Quote of the Day: “The intellectual and moral high ground when it comes to environmentalism ought to be taken by those who believe in private property…”

“What is needed for better husbandry of ecological resources is more widespread and deeper establishment of property rights together with their enforcement. The cause of environmentalism is often associated with the Left. This is despite the fact that some of the worst environmental outcomes in the history of our planet have been associated with Communist governments. …
    “Indeed, the intellectual and moral high ground when it comes to environmentalism ought to be taken by those who believe in private property, strong community institutions and a free economy.
    “[Why?]  If things are owned, they will tend to be looked after. The owner of a lake will not [likely] fish it to near extinction (or even over-fish the lake to a small degree) because the breeding potential of the fish would be reduced.
    “On the other hand, if the lake is not owned by anybody, or if it is owned by the government and fishing is unregulated, the lake will be fished to extinction because nobody has any benefit from holding back. Local businesses may well also pollute the lake if there are no well-defined ownership rights….”
~ Philip Booth, from his article ‘If You Really Want to Protect the Environment, Privatise It’

Here’s John Stossel …

[Hat tip Dan Mitchell]

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100 celebrities are wrong. Save the elephants ... by owning them

 

100 “leading” conservationists, politicians, and celebrities just addressed an open letter to the UK government begging for a ban on ivory trade. If they wanted a better way to produce an Al Capone of the ivory trade, argues Bill Wirtz in this guest post, they couldn’t do better. [Your editor apologises in advance for the frequent use of the word ‘incentivise.’ – Ed.]

100 leading conservationists, politicians, and celebrities addressed an open letter to Theresa May’s Government asking for a ban on ivory trade. They want the UK to become a “global leader” on the prohibition of wildlife trade and help combat African poaching groups. Since we know how beneficial prohibition is for criminal gangs, the only group rejoicing over this leap forward will be the poachers themselves.

The alternative lies in the private sector.

Were I presented with the opportunity to become the Al Capone of the ivory trade, however, never would the temptation be as strong as now. Governments are immensely successful at making products under prohibition enormously valuable. As Milton Friedman said regarding drug prohibition:

If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.

Every time there is a major call for an outright ban on ivory products, prices skyrocket, which ends up incentivising poachers to shoot more elephants. This has created a sort of cat-and-mouse game in which the volatility of ivory pricing is interdependent with outcries by NGOs. When the Chinese ivory prices tripled in 2015 due solely to increased calls for bans, wildlife NGOs said that the market was out of control and that "there is need for immediate action." There was no change in legislation, and yet when the public call for bans subsided and Chinese prices fell back to their original level five months later, the same NGOs claimed their work to be going in the right direction!

Conservation from Private Property

If we want to talk about the preservation of endangered species such as elephants, then let's not engage polemic assertions destined to sell a newspaper or get donations shipped in. Some African countries have taken action regarding poaching: the privatisation of elephants is provably effective.

Let's take the example of trophy hunting.

Unpopular it may be among the twitterati, but this hunting sport has gotten increasingly popular over the years. As National Geographic reported, these hunters imported more than 1.26 million trophies to the United States between the years 2005 and 2014, which is an average of 126,000 trophy imports a year, or 345 every single day.

Trophy hunting, however, is not the reason these species are endangered in the first place. They suffer considerably more from loss of habitat and poaching. In the case of loss of habitat, the endangered animals are driven out due to agricultural expansion for the harvesting of timber, wood, or fuel.

The local population can be incentivised economically to protect these animals. In Namibia, the revenue from trophy hunting is the main revenue source for the funding of wildlife conservancies, and in South Africa, trophy hunting reportedly incentivised locals to give rhinoceros land to live on that protected them from poachers (Conservation Magazine, 2015). This evolution has led the number of existing rhinoceros to jump from 100 in 1916 to over 18,000 today (World Wildlife Fund, 2016). According to South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs, the total revenue from trophy hunting was close to R807 million (59.3 USD) in 2012 and just over R1 billion (73.5 USD) in 2013.

Elephants are victims of the tragedy of the commons: poachers maximising profits from the commons results in them shooting as many animals as possible before they’re all gone. The best protective measure in response is private property rights through the rule of law. If elephants possess a certain utility, notably harvesting ivory, then we should prefer they were owned privately, since their owners would be incentivised to protect them.

No ban on the international trade of a good could ever do the same.

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Bill Wirtz studies French Law at the University of Lorraine in Nancy, France.
He blogs at Wirtz Bill, where this post first appeared (and subsequently at FEE.)

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“Bill Gate’s Solution to Climate Change Reveals His Misunderstanding of Capitalism and Free Markets”

Bill Gates argued in an interview recently that since capitalism is unable to solve the problem of global warming that there should instead be world-encompassing government-business “partnerships” to save Planet Earth.

I commented here.

Austrian economist Richard Ebeling responds today:

Let us assume for the sake of the argument that the dire predictions were to be true. And that the projected and feared increases in average temperature around the globe threaten to have some or many of the negative effects that are often warned about.
    Is Bill Gates correct in his bad-mouthing of private enterprise and his praising of the superiority of government direction and subsidising of businesses to find solutions to the problem, if it exists?
    [H]is comments do raise the issue of the institutions of a market economy versus the workings of the political process.

Central to Ebeling’s argument is the contrasting incentives between incentives within market process,  the incentives of the players in the political process, a difference that Gates simply ignores. Political incentives, says Ebeling, are all short-term:

[Consider] the motivations and incentives of politicians and government planners and regulators. Those in political office or who manage the government bureaucracies have no “assets” to use and spend other than those that have been taxed away from the citizenry of the country.
    Their effective control over those tax funds and government-owned assets extends no further than the next electoral cycle, the outcome of which can see them removed from office and replaced from their senior positions of power. Hence, the politician’s horizon of personal interest and planning rarely extents beyond the next election, whether that be two, or four, or six years away in the American political system.
    And those who hold the appointed senior positions in the departments, bureaus, and agencies retain their power only for as long as they focus on and serve the interests of the president who has made them the head of a branch of the bureaucracy.
    Short-term pay-offs that offer vote-getting photo opportunities, or that satisfies the financial and related interests of individuals and groups whose pockets can provide the campaign contributions for the next run for re-election, or positive “images” for the media and future history books as part of the “legacy” of a president (or prime minister) are as far as those who guide and direct governmental policies and actions have as their decision-making time horizon.

