"The Freedom Lobby" - Energy Bulletin

[hatrack]

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Again, the concern is with so-called economic freedom, primarily to grab whatever wealth one is able to grab. This is an appealing doctrine to those who have the skills and social position to do just that. And, there is an important second component to this freedom, property rights. Property rights become very important if you already have a lot of property (wealth) or the prospect of gaining a lot of property. So, it is again no surprise that the financial press--The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Post among them--see climate change as a canard to gyp them and their readers out of their rights to use their property--primarily property that emits a lot of greenhouse gas--as they see fit.

What these defenders of freedom don't tell us is what they are willing to do to defend the property rights of the inhabitants of coastal cities and countless seaside villages should their communities be swamped by rising sea level--one of the most widely expected effects of global warming. Nor do they tell us what they might be willing to do to protect the water supplies of billions dependent on Asian mountain rivers as the glacial meltwater that feeds them disappears. How might they answer the farmers whose formerly fertile fields become drought-stricken deserts as climate change proceeds? Who do all these people see about the violation of their property rights?

What is conspicuously absent from the freedom lobby's lexicon is the word "justice." They are all for freedom so long as it doesn't include the freedom to hold them accountable for their contributions to the demise of other people's homes and livelihoods. Here they simply ignore their own arguments about property and freely trample on the rights of others to have a livable climate. The private property zealots refuse to acknowledge that the atmosphere belongs to all of us and that that implies that no single person or group has the right to abuse it. What the freedom lobby has conveniently forgotten is that society is a social contract. As philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote, without that contract we would be free to do whatever we wish and the result would be a "war of all against all." The ruling ethos would be that of "might makes right."

The second historical memory lapse is that property is a social convention. The reason something qualifies as private property is because we all agree that it does. There are certain things which we explicitly say are not private property such as public parks, roadways, waterways and museums. They belong to the community. In general the world has said that water belongs to the community. It stands to reason that climate belongs to the community not just of human beings, but of all living things. The point is that private property rights have always been subject to the agreement and needs of the community as a whole. There never has been and never will be a right to unfettered use of one's property inside society. So, what is the freedom lobby really selling? Since they care little for the imperiled property rights, livelihoods, and lives of those who come after us, their agenda can properly be described as the defense of privilege. They are busy defending those who have already acquired considerable property and wealth that could be subject to restrictions or taxation designed to preserve the climate for future generations. Any diminution of those privileges is attacked as an assault on freedom.

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http://energybulletin.net/node/48940

[IrateCitizen]

1. Friedrich von Hayek on altruism

I caught a clip of an interview with Friedrich von Hayek, original "Chicago school" economist, in which he was asked what role altruism played in the proper functioning of markets.

His answer?

"It doesn't."

I've always thought that just about summed it up for me. This is the freedom of von Hayek, Friedman, Thatcher, Reagan and the rest of that sorry lot who objectified the cult of the individual.

If anyone's interested, the clip was from a BBC documentary by Adam Curtis, "The Trap, Pt. 1" (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=404227395387111085).