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You're totally correct that private interests can and do influence the political process! One of the wonderful side effects of fishery privatization is the cre

You're totally correct that private interests can and do influence the political process! One of the wonderful side effects of fishery privatization is the creation of a new lobby which does battle against the existing fish lobbies. See, the ultimate goal is to get less fish pulled from the ocean - at least in the short term until fish populations recover. So the fish lobbies are going to go absolutely insane! Imagine all of the out of work fishermen - and not only in Ireland, but Nigeria, Brazil, the Philippines, Indonesia: These are people who literally depend upon the overfishing and plundering of the ocean for their livelihoods. These organizations (the fishermen, loosely) are already influencing the political process. They are one of the reasons why the current regulations utterly fail. [Remember: It's not as if we just noticed this overfishing problem yesterday. Governments have been trying to 'solve' this issue for decades using traditional statist regulations - and of course failing, predictably.] We already know that privatization of food sources works in practice. All we've got to do is apply what works so incredibly well on land to the oceans. Edit: Oh, and if the fish lobby gets the government to help with policing? That'd be great! [even if not ideal] Isn't the whole goal here to force 3rd world trawlers from pulling out too many fish? You're going to need a lot of guns to do that! Edit2: We are completely fine with the government protecting private farms on land. What's wrong, philosophically, with government protection of private fisheries in the ocean?

anigbrowl 13y ago
We already know that privatization of food sources works in practice. Seems like you skipped a step there. It works with quite varying degrees of success, not unlike regulation. Edit2: We are completely fine with the government protecting private farms on land. What's wrong, philosophically, with government protection of private fisheries in the ocean? Nothing, except not all of them are any given government's to give away (because you can fish in international waters), and because the task and costs involved are significantly different. I'm not opposed to your idea, but you're hand-waving it as a panacea without thinking about the real issues. People have been doing this since the 1970s but we've still got a lot of problems, so it's clearly not a magic bullet. See for example http://cironline.org/reports/system-turns-us-fishing-rights-commodity-squeezes-small-fishermen-4250 http://cironline.org/reports/system-turns-us-fishing-rights-... (and no, I don't especially care about the corporations v. cottage industry frame, there's just some good summary information in the article).
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  1) Privatization of food sources is by far the most successful form of food production. All alternatives have provided inferior results, some catastrophically so (Cambodia under Khmer Rouge, etc. Ironically, the current international fishery management regime is not entirely unlike the collective farm practices of the Khmer Rouge!). 2) Due to the international nature of fisheries, they would have to be sold by the UN or another ad hoc international body. (The current regional-international fishery management orgs could probably work) 3) Catch shares are not related to fishery privatization. Catch shares are simply the most efficient method of carrying out traditional regulatory limits. The goal of fishery privatization is to turn around the fish population collapse, not sustain the collapse (which is what traditional regulation does).
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    Khmer Rouge comparisons? GMAFB.
    - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
      It's a parenthetical side note :) Not part of my argument/position.

anigbrowl 13y ago

We already know that privatization of food sources works in practice. Seems like you skipped a step there. It works with quite varying degrees of success, not unlike regulation. Edit2: We are completely fine with the government protecting private farms on land. What's wrong, philosophically, with government protection of private fisheries in the ocean? Nothing, except not all of them are any given government's to give away (because you can fish in international waters), and because the task and costs involved are significantly different. I'm not opposed to your idea, but you're hand-waving it as a panacea without thinking about the real issues. People have been doing this since the 1970s but we've still got a lot of problems, so it's clearly not a magic bullet. See for example http://cironline.org/reports/system-turns-us-fishing-rights-commodity-squeezes-small-fishermen-4250 http://cironline.org/reports/system-turns-us-fishing-rights-... (and no, I don't especially care about the corporations v. cottage industry frame, there's just some good summary information in the article).

alexeisadeski3 13y ago
1) Privatization of food sources is by far the most successful form of food production. All alternatives have provided inferior results, some catastrophically so (Cambodia under Khmer Rouge, etc. Ironically, the current international fishery management regime is not entirely unlike the collective farm practices of the Khmer Rouge!). 2) Due to the international nature of fisheries, they would have to be sold by the UN or another ad hoc international body. (The current regional-international fishery management orgs could probably work) 3) Catch shares are not related to fishery privatization. Catch shares are simply the most efficient method of carrying out traditional regulatory limits. The goal of fishery privatization is to turn around the fish population collapse, not sustain the collapse (which is what traditional regulation does).
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Khmer Rouge comparisons? GMAFB.
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    It's a parenthetical side note :) Not part of my argument/position.