Whereas planning horizons for businessmen investing their own money are typically much longer:

The private enterpriser in the marketplace invests his own money or borrowed funds for the use of which he has entered into legal obligations to pay back with interest. When the businessman plans the construction of a new manufacturing factory that once built can stand and be productively used for decades; or purchases land that has on it raw materials under the ground or timber on the surface, for instance, that have marketable value and profitability for even a century ahead if properly conserved and economized; or who buys expensive and durable capital machines, tools and equipment the productive lifespan of which may extent, with proper maintenance and repair, for many years into the future; when he does any or all of this, he must weigh the financial gains in the present with the profitable rewards that may be available in the future with wise use of the private property that he oversees, manages and owns.
    Who, therefore, has the greater personal incentive and financial motive to take the future into account before making decisions in the present? The market-oriented private enterprisers who must carefully weigh how his present actions will have a positive or negative effect on his abilities to earn desired revenues and profits in the future, depending on how they wisely use their own property? Or the politician who spends other people’s tax-collected money and has no permanent “skin-in-the-game” outside of his ability to pander to special interest groups before the next election to obtain from them campaign contributions and votes on election day?

Fair question, you’d think.

Yet, because some other businessmen may not share Bill Gates’ conception of desirable and profitable in terms of what he thinks to be important and should be invested in, those other businessmen are, therefore, short-sighted and “irrational” in their disregard of what should be done to “save the planet.”

Central to this, if course, is the system of private property rights that protects the investor in long-term plans, and protects property-owners against environmental predation by others. This was the historical cure to the tragedy of the commons; yet if ““climate change” and “global warming” are, in fact, problems facing people on Planet Earth, then it is due to an atmospheric tragedy of the commons” – so why is there so little discussion of private solutions?

When property rights are not clearly defined, people will often act in ways that do not take into consideration the full effect and cost upon others. Resources, or land, or the air are wrongly or excessively used because the users do not have to weigh or pay for the full consequences of their own actions upon others. This is the source of practically all of the environmental and pollution problems that are cause for concern today.If “climate change” and “global warming” are, in fact, problems facing people on Planet Earth, it is due to an atmospheric tragedy of the commons. The question, then, is, are there private solutions to this problem – if it exists as proponents claim – or does it have to be “solved” through the central planning of global governments and government-business “partnership” as asserted by some such as Bill Gates?

The simple fact is, Bill Gate’s Solution to Climate Change Reveals His Misunderstanding of Capitalism and Free Markets. That is the tragedy of his alleged solutions.

[Cartoon by Wilham Warren, from Epic Times]

RELATED:

• Bill Gates: Communism & climate
• What would a libertarian do about global warming?
• Once again, "What would a libertarian do about global warming
• Russel Norman, Jared Diamond & Easter Island: "Bunk."
• The buzzword for this morning is 'sustainability'
• Malthus meets the Greens

A ‘Minarchist’ Environmentalism

Guest post by Nick Sorrentino from the blog Against Crony Capitalism

This essay has little (directly) to do with crony capitalism, however I wanted to post it here for our readers’ consideration. People who read Against Crony Capitalism regularly know that we care about the environment. We love the ocean, and hiking, and clear skies on a moonless night. We are saddened by the clear cutting of rain forest, (usually due to a wilful lack of property rights) and by plastic floating in our seas; we care about “sustainability” generally.

However we despise the command and control methods which have traditionally been the weapons of choice for the environmentalist movement. This general disposition toward control has muddied the water on environmental issues. For many outside of the environmentalist movement the perception now is that “environmentalism” is not actually the end. A clean planet is not the end. Instead, the actual end is state domination and regulation of every single aspect of life which is . Indeed that “green” is the new “red.”

I think one can be “green” and pro-market. In fact being “green” and pro-market is not some quaint contrarian position, but the way forward.

Can you own water? [update 2]

That’s become the question of this political term, hasn’t it, the answering of which is going to hold up the government’s flagship sell-a-little-bit programme for its power companies: Can you own water?

Simple answer: Yes, of course you can.

The ownership of water is not only possible, it’s often highly desirable.

It de-politicises arguments about resources.

It solves the Tragedy of the Commons in water.

It solves the increasing problem of dirty dairying.

It solves the problems involved in the South Island river systems, where there are many competing uses for the limited water available.

Recognising ownership in a water resource is not only moral, it’s practical. The answer to the problems cited and many more besides is to recognise there is no greater protection for both environment and water users than the protection of property rights and the legacy of common law -- if only these were allowed to function as they should, by placing the power of law behind those who truly value the specific resource under threat.

Ownership of water not only could happen, it should happen.

If the way to open those floodgates is by recognising specific claims to ownership, however flawed initially, then so be it.

Better it begins some way than never to begin at all.

* * * * *

* I make no comment at all here on the veracity of claims now hitting the headlines, nor on the anachronistic argument asserting property rights were recognised in New Zealand before 1840.
But as Ronald Coase points out, once a property right is finally recognised in law then (as long as transaction costs are kept low) it will end up in the hands of those who value it the most. And that would be a good result, right?

UPDATE 1: The collectivisation of water has failed New Zealanders.

So in addition to the excellent links I’ve provided above, I’d like to highly recommend a Canadian organisation called Environment Probe who have written many excellent things on The Role of Property Rights in Protecting Water Quality, including these many wonderful publications.

UPDATE 2: Yes, I do own water says Liberty Scott.

If I have land, and collect water on that property, it is mine.
Just because the state treats the sea, rivers and lakes as owned by it and local authorities, doesn't mean that water can't be owned. It is ludicrous to claim otherwise.
Reticulated water costs money. It requires people to work, people to construct, lay, maintain and replace pipelines, dams, pumps and the electricity required to operate them. That isn't free.

Instructions for people who suck at everyday life

The major idea of Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom was identifying the way communities use processes like privatisation and “informal norms and cultural rules” to combat the Tragedy of the Commons. [Hat tip Anti Dismal]  It’s the same point made in Larry David’s lesson to Christian Slater (above) about eating all the caviar. (A principle he then embarrassingly breaks himself.)

At a party, Larry David spots Christian Slater, who, considering his career lately, is indulging a little too heavily in the caviar. As Slater goes over his "allotment," Larry David tells him: "We have unwritten laws in our society... You take a little bit, and then you step away for twenty minutes, see what kind of action there is. If nobody's taking any, maybe take a little bit more. Step away again. So forth and so on.

