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Exactly. Which is why government can often do a better job than private sector in taking care of the land. Because it doesn't have a profit-based bottomline. Which is why your national parks are so well cared for.
Those seeking profit are the ones who are more likely to plunder while they can. Not too many local governments are plundering the parks and forest reserves. Unlike the private sector, elected officials are accountable to the people who actually live in the area. Corporations are responsible to their shareholders -- they don't live in the area being affected by the corporation's actions. If Councilman Bob authorizes the metropark's ecosystem to be encroached or destroyed, he'll have a whole city calling for his head, if they don't want it. If Chairperson Bob authorizes the company backyard's ecosystem to be encroached or destroyed, he probably is improving the bottomline for his shareholders and will get a bonus, and the local residents affected by his actions are not those he is ultimately accountable to.
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I more or less agree with your analysis on why big corporations have little incentive to do what is in the interests of the people wrt the environment. (Kevin Carson has some good points to make on this topic in an upcoming
Freeman article).
But I disagree with the assessment that government would do a 'better' job. Part of the problem for me is that your analysis seems to assume that the private ownership in question is in the form of large corporations, while government ownership and regulation is local government. I tend to agree with you that local government control (like city-level) >>> letting big corporations run wild; but big corporations only have the power they do (and only get
big) because of the influence of federal government. So saying that private ownership and control over these situations would be worse than government is only true if we allow for the existence of a type of institution that would only exist if there was massive government intervention on their behalf (and thus wouldn't fit into any anarchist picture, "capitalist" or otherwise).
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So I really don't think the issue is one of 'private vs public' ownership, but one of centralization vs. decentralization--if things are highly decentralized, then it won't matter much whether environment stuff is regulated by the people in the form of a local city council, or 'regulated' by the people in the form of natural market checks on abusive private owners.
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Agree. Good post.