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> If the market value of a healthy forest is greater then that of palm oil, the forest will survive. If the inverse is true, the forest will be destroyed. More
by wwweston 7y ago
> If the market value of a healthy forest is greater then that of palm oil, the forest will survive. If the inverse is true, the forest will be destroyed.
More precisely: if the market value of palm oil is greater than that of healthy forest, there will be incentives to destroy the forest. That only translates to "the forest will be destroyed" where people / societies have no other values in play beyond their incentives.
Incentives matter, for sure, and using them as a tool to encourage preservation is a good arrow to consider stocking the quiver with. But something important is lost if we assume they're the only things that matter; it's essentially an acceptance of the idea there are no values besides incentives.
[edited "More precisely" conditional sentence to actually make sense, I accidentally swapped the hypothetical and asserted consequence when I typed it out the first time]
- chrisseaton 7y ago> if the market value of a healthy forest is greater than that of palm oil, there will be incentives to destroy the forest No the idea is the opposite - if the market value of healthy forest is greater than that of palm oil the idea is people will be incentivised to not destroy the forest because it's worth more than the palm oil.
- shawnz 7y ago> people / societies have [...] other values in play beyond their incentives. Isn't that basically just a non-monetary incentive?
- earthboundkid 7y agoYes, but “incentives” is just a model. Sometimes the model helps; sometimes not. You can fudge the model enough so that everything fits into it, but it’s often adding complexity for no increase in clarity.
- wwweston 7y agoI'm using the term values to describe outcomes a person might find desirable outside their immediate sphere of interest. You might find that you are opposed to genocide, even if it happens remotely and is no immediate skin of your nose, or that a lost child bothers you and motivates you to act to try fix the situation, even for a child not connected to your tribe or recognized responsibility. What's going on in those situations? Is that an incentive? I suppose you could work with a definition of incentive that might include it, but I think it's useful to distinguish what's going on in situations like that from situations where immediate personal benefit is more clear. One is more or less about what you want your life to be more like, the other is more or less about what you want the world to be more like.
- adrianN 7y agoFor poor people there is very little that matters other than getting enough money to survive and maybe send their children to school.
- wwweston 7y agoHow often does it happen that industrial-scale deforestation is primarily a response to economic survival issues among the poor? Usually when I see industrial-scale impacts, there's incentives capital is responding too.