If this advice to a caviar hog sounds pretty basic, it is. That’s because it’s advice to someone who sucks at everyday life. Just like Larry himself. Just like all these Instructional Diagrams for People Who Suck at Everyday Life:

Patent thickets?

Those opposed to inventors keeping property in their own inventions will often be heard muttering about the destructive economic effects of so-called “patent thickets.”

 The patent thickets problem, a form of ‘tragedy of the anticommons,’ is
a phenomenon by which people underuse scarce resources because of
overlapping ownership. In the patent thickets, a technology is prone to
underuse because of the high costs of licensing resulting from multiple
ownership stakes in the same technology.”

“This concept is not unique to patent law,” notes associate professor at George Mason University Adam Mossoff,

it is based on Professor Michael Heller’s theory of the anticommons in real
property, which arises when there is excessive fragmentation of ownership
interests in a single parcel of land. According to economic theory, the problem of
such excessive fragmentation of ownership interests is straightforward: It
increases transaction costs, accentuates hold-out problems, and precipitates
costly litigation, which prevents commercial development of the affected property.

The implicit assumption is that some sort of redistribution of property is the answer to this alleged problem.  But as Adam Mossoff points out, even “Professor Heller acknowledges that ‘the empirical studies that prove — or disprove — our theory remain inconclusive.’”

It’s in this context that Mossoff’s series of posts on the Sewing Machine Wars “and the denouement of this patent thicket in the Sewing Machine Combination of 1856 is important.” 

Why would you be interested in “sewing machine blogging”?  Simple:

1. because the invention of the sewing machine in the late-nineteenth century was an achievement then “on par with the latest high-tech or pharmaceutical discovery today”;
2. because its invention, patenting and commercialisation tell us an awful lot about how patent law works, and once worked well;
3. because it tells us how patent conflicts are resolved voluntarily; and,
4. because author Adam Mossoff knows all about patent law.

• Who Cares About the Invention of the Sewing Machine?
• The Incremental Invention of the Sewing Machine (Part 1 of 2):
• The Incremental Invention of the Sewing Machine (Part 2 of 2)
• Patent Thickets, Incremental Invention, and Innovation
• Patent Thickets, Patent Pools and Antitrust:
• Patent Thickets and Patent Trolls:...
• Patent Thickets, Bad Patents, and Costly Patent Litigation:

Unsure foreshore solutions

AFTER MUCH BEHIND-DOORS backing and filling and log-rolling, the government and its apartheid party coalition partner have finally come up with solutions to the foreshore and seabed dilemma that still simmers as a result of Labour’s nationalisation.

In 2004, if you recall, Helen Clark unilaterally extinguished Maori rights to claim ownership in foreshore and seabed under common law and gave effect to the nationalisation in a hastily passed law, the Foreshore & Seabed Act.  And at the time National talked about amendments to the Act that would virtually cement it in place for all time. This was considered to be opposition.

But things have moved on. Helen Clark’s “haters and wreckers” are now ministers in a National cabinet.  And their blancmange Prime Minister has come up with the perfect blancmange solution--- a semantic one.

Make it all crown land, said Labour’s law; no, no, says National’s kick for touch, let’s call it “public domain.” And get the Maoris on side by calling this new legal concept of non-ownership "takiwā iwi whānui"—and get the lawyers onside by making the “roles and responsibilities” of the non-owners sufficiently vague that only decades of court case will be able to define precisely what it means.

But you don’t like that solution? Don’t worry, they’ve got others.

That’s right. Unable and unwilling to make a firm or principled decision themselves, they’ve put out a “discussion document” containing four proposed “solutions’ to see which get people worked up least. You don’t like “public domain”? Why, sire, why not try these three other flavours, including Crown ownership of everything, Maori ownership of everything other than the minerals- or the status quo, if too many people throw too many toys out of their cots.

Observe that in all four “solutions” the government retains all the mineral rights to foreshore and seabed.  That “iwi authorities“ will have “roles and responsibilities” akin to those of regional councils, and veto rights that (as Shane Jones points out) will invites "brownmail," where tribes receive cash from developers in return for their support. That the likes of non-Maori aquaculture operations have essentially just been told to take a long walk off a small pier. And that the well-recognised tragedy-of-the-commons continues to hover over all the areas over which no clear ownership rights and ownership interests are established like an unwelcome elephant at an otherwise elegant cocktail party.

And observe too that while in some of the four options there’s talk of “allowing” access to courts to prove rights to foreshore or seabed under common law (a right all citizens enjoyed under British law for centuries, until extinguished here by Helen Clark) it really is only talk.  Even the option of granting Maori “absolute title” is not granting title by right, but by fiat--and the “absolute title” to be granted under this solution is not to specific portions of foreshore and seabed to which specific owners my lay claim, but to all the foreshore and seabed not presently under private title, meaning that non-Maori lose whatever rights in common law they may have once been able to assert.

And since the ownership “rights” in any of these proffered solutions will be neither transferrable nor divisible, this means that any “ownership” granted is largely notional in any case.

So not so much just kicking for touch as taking away the ball under cover of turning on the lights.

It’s a series of Clayton’s “solution” by an Attorney General obviously well versed in semantic tricks—a solution that retains the body of nationalisation of foreshore and seabed, while transferring the shadow of ownership to the government and whichever Browntable groups are making the most noise.

FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH, my own view on the foreshore and seabed issue has been consistent now for at least six years, and is based on the common law principle that everyone, no matter their colour, has a right to claim ownership rights to un-owned property if the requisite common law tests are met. 

I see no reason to change that view now.

RE-POST: NZ's water problems cured by property rights?

Since problems with water use and water “allocations” are in the news again, as discussed in Dr McGrath’s column two posts below this one, I’m reposting this post from July 2006 (with just a few more recent links). 

