Whilst doing research for an upcoming commentary, I stumbled upon this post from a charming fellow calling himself “the Slacktivist.” Cute.

The post was so dim-witted and delusional, I had to serve him with some much deserved ridicule. Citing a story once cited here about the coming banana famine, His Slacktivist writes:

According to cornucopian anti-environmentalist Julian Simon — and his disciples, such as disgraced and discredited statistician Bjorn Lomborg — the world can never run out of anything (see here).

“Therefore,” the simonists argue, “the world’s banana crops cannot really be threatened, cod cannot be overfished, and fossil fuels will last forever. Lalalalalalala I can’t hear you lalalalalalalaaaaaaa.”

But again: The banana, in various forms, is the staple diet for some half billion people in Asia and Africa.

The stakes here are too high for cornucopian nonsense.

Sheesh. Where to begin?

Julian Simon’s optimism never rested on the premise that “cod can’t be overfished,” or that “banana crops can never be threatened.” Indeed, Simon and all free market economists recognize that we can run out of the stuff we need — that’s what they’ve been trying to guard against. Simon’s point was that so long as there’s demand for a good — and so long as government stays out of the way — that good will almost always been in plentiful supply, because the people producing that good have a vested interest in making sure it never goes away.

It’s only when goverment intervenes that people adopt an “every man for himself” strategy, and, in a scenario we libertarians like to call “the tragedy of the commons,” the stuff we want gets all used up.

Take fish, for example. We may indeed overfish ourselves out of a replenishable supply of tuna, or cod, or crab. But not for reasons Der Slackster suggests. We may run out of fish because governments long ago decided that the ocean would be a “common” area, free from vile, capitalistic “property rights.” Had you or I been able to buy grids of oceania, each of us would have incentive to be sure our grid stays full of cod — to sell, to eat, or to freeze as weapons for our army of dueling monkey butlers.

But because oceania is a “common,” our incentive changes. If I see a female, egg bearing cod swim by, I’m not thinking about whether or not I should spare her, so she can later lay eggs, so I’ll have cod in the spring. I’m thinking that if I don’t spear that cod and put her in my boat, you will. It’s now to my advantage to reel in every cod I see, lest you beat me to it.

How about a real world example? Okay. The black rhino in Africa. Poached almost to extinction, governments in Africa (Zimbabwe, most notably) took various public conservation efforts to preserve the species. The most obvious effort — banning the ivory trade — only made the rhino more lucrative to poachers — it drove up the price of ivory. Only after Zimbabwe granted private ownership to black rhinos did the species make a comeback. Suddenly, there was private incentive to keep the animals alive. Driven by profit, rhino “ranchers” had remarkable success staving off potential poachers by protecting their investment with formidable security systems.

The scene is similar with elephants. African countries that have banned the ivory trade have seen their elephant populations dwindle. Countries that allow an ivory trade — and have a healthy respect for property rights of both land and elephants — have healthy elephant populations.

Same with ducks. Private organizations like Ducks Unlimited — who want to keep duck populations up for hunting — have been enormously succesful in persuading property owners (sometimes by paying them) to allow migrating ducks to nest and molt on their land. Contrast that incentive system to the Endangered Species Act, which states that if an endangered species is spotted on your land, you lose most use of that land and much of the land around it.

If I’m a land owner, I’m more than happy to let ducks molt on my property — especially if a private group pays me to do it. But the moment I see an endangered species on my land, I’m either going to shoo it away or kill it and bury it, lest the feds find out, and put heavy restrictions on what I can do with my property.

Check here for more examples of how private enterprise benefits the environment.

But back to bananas. The irony in the Slacktivist’s post is that he faults free-marketeers like Julian Simon for the pending extinction of the banana. But it isn’t overfarming or greed or pollution that’s killing the banana — it’s natural-borne fungi and viruses. And indirectly, it’s environmentalism.

The banana in fact could (and probably will, in the end) be saved — and by the very forces of capitalism and profit motive people like the Slackster so loathe.

If the banana is to be saved, it will be via genetic modification — tweaking the fruit’s genes in order to boost its immune system. And the companies that are likely to do it — Monstanto, ADM, etc. — are the very companies whose CEOs I’m guessing the Slackster puts just a hair in front of Jeff Dahmer on his “people I’d like to have dinner with” list.

If the banana does go extinct, it will be because environmentalists like Greenpeace, PIRG and the World Wildlife Fund — have taken it upon themselves to thwart the onset of biotechnology at every turn — will have been successful in pressuring governments, legislatures and the buying public into preventing biotech companies from fiddling with the banana’s genetics.

If the banana dies, the Slacktivist’s ideology will be to blame, not Julian Simon’s.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2003 at 5:31 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.