🚀 go-pugleaf

Larry Smith (larrys@pentagon.io.com) wrote:
: In article <D0sIqt.L36@truffula.sj.ca.us>,
: Cameron L. Spitzer <cls@truffula.sj.ca.us> wrote:
: >
: >It's important that we enviros not tacitly accept the assumptions
: >behind the Wise Use arguments.  One assumption is that environmental
: >regulations "cost" property owners.  We should question this
: >assumption whenever the bad guys rely on it.  Let's point out,
: >to counter, that the WU "takings" argument is in reality a demand 
: >for vast government handouts:  The WU folks want the government
: >to guarantee *speculative investments*.  Investors in extractive
: >industry *gamble* that they will be able to avoid major costs
: >associated with their profitable production.  They *speculate* that
: >these costs will go undiscovered until they move on.
: >Taxpayers shouldn't bear the risk that these high rollers might guess
: >wrong and get caught destroying a species or a watershed; sometimes
: >gamblers should lose.

: Interesting theory, but not what people are complaining about with
: these takings.  Land has a certain value based on conditions pre-
: vailing at the time.  If that value changes because of the luck of
: the market, that's fate, and there's nothing can be done about it.
: When that value changes because the _gov't_ invented a new law, that's
: a taking, a real, and personal, destruction of wealth, not a potential,
: not a "future" - it registers now as a capital loss, and the IRS knows
: it.  Ahh - but you don't get any tax write off from that.  Go ahead,
: sell your house below what you bought it for and try to get a tax
: refund.  But sell it for _more_ than it cost you and the IRS is right
: there, hand out.

: This is _not_ monopoly money, it is a _real_ monetary loss, and not
: just confined to rich people or speculators.  That is _why_ the
: _electorate_ kicked the Democrats out.  There weren't enough rich
: people to account for that, but everyone has heard and seen the
: documented horror stories of poor and middle-class individuals
: and the EPA.  This isn't covering Donald Trump's ass.  It's a
: hidden tax, like unfunded mandates, it lets the gov't play God
: and hides the cost some place where it won't show on the Federal
: Budget.
: -- 
: Larry Smith --- My opinions only.           larrys@zk3.dec.com/larrys@io.com.
: pentagon.io.com is Illuminati OnLine, SJ Games, _not_ "the" Pentagon, please.
:    Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
:    argument of the tyrant and the creed of the slave.   -- William Pitt, 1763

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EPA regulations are not always ideal. But the goal of environmental
protection is not just some hideous plot by leftists who have infil
trated the government a` la some McCarthyite conspiracy theory. And
you're dead wrong if you think more than a tiny percentage of the
electorate shares the militantly antienvironmental property rights
zealotry of a Newt Gingrich. The reason we have an EPA, an Endangered
Species Act, a National Parks Service, etc, is because the vast
majority of the public recognizes the threats to our environment
and wants to protect the environment, as well they should. Newt and
friends would have gone down to the most ignominious of defeats
had this election been based in any significant measure on their
environmental positions.

Please read my previous post in this thread for more discussion of the
relations between "property rights" and "ecology."

Guy Berliner
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