    Water has become an issue here in Godzone - dirty lakes in Rotorua; “dirty dairying” around the country; falling lake levels in South Island hydro lakes; rising demand for limited river water for agricultural irrigation.
    As Federated Farmers say regularly, the problem isn’t that New Zealand’s running out of water, it’s that water is running out of New Zealand—to which I would add that it’s precisely what you’d expect when the only organisations deputed to oversee the collection of water before it runs out are government appointees, and the first reaction to every problem is to call for government involvement.
    Frankly, all of these problems have been caused either largely or in part by too much government control, and too few sufficiently clear property rights in water.  In other words, it’s a Tragedy of the Commons problem, and one recognised even by the Clark Government who has spent the last three years putting together a scheme for tradeable water rights, and by Rotorua Maori who are just beginning to talk about property rights as a means of protecting water quality in local lakes.
    It's easy to get too excited about this sort of progress. The general manager of Rotorua's Ngati Whakaue Tribal Lands Trust is not yet ready, it seems, to call for clear property rights as a means by which lake water can be protected in common law. And the cabinet paper on tradeable rights was prepared by David Benson-Pope and Jim Anderton, hardly friends of the market, and whatever emerges from their deliberations will not unfortunately be full full property rights: Benson-Pope has been insistent that water is a "public good" and that any rights will not be treated as rights in perpetuity -- "I think there's going to be discussions about trading regimes, about charging and so on," he says -- so it is just another government-driven halfway house. It is, as they say, a start. Just a start.
    The reason it's a good start is that secure property rights gives people the ability to cure these various Tragedy of the Commons problems, giving owners incentive and legal standing to protect, conserve and to maintain what is theirs. As the Canadian Environment Probe organisation has said for a long time, a system of clear property rights and common law protections of property rights offers the best long-term security for water and those who rely on it. And my colleague Craig Milmine has a dissertation from 2000 discussing the theory in detail, and showing how a water rights regime could function in the South Island's Kakanui district.
    I highly recommend hunting down the nuggets in both sources.

LINKS: Cabinet moves to trade water - Dominion Post
Tragedy of the Commons - Garrett Hardin, Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
Rotorua lakes face long battle for health - Stuff
How can we save our lakes? - Daily Post
The role of property rights in protecting water quality - Environment Probe
Sustainable water programme of action - Ministry of the Environment
Water & wastewater publications - Environment Probe
Kakanui water study - Craig Milmine [Hat tip Stephen Hicks]

Property rights urgently needed to allow mineral riches to be safely exploited

Gerry Brownlee’s announcement that he wants to unlock New Zealand’s mineral wealth has set hearts all aflutter, with the Standard (poor lambs) likening his trial balloon to a precursor to rape and pillage and Metiria Turei complaining that we don’t really need to get richer, and that mining stuff is just “old dinosaur thinking” anyway.

Tell that to the Lucky Country to the west of us, where everyone is still (on average) around 25% wealthier than each of us based in no small part on digging stuff out of the ground and selling it.

Which leads me to ask and answer an obvious question for you:

Is it possible to mine without upsetting the neighbours, and to set up a legal structure that allows it?

And the answer:

Of course it is. It just requires the clear recognition of private property rights.

Such a shame then that we have so few of them – that nearly half of New Zealand’s land is ‘owned’ by the government and around one-third set aside as “conservation land” – with up to 70% of all known potential mineral resources on government land administered by the Department of Conservation.

And although Gerry Brownlee, bless ‘im, is keen to get mining going again in New Zealand, he’s not going to countenance a change in either the government ownership of mineral rights (all naturally occurring gold, silver, uranium, and petroleum in New Zealand is owned by the Government, and permits under the Crown Minerals Act are needed to explore for or mine these minerals), or of government ownership of land.

That’s a great pity since there’s so much at stake – and his proposal simply to improve “access” to conservation land for mining is probably the worst of both worlds.

How much is at stake? Well, Australia is often known as "the lucky country" because of its resource riches. And according to a 2006 World Bank study (which being the World Bank is bound to be full of holes, but it’s all we’ve got to look at) Australia's underground mineral wealth only amounts to around $11,500 per Australian, most of which is being tapped, whereas New Zealand’s is around a third of that at $3,600, most of which is not being tapped. That’s not quite Australia’s mineral riches, but that’s a respectable amount of wealth to lock up just to protect a few snails-- according to Brownlee’s advisers that’s around $140 billion of gross in-ground value locked up.

And what’s wrong with just improving access rather than improving private ownership rights?  Because the incentives are all wrong. One look at the Soviet Union’s lethal legacy of filth or of logging and forest clearance in the Amazon is enough to show what happens when government owns everything, and is interested in extraction at all costs.

Improving access instead of improving private ownership rights does nothing to solve the Tragedy of the Commons problem that is at the cause of so much of the world’s environmental degradation:  As long as a resource is either unowned or held in common (or govt) ‘ownership,’ then the incentive for each resource user is to take as much as they can when they can and whenever they can, no matter the consequences for the quality and the quantity of either the resource or the are in which its being extracted.  That's the tragedy: common ownership provides no incentive for genuine 'stewardship' – and any attempt to replace natural incentives with bureaucratic management is doomed to failure.  Just ask the residents of Magnitogorsk or the Mato Grosso.

Conflict is not inevitable with mining. The answer, as I pointed out to Nandor Tanczos a few years back, is not political management but clearer property rights, and greater common law protection of those rights. Property rights take the issue out of the political arena, allowing those who do hold rights to express their own values without political interference from the likes of either Mr Brownlee or Mr Tanczos. Elizabeth Brubaker from Canadian organisation Environment Probe makes that case superbly here.

When property rights are properly expressed through common law for example, property rights involve a 'bundle' of rights, and each rights-holder is promised clear legal protection by the courts over their 'stick' in the bundle. When such a thing as mining is contemplated, every owner of a stick in the affected bundle has absolute protection in expressing their own values--whether that’s conservation of the environmental values, or the use of the resource--and that legal protection must be recognised by anyone proposing to exercise the use of their own 'stick.'  Everyone is free to make their own valuations of each of the ‘sticks,’ and in the end, the resources end up in the hands of those who value them most.

If for example I have a clear and protected right to use a stream running through an area affected by proposed mining, then under common law the miner is obliged to take my values into account by either not damaging the waterway, or by purchasing my assent and the assent of all other affected stream-users -- and of all other affected parties. (Elizabeth Brubaker offers some examples here of the sort of legal protection afforded to stream-users by common law).  These affected parties might hold rights to access, hunting, harvesting, tramping, logging, birding, or profits à prendre; they might hold a conservation covenant, or just have the right to peaceful enjoyment of their property – but under common law all their rights must be protected as long as they wish them to be protected.

That's protection then for all rights-owners' chosen values, and all done without all the picketing, bickering and politicking we see now. If it be objected that this excludes all those who value the untrammelled value of wild and untouched land, then let them express the extent to which they really do truly value the conservation estate by becoming a rights-holder in it, rather than seeking to use the government's club to enforce their chosen values over others. It doesn't require full ownership, it simply means acquiring the right to a 'stick' in the bundle.

