Thank God for state intervention protecting and regulating our land

[volkin]

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I think the ACists here have made a pretty big assumption that I'd like to challange.

They state that it is alway in a private company's interests to preserve an area to maximize long term profit, but consider this;

Company A want to buy an area of forest and carry out sustainable logging. They will receive a slow but steady profit for the foreseeable future.

Company B want the same area of forest. They will log it all in 6 months for a big profit then sell the inferior quality land for a reduced price, then they buy another area of forest and repeat.

As you can see company B will make more money in the short term and the long term as long as there is wood to cut, but hey, even then they can go into mining, or just buy a yacht and take early retirement.

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Wow, you make a lot of assumptions about how much money they get from certain activities.

And notice that there's nothing stopping you from buying the "inferior" land at the cheap price and planting a ton of trees.

And remember, cutting trees down is good for the environment! The founder of greenpeace says so!

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Governments are defined by the area they occupy, they plan on being there for ever so naturally want to look at the long term preservation of that land.

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And the future prospect of selling land *creates* incentives to preserve it! Nobody wants to buy a superfund site. Since the people who work in government are not personally harmed (economically) when government property is trashed, they have a much lower incentive to preserve it.

And BTW, governments are not defined by their territory. Governments trade land all the time.

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Private companies are not tied to any specific area, if the most profitable action is to rape the land and move on, it's a safe bet thats what they'll do. There was the example of the owner and tenants of a house. If an owner found out that if he gutted the house, selling all the fixtures and fittings and the empty shell, he would have enough money for 2 houses, what would he do?

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Why shouldn't he gut the house in this situation? Is there something sacred about assembled houses that makes them untouchable?

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Because it is better to have one pristine environment preserved than two, ldo.