In
yesterday’s post, I discussed how the (near-) universal protection of property rights made possible “industry at the speed of thought” in the 19th century. Unfortunately, in the 20th century, property rights became gradually and then completely subordinate to a supposedly “higher” concern: government’s protection of “the environment.”
Now, if the human environment is one’s concern, then the way to protect it is through private property rights. Property rights enable each individual to optimize his own environment, developing and preserving as best promotes his well-being. Twentieth- and twenty-first century concern with “the environment” amounted to placing the non-human environment–untouched nature–over property rights and the human environment.
Instead of “industry at the speed of thought,” we have “industry at the speed allowed by environmentalists.” And as the story of the Trans Alaskan Pipeline delay in the 1970s illustrates, that can be a deadly slow speed.
…
Continue Reading
Consider: the Tide-Water Pipe Line Company … built an “impossible” [crude-oil] pipeline in three months. And it was open for business in May 1879–a mere six months after the company was formed. In today’s American industry, in six months it can be difficult to get permission to lay down mats to teach Yoga on; a state of the art industrial project is inconceivable.
If oil is the lifeblood of a mobile civilization, then oil pipelines are its arteries.
TransCanda’s Keystone XL pipeline, a potential source of highly secure Canadian oil for U.S. refineries all the way to the Texas Gulf Coast, was proposed back in 2008. Despite the fact that pipelines are the safest way of transporting oil, and that this proposed pipeline went to borderline bizarre lengths to prevent the slightest momentary oil leakage, TransCanada endured more than three years of dealing with the “green” regulatory establishment–wrangling with permits, environmental impact statements, secondary environmental impact statements, and the like.
…
Continue Reading
“Business that is everything to everyone is not anything at all in itself.”
– Elaine Sternberg, Just Business: Business Ethics in Action. Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 33.
No doubt his handlers have given Al Gore the word: go easy on climate warming (aka climate change). The issue has little traction. You are the wrong voice for the cause. Solyndra. Climategate 2.0. Winter snows…. Not now, Al.
Take it up a notch! they must be telling him. Think bigger. Subsume the issue…. And so Gore’s new piece in the Wall Street Journal barely mentions his pet issue of (man-made) climate change but something much larger and amorphous.
“A Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism,” coauthored with David Blood, calls for “abandoning short-term economic thinking for ‘sustainable capitalism’.” Such is code for that subjective, holistic, anything goes doctrine of corporate social responsibility, which I elsewhere questioned as follows:
The discipline of business ethics should be reoriented around a more sophisticated understanding of capitalism proper.
…
Continue Reading