now if you could explain why we feel no stake in the future of our natural resources when we know they’re running out…. Or is that where Tolstoy comes in….

Take the fishing industry. This is popularly called the “tragedy of the commons”. If everyone can fish in international waters (or in national waters unprotected by a navy) then everyone will. Since no-one “owns” the resource everyone has the desire to get as much out of it as he can before others get it first. This means that the resource gets used up.

Perhaps oil would be included in this? Different companies feed off the same oil sources but from different spots. This is greed, but it is also an inability to price scarce goods appropriately. Oil pricing isn’t US oil companies fault – blame OPEC … a cartel with no thought but its own profit and no capacity for long-term investment.

We are unlikely to run out of iPods since, if they become scarce, speculators leap in, stockpile, and then sell them at significantly higher prices. This reduces demand, allows others to get in to the market, and then supply increases lowering prices again.

Harder to do with things that no-one owns, such as rain forests.

If a single company owned a section of rainforest then, no matter how greedy they are, if they intend to make money sustainably, they have to manage that resource and ensure its survival.

Only where people have no stake in the ownership of the resource beyond its immediate utility, or no vision for the future, can we speak of destruction and neglect.

And you missed Anton Chekov’s response to Tolstoy over this essay: “It is a common saying that a man needs only six feet of earth. But six feet is what a corpse needs, not a man… Man needs not six feet of earth, not a farm, but the whole globe, all of nature, where unhindered he can display all the capacities and peculiarities of his free spirit.”

If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion – in any good “intro to lit” anthology you might have lying around, it’s possible you’ll find the Tolstoy “novella/long story” “The Death of Ivan Illych.” You’ll find it a powerful piece of writing – both in content and in structure. It expands on some of the themes of “How Much Land….”

Here’s a link to an on-line version:

http://www.classicreader.com/booktoc.php/sid.1/bookid.295/

If you’re like me, though, you’ll probably want to read it with paper in your hand….

It’s just that today, with costs sky-high and public services decreasing, it would be disingenous of a writer to pretend that every American mustn’t be disporportionately concerned with amassing what might have once been considered a fortune. If you go into retirement today with less than half a million, your’e a loser who’s on a fast track to Medicaid.

To me, the funamental fallacy of life in America as it’s constructed today is that it operates on the assumption that every American must be a mini-financier. But many of us have no interest in the field of investments. Trying to make us invest in a 401(k) or mutual fund is like leading a horse to water.

We can’t have a country in which everybody is forced to concern himself with amassing a small fortune. There has to be a place for people who just want to be of service to exist without living in poverty (outside a convent, that is).

P.S. When I read “Anna Karenina” years ago, I didn’t find it daunting. It was one of the most dazzling books I’ve ever read. (Of course, you never know how much that’s the work of the particular translator [perhaps Constance Bennett]).

On the strength of your post, think I might take Tolstoy’s short stories out of the library. Would that his like were around today (in America, that is).

Although debunking Ayn Rand is never a bad thing – to me….

Yes, of course, an industry or a human activity in itself isn’t inherently evil. But the fact that humans engage in the industry or activity makes it possible that evil, of which humans are all too capable, I think we can agree, can enter into that industry or activity.

And the problem is that because people demand cheap goods Wal-Mart engages in unscrupulous trading with an unscrupulous partner, China. Because people demand convenience food, the fast food giants encourage destructive farming practices in South America that exhaust fragile land and denude the rain forests with long term effects on our global environment. And of course our dependence on oil….I think we have to ask ourselves if maybe some of this stuff we demand mightn’t be our human evil creeping into otherwise neutral industry and activity….

I’d never claim it’s wrong to have needs – or wants, Gavin. But I would suggest that it’s important that we examine both and try not to, as you say exceed our grasp….

My favourite Tolstoy short-story is one I’ve lost track of and involves an Angel who falls to earth and goes to work as a shoe-maker. He had argued with God over the nature of Man and God had sent him down to find out for himself. Can’t remember what it was called, though.

Although, without swiping at business one can certainly swipe at greed. They don’t have to be related. As Rand said, “No person can be smaller than their money.”

If greed compels you to eat more than you need you certainly get fat and may die of heart-disease. But that doesn’t make fast-food (or the culture that created it) bad / evil / wrong. It’s eating more than you can handle that’s the problem.

The same goes for taking on anything that is more than you can handle. If you do so in business you lose the business along with the investment entrusted in you by others. On the other hand, if you take on as much as you can handle, then your investment is repaid not only in cash, but also in jobs for others, and new products for consumers.

It’s a thin line, of course. As Tolstoy points out here, you can become so enamoured with the vision of your own greatness that you lose sight of what you can actually handle. For the greedy, your reach exceeds your grasp.

Marcuse has also written, albeit non-fictionally, about the virtues of a lifestyle where we only take that which we need to live comfortably, anything beyond that suggests a fixation or neurosis.