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- Newsgroups: sci.environment
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- From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
- Subject: Re: The Criterion for Ecocentrism
- Message-ID: <1992Nov13.061824.8598@ke4zv.uucp>
- Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
- Organization: Gannett Technologies Group
- References: <1992Nov9.012422.28509@ke4zv.uucp> <1992Nov9.172217.2590@vexcel.com> <1dmfrvINNha9@gap.caltech.edu> <1992Nov10.021224.10985@vexcel.com>
- Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 06:18:24 GMT
- Lines: 26
-
- In article <1992Nov10.021224.10985@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
- >In article <1dmfrvINNha9@gap.caltech.edu> carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU writes:
- >>In article <1992Nov9.172217.2590@vexcel.com>, dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
- >>=If the propert is collective and society wants to preserve it,
- >>=then it does not need to determine a quantitative value.
- >>
- >>Just how do we determine that "society wants to preserve it"?
- >>Ask Dean Alaska, and if he says society wants to preserve it,
- >>then society wants to preserve it?
- >
- >Thats probably not too bad of a place to start :). There are plenty of other
- >people in society that could be asked, also. If one person doesn't want
- >to preserve it, is the rest of society wrong?
-
- It depends on how badly that one person wants the resource and how strongly
- other individuals want to preserve it. That's where the market can set a
- quanitative valuation. If 100 million people want to preserve a resource,
- but are only willing to spend a penny each to do so, and one individual
- is willing to expend 10 million and *one* dollars to use the resource,
- then the market says that his voice wins the decision. The market is
- valuable because it forces people to face hard choices straight on rather
- than depending on "somebody should do something" and "there ought to be
- a law." If they value something, they must *personally* bear their share
- of the cost to obtain and keep it.
-
- Gary
-