🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jul11.224426.2523@megatek.uucp> cjp@megatek.uucp (Chris "Systems Stud" Pikus) writes:
[Regarding deforestation of private land:]

> If these land owners want to cut down their trees, it's their
> business.  If I owned land that was going to become "worthless"
> because of some government regualtory fiat, I would be cutting
> them down as fast as possible too.
> 
> If you have a problem with that, why don't YOU buy the land?
> Then you can do (or not do) anything you want with it.

The notion that a land owner may "do (or not do) anything [s/he]
wants with it" apparently appeals to many, but has never been
supported by law.  Even property owners have legal
responsibilities to the societies of which they are members.  Do
you believe that an owner of land through which a river runs
should have unlimited freedom to poison the river, even if
people drink from it downstream?

Perhaps back when the earth was sparsely populated by humans, and
the available tools of destruction were comparatively puny, it was
possible to live in sufficient isolation that you really could do
whatever you wanted with a piece of land, and no-one would know
the difference.  With 5.mumble billion people on the planet, and
97 million more each year, those days are long gone.  Perhaps they
never existed.  Even Genesis records a dispute between two brothers,
one a tiller of land and one a herder of animals.

jas