Deer, Dear?
Tuesday, 26 June 2007 by Jacob TomawThis just in! Reduced supply and increasing demand leads to higher prices. Higher prices lead to a search for alternatives.
Tuna populations are on the decline and there is international agreement to reduce catches of the tasty sea chickens. Demand continues to be strong, so prices are on the move up. In japan sushi chefs are experimenting with new types of sushi as tuna prices rise. They are looking into raw deer and horse. They are even borrowing some of our blasphemous American sushi recipes.
“It’s like America running out of steak,” said Tadashi Yamagata, vice chairman of Japan’s national union of sushi chefs. “Sushi without tuna just would not be sushi.”
Why don’t we run out of steak but do fish? Think about who owns the fish and who owns the cows? Grandpa Miller and thousands of other people own the cows and the land they live on. Most of the fish we desire the most live in waters owned in common. Common ownership only leads to tragedy. What is the solution? I will let Murry Rothbard deliver it from a letter in 1953:
… Private individuals and firms should definitely be able to own parts of the sea for fishing purposes. The present communism in the sea has led, inevitably, to progressive extermination of the fisheries, since it is to everyone’s interest to grab as many fish as he can before the other fellow does, and to no one’s interest to preserve the fishery resource. The problem would be solved if, on the first-ownership-to-first-user principle, parts of the sea could be owned by private enterprise.
June 26th, 2007 at 11:11
No, not tuna!
June 26th, 2007 at 11:53
Wish that would have happened at college. Days and Days and Days of smelling that damn tuna helper! Just kidding Nina!
June 26th, 2007 at 11:56
she says that, but she misses the tuna. why else would she secretly open it at night and sniff it???
June 26th, 2007 at 12:07
A more feasible plan than Rothbard’s already has widespread support in the US and Canada: Tradable Fishing Quotas.
Though, Rothbard would probably abhor the use of the government to establish this market.
June 26th, 2007 at 13:25
Here is more information about the quotas.
Zach is right that Rothbard probably would have abhorred the use of government to establish these. Government is not needed to create property rights, they exist because we exist. Rothbard (and I) would prefer a system where individuals can one the sea. This might mean the surface or a depth. When, homesteading you declare ownership by improving the resource. This might be tending to the fish, fencing, or building something. It is important to know that you could not fence off the whole sea and claim you owned it. This would only mean you owned the parameter.
If the sea were owned, conservation organizations could create refuges, farmer could create fisheries, miners could exploit, and tourists tour harmoniously in a system regulated by the free market.
June 26th, 2007 at 16:58
I don’t think that current technologies can provide the Rothbardian solution. The issue is not overuse of a particular parcel of ocean but the depletion of fish stocks, which are highly mobile, migrating up to thousands of miles. The proper place to apply property rights is to the fish, which ITQ’s do (though not to particular fish, which is nice since they are virtually homogeneous anyway).
I would fail the libertarian purity test since I, unlike Rothbard, am not an anarchist. I accept that the government is necessary to enforce property rights, and I think that even with that small concession, ITQs would be acceptable so long as the quotas are set and allocated via non-governmental means (which, IIRC, actually happens in some fisheries).
But more broadly, Jake is looking at other benefits of private ocean parcels. -I’m not familiar with anyone owning private refuges, though I would think compensation for damage by pollution would face the same practical problems as other air and water torts on land. -There already exist fish farms for less mobile species (and these have notable potential external costs (higher accumulation of toxins in the stocks and greater likelihood of epidemics)). -Mining has significant externalities which makes me go all squishy on laissez faire again. -I can’t currently think of restrictions on marine tourism that don’t also address externalities.
In other words, it is not obvious how private ocean parcels would be a net social benefit. But perhaps my utilitarianism makes me an inferior libertarian.
June 26th, 2007 at 19:16
I admit it, I am an extremist and an anarchist. However I would settle for a constrained Madisonian form of government.
I think the quotas are a great step, but government being responsible for anything makes me nervious and would prefer to see a non-government solution. The dilema of fish mobility is interesting and I cannot think of a good response right now. The same dilemma is there for wildlife on land.
Zach points out a large problem that the seas would face as we do here on land. I think pollution and externalities like it should be handled differently. I will leave you all to wonder how that might be for now.
Another problem with an anarchical solution is how an improvement to land is determined. If you are working the land then it is obvious, but can there be a wilderness refuge in a Rothbardian system?
June 27th, 2007 at 8:51
Sorry guys, i liked Mel and I’s tuna conversation better.
December 16th, 2007 at 17:24
[…] Zach sent me this post about free vs. farmed fish in British Columbia. I have posted about oceanic fisheries before. […]