I commend the idea to your attention.

NB: Check out the New Zealand Mineral Exploration Association’s website, which has all the information you’d want to know about where and how much we’re minerally endowed. See.

Dirty dairying and dodgy drafting

New Zealand's present and future prosperity is still based largely on agriculture, yet on the back of the recent report on the NZ environment by Parliamentary Commissioner of the Environment Jan Wright we're heard various fevered calls from water campaigners for a "moratorium" on agricultural development, from the Greens' Russel Norman for farmers to require resource consents for improving their productivy, and -- from this month's environment minister (the punch-drunk Trevor Mallard) -- a call for enforced "downsizing" of dairy farms and "limits on herd sizes." 

Enforced downsizing and limits on herd sizes!  Talk about shooting your prosperity right in the foot.

And following the weekend's fiasco over the alleged "deletion of a chapter critical of dairy farming"  the rhetoric has ramped up again, with the Greens' Russel Norman declaring  New Zealand's "clean green" image has been tweaked, that "industrial dairying" needs to pull its head in -- and this morning Federated Farmers president Charlie Pedersen appeared to concede the point, and National Party appeaser Nick Smith to embrace it.

Never underestimate the ability of politicians (and appeasement of them) to destroy your livelihood, while making a problem worse.

The problem they're mostly attempting to address is water -- how it's regulated, how dirty it is, and the role of agricultural intensification in the declining environmental standards.  Said Parliamentary Commissioner Jan Wright at the report's release, the report finds water quality is "declining" in areas used for farming, and "the Resource Management Act is causing fundamental problems for water management." In response, Murray Rogers of Canterbury's Water Rights Trust campaign group says "agricultural development needs to slow down while research and regulatory structures are put in place to manage water." 

Both Wright and Rogers are right, although not in the way they think they are. 

Since it looks like farmers could have their future prosperity limited on the back of what this report says about water, let's see first what it actually says.  (you can read the whole report here.) On inspection it turns out that the body of the report which contains the actual data  is less frightening than what the headlines and the deleted 'summary' chapter say about it.  (No surprise there -- it's on a par with the various summaries of the IPCC's global warming science.)  About water the body of the report says:

• By international standards, freshwater in New Zealand is both abundant and clean.
• Because New Zealand has a low population and high average rainfall, it has more total freshwater per person than more than 90 per cent of almost 200 other countries around the world. However, not all of this water is in the right place at the right time...
• With land-use practices becoming more intensive, particularly in farming, there is greater demand for water now than ever before, and evidence is building that its quality is declining in many water bodies.
• As the dominant land use in New Zealand, agriculture has the most widespread impact on water quality.
• Rivers in catchments that have little or no farming or urban development make up about half of the total length of New Zealand’s rivers and have good water quality. Water quality is generally poorest in rivers and streams in urban and farmed catchments. This reflects the impact of non-point-sources of pollution in these catchments...  The proportion of the total river length that is in farmed catchments is more than 40 times the proportion that is in urban catchments.
• In recent years, the impact of agricultural land use on water quality has grown as a result of increased stocking rates and use of nitrogen fertilisers. Within the agricultural sector, there has also been a move away from low-intensity to high-intensity land use (for example, converting from sheep farming to dairy or deer farming). The net effect of most intensified land use is to increase the amount of nutrients, sediment, and animal effluent dispersed into water bodies.
• The median levels of nitrogen and phosphorus have increased in rivers within the national monitoring network over the past two decades. More specifically, over 1989–2003, there was an average annual increase in levels of total nitrogen and dissolved reactive phosphorus of 0.5 per cent to 1 per cent. While this increase may seem small, and is difficult to detect from the slope of the median (dark blue) lines in Figure 10.3, it signals a long-term trend towards nutrient-enriched conditions that are likely to trigger undesirable changes to river ecosystems.  Furthermore, New Zealand rivers with relatively high levels of nitrogen are deteriorating – becoming more enriched – more rapidly than rivers with low levels of nitrogen. This is illustrated most clearly in Figure 10.3.
• Seventy-five of the 134 lakes in New Zealand for which nutrient data are available have high to very high levels of nutrients (see Figure 10.5, right). Thirteen per cent of these lakes are known as ‘hypertrophic’, meaning they are ‘saturated’ with nutrients and their water quality is extremely degraded. In such lakes, algal blooms are common and the health of aquatic animals is often at risk.
• Levels of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) and algae are between two and six times higher in lakes in pastoral catchments than in lakes that are in natural catchments (see Figure 10.6).
• A large majority of the 3,820 lakes greater than 1 hectare in area in New Zealand are not monitored. By extrapolating the results for monitored lakes, it is estimated that the majority (about two-thirds) of all lakes are likely to have relatively low concentrations of nutrients and good to excellent water quality because they lie in natural, or only partially developed, catchments (Ministry for the Environment). The remaining third of lakes are likely to have high levels of nutrients and poor water quality.
• Pollution from organic waste in rivers has reduced since the late 1980s. This indicates improved management of point-source discharges of organic waste, that is, pollution from a single facility at a known location, such as discharges from wastewater treatment plants, meatworks, and farm effluent ponds.
• Two-thirds of New Zealand’s lakes are in natural or partially developed catchments, such as native bush, and are likely to have good to excellent water quality. Small, shallow lakes surrounded by farmland have the poorest water quality of all our lakes.
• Sixty-one per cent of the groundwaters in New Zealand that are monitored have normal nitrate levels; the remainder have nitrate levels that are higher than the natural background levels, and 5 per cent have nitrate levels that make the water unsafe for infants to drink.
• Fertilisers and stock effluent are major sources of the nitrogen and phosphorus in water bodies in agricultural catchments. The erosion of soil also contributes significant amounts of soil-bound phosphorus to waterways.

Now I don't know about you, but overall that looks like a pretty credible pass mark to me.  Says the report:  "By international standards, freshwater in New Zealand is both abundant and clean." So much for the blowhards.

But there do appear to be two main issues:

1. increased draw-offs for irrigation and resulting 'competition' for water in Canterbury and Southland, and
2. the effect of farming on water quality in lakes and rivers. 

You won't be surprised to hear I've got something to say about both, nor that what I've got to say involves property rights.

