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His freeform, not-too-serious libertarianism can easily be mocked, but PJ O’Rourke did have a very good point about well-intentioned but counterproductive envir
by devilbunny 28d ago
His freeform, not-too-serious libertarianism can easily be mocked, but PJ O’Rourke did have a very good point about well-intentioned but counterproductive environmental legislation like the laws governing wetlands: imagine that, should an Old Master painting be discovered on your property, you were required immediately to cease all other use of the property and protect that Old Master painting against damage or theft, under penalty of law, but without any compensation for the expenses this might incur. You can imagine that any new ones found would simply be burned immediately, not protected. And wetlands laws work a bit like that.
- cucumber3732842 28d agoRegardless of specific political ideology it only takes a room temperature IQ to realize that copy pasting the concept of Royal Forests from Norman England to today is probably gonna cause all the same perverse incentives and hardship and stunt wealth accumulation/progress in the affected areas and so on. What did we spend the last few decades of the 20th century doing? Basically that. The other real fucked up thing is that most of it is state/local implementations of federal rules but that's insane because California has a completely different relationship with swamps and water than the Carolinas. The worst of it will probably get unwound when the courts adopt a "no you idiots, a fractional taking is still a taking pay the F up" doctrine but that might be a century from now. There's sooooo much money tied up in it though.