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Private owners respect and conserve their resources. Governments (which is to say, politicians with short lifespans in their job) use up resources in a rush t
by tjic 17y ago
Private owners respect and conserve their resources.
Governments (which is to say, politicians with short lifespans in their job) use up resources in a rush to accomplish short term, idiotic goals.
You can look at the environmental records of capitalist countries versus centrally managed totalitarian states.
...or you can look at golf courses (which don't "cut down all the trees to keep things tidy") and compare them to the government of Palo Alto.
- ardit33 17y agostrange, because in my country, it was during communism, that a lot of trees were planted, both parks/forest, and agricultural one. If dear leader wanted a artificial lake, with lots of trees, next to his villa, he would get it. If he thought lots of lemon trees, and olive trees were awesome, bared hills will be transformed to accommodate all these trees. And it was during the transition to democracy, (and even today), that a whole of these things started getting destroyed. We are talking about commmon areas. As for private property, I can safely say that most europeans love trees. As another anectode, there are some streets in SF where trees are completely missing. And it usually corresponds with the density of asian population. It seems that there is something about a tree, in front of the house/door that hinders the chi flow, or something. But go to Clement st. and there are trees where the more euro shops are, and just a few blocks down, there is little trees where the asian stores are. Some things can be cultural also.
- run4yourlives 17y agoThat's disingenuous. While this act was clearly one of government bureaucracy run amok, to suggest that the same thing doesn't happen on private land is patently absurd.
- hristov 17y agoRight, golf courses only cut most of the trees because they are in the way of their fairways. And then they poison the water for the entire area by using all kinds of chemicals in order to keep their grass in a ridiculous unnaturally green color and the course free of animals that may disturb the neatness of the grass. Sorry you cannot make such blanket statements, some times governments do terrible things for the environment and sometimes businesses do the same. People that care about the environment should be vigilant and hold both governments and businesses accountable.
- shykes 17y ago> Private owners respect and conserve their resources Except when they don't. Blanket statements like that aren't very helpful. > politicians [...] use up resources in a rush > to accomplish short term, idiotic goals. Except when they don't. Or when the goals are decided by the private owners who bought them lunch.
- req2 17y agoPrivate owners that don't conserve their resources quickly find themselves without resources to conserve; governments that don't conserve their resources get another chance. Many things get in the way of this simple statement being true.
- randallsquared 17y agoOr when the goals are decided by the private owners who bought them lunch. I think you missed the point. If the property in question were privately owned, then the goals concerning the property would be the owners' goals, not the politicians' goals. To the extent that the politicians' goals control property, the property isn't privately owned (except for the corner case of property the politicians privately own).
- shykes 17y agoAllow me to reformulate my point for clarity: 1. Politicians don't always mismanage publicly owned resources 2. When they do, it is often on behalf of a private interest, e.g. a real estate developer contributing to their next campaign
- Timothee 17y agoI'd say that totalitarian states tend to have governments that last longer than in capitalist countries (even though I feel that the capitalistic aspect is not related to the totalitarian part…), thus I'd say that capitalist countries are more likely to want to "accomplish short term, idiotic goals".