Competition for water is complicated by bureaucratic systems of allocation. Protection of water quality is stymied by bureaucratic systems of protection: which means there are no effective legal remedies against pollution, and no effective agent to argue on behalf of that which is being polluted.  Both problems are the direct result of what's known as the Tragedy of the Commons problem.  As long as a resource is either unowned or held in common ownership (which is the case with water in NZ), then the incentive for each resource user is to take as much now as they can, and whenever they can, no matter the consequences for the quality of that resource, and no matter the long-term effect on the quantity of that resource.  That's the tragedy: common ownership provides no incentive for genuine 'stewardship.'

The answer is clearer property rights, and greater common law protection of those rights.

As Jan Wright almost inadvertently pointed out in interviews yesterday, "the Resource Management Act is causing fundamental problems for water management."   She's right, but not in the manner she thinks she is. The fundamental problem caused by the RMA is insufficiently secure property rights. The cure for both problems is more secure property rights.  Let's me tell you how.

1. Competition for water
As water users realise every summer, competition exists for existing water resources.  Bureaucratic distribution of access to water does nothing to secure the resource, and nothing to give water users long-term security of supply.  By contrast, recognising secure property rights in water means that water users have a long-term interest in maintaining security of supply, and that rights to use water end up in the hands of those who are going to value it most. 

Instead of a bureaucratic system of allocating water use, a system of secure tradeable water rights give users of water the benefit of long-term time horizons to plan their use (discouraging the short-termism that generally stymies 'sustainable' resource use), and establishes for all users the real value of those rights.  With tradeable water rights, where and when water is in short supply price signals will communicate that information to users, indicating that more care should be taken with the valuable resource, and more attention paid to expanding the resource (by construction of greater collection capacity for example). 

There's nothing complicated about any of that: that's how the markets for all other resources function, and the long-term effect of such markets is that for all sorts of reasons -- including greater incentives for increased efficiencies -- resources become less and and less scarce, and of better and better quality. 

The key to swiftly effecting such a scheme is to immediately secure the rights of existing users, ensuring that such rights are tradeable so that they can be transferred to others who might value them more. A heavily politicised scheme for tradeable water rights was being discussed in 2006, but like all politicised schema the feet are still being dragged.  What's needed quickly to avert moratoria and meddling is a system of clear property rights by which water can be traded.  

As the Canadian Environment Probe organisation has said for a long time, a system of clear property rights and common law protections of property rights offers the best long-term security for water and those who rely on it. My colleague Craig Milmine has a dissertation from 2000 discussing the theory in detail, and showing how a water rights regime could function in the South Island's Kakanui district.

2. Water Quality
We're told by all the usual suspects that dirty dairying is destroying our clean green reputation, and that agricultural intensification is destroying water quality.  I suggest the answer to that is not more bureaucratic intensification, which is what has produced the problem, but less.

 Property rights under a common law regime provides superior environmental protection -- that is, a system of clear property rights as a means by which water can be protected in common law.  No question about that ( I invite you to follow those three preceding links to check that claim).    When the costs of one's own actions are one's responsibility, a change of behaviour is greatly encouraged.  When producers themselves have to pay for their own pollution, a change in methodology of production has to be considered.  When water users themselves have clear rights in common law to protect the water in which they have property, then looking at it as a long-term resource that merits looking after is going to happen.  And when neighbours' actions start to destroy that resource, then with their property rights secured rights' owners have the motivation to act in protection of that resource, and under common law they have simple and effective remedies with which to take action -- remedies that simply don't exist under the bureaucratically intense RMA. 

Under common law for example, those with recreational or water rights along the Waikato or with rights to fish the lakes of Rotorua or the headwaters of the Tarawera River would have recourse against farmers or pulp and paper mills who polluted the fishery -- whereas with the RMA the polluters get a license to pollute and the affected parties find they have no particular legal standing, and no particular protection in law to protect their resource, common law grants them solutions, standing, and the means by which to protect their resource long-term. 

What common law does in other words is give effective legal power to recognised resource users to protect their resource long-term.  If we genuinely want to rehabilitate NZ's clean green credentials, then I maintain the solution is better protection of property rights and the rehabilitation of common law remedies for environmental protection.  Simple.

But there’s a problem.  In fact, there's two problems -- and it's not dirty dairying, but dirty government . 

1. The Resource Management Act (RMA) has successfully buried almost all avenues for common law environmental protection.  Despite their proven effectiveness over eight-hundred years, common law measures to protect against pollution are buried under the statutory framework of bureaucratic control set up  by the RMA.  To bring back common law environmental protection requires the RMA to be scrapped, and replaced by a 'codification' of rational common law principles of environmental protection.
2. Even with the codification of common law, without clear ownership there is still no protection. To work effectively, property rights-based environmental protection needs an owner to stand up for his property, yet nearly half of this beautiful country and most of the seabed, foreshore and waterways still have no property rights attached. Most of it is essentially un-owned, leaving a government department as the conservator of record of much of the country's waterways.  The Environment Report should be regarded as a report card of how well they've carried out the role.

"Chapter 13 "
Whatever the real news about the release, non-release or pseudo-release of the last chapter of the five-yearly Environment Report, the fact remains that water quality in some places is going to get worse, and that it will be "non-point sources" such as agricultural runoff (those that command and control resource management can't so easily control) that will play a large part in that diminution.

The answer is to give greater power to those who value the resources under threat, and there is no greater power in law than the protection of property rights and the legacy of common law -- if only these were allowed to function as they should.

UPDATE:  Professor of  pastoral agriculture at Massey University Jacqueline Rowarth shows that there are no decent voices ranged on the side of farmers in this latest attack, (and, also, that the science side of Massey University is as infected with political correctness as the humanities side of the campus), and that top-down solutions are likely to be the only ones countenanced in the latest round for the dirty dairying debates.  

In this audio excerpt from Radio New Zealand she challenges none of the conclusions of either the actual or the bootleg report, and appears to implicitly regard any possible solution to necessarily involve more of the top down central-planning solutions that have led to the problems reported.  "We" need to stop pointing the finger; instead she says "we" clearly need to be "redesigning New Zealand's agricultural systems" -- on which the country's smartest brains need to be working -- and that playing the blame game will put off the smart brains.

Note both the brazen collectivism, the refusal to countenance evidence and -- instead of any suggestion of bottom-up solutions -- the overt reliance on central planning to solve the reported ills. 

Don't worry, be free

I'm hearing all about "peak oil" and how we're "running out of resources." The answer apparently is to give up, give up, give up!

Fuck that.

The idea is as wrong ethically -- it's not man's natural estate to grovel before Gaia; we either stand tall and exploit nature or we die -- as it is wrong economically. As Cambridge Energy Research founder Daniel Yergin points out "The theory [of Peak Oil] is very fashionable ... but it completely discounts technology, which constantly expands our horizons..." Let's explore that idea.

In the sevententh-century Britain was running out of trees to build houses. The problem was solved by the increased use of bricks. In the late-nineteenth century we were all running out of whale oil to light out lamps. It was a problem solved by the exploitation of a new resource: oil.

The stone age didn't end because they ran out of stones; it ended because they went on to exploit better things -- and sitting here as a beneficiary of the Industrial Revolution I'm very glad they did. Given that it's the process of invention and exploitation of resources begun back then that keeps us all alive today, it's important to have some basic understanding of how resources are produced and exploited -- when properly and freely done, it's almost seems as if an invisible and benevolent hand was guiding production.

As George Reisman explains,

the resources provided by nature, such as iron, aluminum, coal, petroleum and so on, are by no means automatically goods. Their goods-character must be created by man, by discovering knowledge of their respective properties that enable them to satisfy human needs and then by establishing command over them sufficient to direct them to the satisfaction of human needs.

For example, iron, which has been present in the earth since the formation of the planet and throughout the entire presence of man on earth, did not become a good until well after the Stone Age had ended. Petroleum, which has been present in the ground for millions of years, did not become a good until the middle of the nineteenth century, when uses for it were discovered. Aluminum, radium, and uranium also became goods only within the last century or century and a half.

Julian Simon points out that it's the human mind applied to nature that is the ultimate resource. It's the human mind applied to production that transforms what nature provides into "goods" for human use: in other words, it's the mind itself that produces resources from the raw materials around us. As George Reisman and Ludwig von Mises point out, the idea that resources are running out "comes true only under socialism" -- only under a system in which private property is banned, production is strangled, the tragedy of the commons remains in effect, and (crucially) price signals that indicate the real value of resources are ignored or muzzled. Let George explain.

The value of goods is within us—within human beings—and radiates outward from us to external things...

Thus, in one sense ... the contribution of nature is zero. Practically nothing comes to us from nature that is ready-made as a useable, accessible natural resource—as a good in [this] sense. In another sense, however, the natural resources that come from nature—the matter, in the form of all the chemical elements, known and as yet unknown, and energy in all of its forms—are virtually infinite in their extent. In this sense, nature’s contribution is boundless...

And this brings me to what I consider to be the revolutionary view of natural resources that is implied in [this] theory of goods. Namely, not only does man create the goods- character of natural resources—by obtaining knowledge of their useful properties and then creating their useability and accessibility by virtue of establishing the necessary command over them—but he also has the ability to go on indefinitely increasing the supply of natural resources possessing goods-character. He enlarges the supply of useable, accessible natural resources—that is, natural resources possessing goods-character—as he expands his knowledge of and physical power over nature.

The prevailing view, that dominates the thinking of the environmentalists and the conservationists, that there is a scarce, precious stock of natural resources that man’s productive activity serves merely to deplete is wrong. Seen in its full context, man’s productive activity serves to enlarge the supply of useable, accessible natural resources by converting a larger, though still tiny, fraction of nature into natural resources possessing goods-character. The essential question concerning natural resources is what fraction of the virtual infinity that is nature does man possess sufficient knowledge concerning and sufficient physical command over to be able to direct it to the satisfaction of his needs. This fraction will always be very small indeed and will always be capable of vastly greater further enlargement.

In a free and unhampered market, the production of resources once discovered are coordinated and harmonised by the price system. Produce too much and prices go down, making further production uneconomic. Produce too little, and not only do we get headlines saying we're running out, but (if the politicians have left it free to operate) the price system tells producers that it's time to explore new fields, to bring previously uneconomic fields back into production, and (if prices really go stratospheric) to explore substitutes for these resources that are becoming uneconomic.

If it's left unmeddled with, it's the price system itself that provides the motivation for production, for conservation, for exploration and for exploitation; not the maunderings and witterings of Gaia worshippers and economically illiterate politicians who only help to make things worse.

Cue Card Libertarianism - Environmentalism

ENVIRONMENTALISM: Encompasses various strands ranging from legitimate concerns about industrial pollution through to outright hostility towards industrial civilisation and technology. Libertarianism has no problem with the former, but is vehemently opposed to the latter – to the misanthropic or ecology strand which these days is all but mainstream.

The term ecology was coined by the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel in 1866. He defined it as the science of the relationship between organisms and their environment. As a philosophy it came to regard any disturbance of or harm to the organisms as necessarily detrimental to the whole environment. In its modern guise, it makes no distinction even between inanimate and animate matter, effectively claiming that all of existence, has intrinsic value in its virgin form, and should be regarded as inviolate. This includes such entities as trees, rocks and mud puddles, all by this “reasoning” granted equal importance to living, breathing human beings.

In 1905, Haeckel the zoologist became Haeckel the President of the Monist League, dedicated to promoting the forcible imposition of ecological ideals. Its zeal paid off in Germany’s “Green Revolution” of the 1930s, which began under the banners of “Blood and Soil” and “Back to the Land” and ended up by invading Poland and destroying most of Europe, and much of the inhabited world.

The ecology movement hibernated after World War Two and re-emerged in America in the 1960s. Initially deriving popularity from concerns about the use of pesticides raised by Rachael Carson in Silent Spring – concerns that led to the banning of DDT and the consequent death of up to 55 million people due to the return with renewed virulence of malaria -- the ecologists, deep ecologists and their deeper red felow travellers who saw an opportunity went on to posit implausible doomsday scenarios which all required big and bigger government to remedy.

Reputable scientists and disreputable politicians joined in doubting man’s or the earth’s chances of making it to the year 2000. Undaunted by the non-advent of any of the promised apocalypse scenarios, the doomsday merchants are still at it – Global Warming having supplanted an imminent Ice Age – demanding a tax-spend-regulate binge in the interests of the eco-system.

New Zealand’s Resource Management Act is an answer to any ecologist’s prayer. It prohibits (without a resource consent):

any use, erection, reconstruction, placement, alteration, extension, removal or demolition of any structure in, on, under or over land;
any excavation, drilling, tunnelling, or other disturbance of any land;
any destruction of, or damage to, or disturbance of, plants or animals in, on, or under the land;
any deposit of any substance in, on, or under the land;
any other use of land whatsoever [!!]

- – and it sets out the tortuous steps by which such a consent might be acquired and from whom.

As Ayn Rand points out, when the productive have to ask permission from the unproductive in order to produce, then you may know your culture is doomed. The point should be obvious even to a product of today's education system.

It should be obvious enought that as a species human beings have a specific means of survival. The way we survive and (if we do well) flourish is not by renouncing ourselves or sacrificing to Gaia but by producing - by applying the mind to existence, transforming it for our own ends.

Thus are resources identified and produced: by application of our minds to this earth in the name of our own survival. It's said that resources themselves are finite, but that's not true. The human mind itself is the ultimate resource. Summarises Benjamin Marks in 'The Malthusian Trap,' it's possible to take seriously the warnings of the pessimists, but as George Reisman and Ludwig von Mises point out, "it comes true only under socialism" -- only under a system in which private property is banned, production is strangled and the tragedy of the commons remains in effect -- under a system of (non) production where the human mind is not able to read price signals and opportunities, and to adapt their own resources to suit.

Libertarians generally hold that there is a place for environmental laws, but that they must be based on the non-initiation of force principle. It is legitimate to protect human individuals from the enforced, involuntary ingestion of harmful substances, for example, but not legitimate to protect un-owned sand dunes from being “despoiled” by housing -– just one of the more absurd outcomes of the Resource Management Act.

Libertarians hold that the best answer to environmental concerns is the extension and better honouring of property rights through common law protection of private rights, whereby it would be unlawful to pollute, violate, or commandeer private property. Old ladies couldn’t be forced from their homes by government or local body fiat to make way for motorways or shopping malls; whole villages (of privately-owned houses) couldn’t be uprooted to make way for government mandated dams; private land couldn’t be invaded by a gold prospecting company or power lines with government backing – to cite some recent real-life examples.

Even trees, rocks, mud puddles and sand dunes would be inviolate if they are privately owned!

This is part of a continuing series explaining the concepts and terms used by NZ libertarians, originally published in The Free Radical in 1993. The 'Introduction' to the series is here. The series itself is accumulating down on the right-hand sidebar, and in the archives here and here.

What would 'Party X' do about the environment? - PART 6: A fishy story

Continuing this serialisation based on my 'Free Radical' article 'Environmental Judo' - seven environmental policies that a genuine opposition party could adopt if they were serious about spontaneously shrinking the state, without any new coercion along the way.

Today, de-politicising the oceans:

6. A Fishy Story
NZ’s fisheries are at present what’s known as a “managed commons,” a system in which the tragedy of the commons is limited only by bureaucratic management of property effectively held in common by all those who own quotas. The quota system is simply a system of rationing by bureaucrat, with no incentive for the bureaucrats who set the level of rationing to get it right, nor for quota holders to maintain the resource.

The result has been politicisation of the fisheries, short term thinking from fishermen (rational in the circumstances), and pressure for even more government control of local fisheries.

I suggest we need a rethink. The best way to protect fish stocks and to protect the legitimate interests of fishermen is not through rationing but through property rights.

We know that when property is secure that property owners tend to look to their longer term interests: no reasonable property owner wants to destroy the goose that lays his golden eggs. When property rights are insecure however the situation is reversed: the greatest incentive with the short-term horizons created by insecure property rights is to grab what you can while the going is good.

Such has been the recent experience in NZ’s fishing industry where property rights are rationed by bureaucratic fiat, and we see claims of increasing bottom trawling and bycatch, and scary reports of decreasing fish stocks and a decimated fishery.

The answer is not more politicisation, but less.

Think about it for a moment. There are extinct native birds; there are decreasing fish stocks; but there is no immediate likelihood of dairy or beef cows becoming extinct. There’s a crucial difference here isn’t there: the difference is that farmers’ property in their cattle is protected. That’s the whole difference.

Farmers have historically protected their property in their stock with methods such as barbed wire, brands and enclosed paddocks. Obviously, none of these methods of protecting farmer’s property in their stock works with fish at present (except perhaps with shellfish, for which water rights and seabed rights are necessary), but giving fishermen the opportunity to show reason WHY their ownership in a fishery should be recognised should be seriously considered.

We can use the power of good law to promote the technological means by which law good law can be brought to bear on the problem. Think about the development of property rights in cattle, and how technology helped:

The use of cattle brands was the first simple method enabling cattlemen to define ownership of their stock, which it was the law’s job to protect, allowing them to plan and to grow their herds ‘sustainably’ in the full knowledge that their investment in the herd was protected. The better the legal protection, the longer term the investment and the planning that could be done. This is the reason that cattle rustling was treated so severely in the days when cattle still roamed the plains, and before barbed wire was invented.

The invention of barbed wire revolutionised farming, allowing farmers to protect and define both their stock and their land across huge areas, allowing them to plan ahead and to protect both their herd and their land ‘sustainably’ in the full knowledge that their investment in herd and land was protected.

Both inventions enabled the legal technology of property rights to be brought to bear to protect first the resource (by means of identifiable brands) and then the environment (by means of barbed wire).

What’s needed now is the same thing to happen with the fisheries. If fishermen’s own interests in fisheries and fish stocks are safeguarded, then every incentive exists for them to take the long term view.

What’s needed with the fisheries is the maritime equivalent of brands and barbed wire so that fish stocks and fisheries are protected by those who have the most interest in protecting them: the fishermen themselves. What’s needed is technology.

Political parties don’t invent technology. They can’t. But what they can do is offer the protection of property rights to those who do.

I suggest the best way to obtain what we want here is to invite the fishermen themselves over, say, a three year period to present methods either technological or otherwise by which their own interests in fish and fisheries may be objectively recognised and protected in law, and then commit to enact that protection.

I predict an explosion in fish stocks, the depoliticisation of the fisheries, and a big export market in the technology produced.
[Tomorrow, Part 7: A Kyoto Plan with a difference]
* * * * *
THE SERIES SO FAR:

INTRO: 'What Would Party X Do?'
PART 1: 'Eco Un-taxes.'
Part 2: 'A Nuisance and a BOR.'
Part 3: 'Small Consents Tribunals'
Part 4: 'Privatisation: Iwi then Kiwi'
PART 5: 'A Very Special Carbon Tax'

THE SERIES IS BASED ON THE PRINCIPLE DEVELOPED HERE:
'Transitions to Freedom: Shall We Kill Them in Their Beds?'