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Monday, November 17, 2008
Lemieux: In defence of waste
This week, Pierre Lemieux turns his sights on the new religion of environmentalism.
According to David Suzuki, we all consume too much. In a recent discussion with Ian Gillespie of the London Free Press, Suzuki complained about capitalism:
"We have an economic system that . . . is dependent on consumption," he said. "And most of that consumption is frivolous stuff. We don't need it."
To Suzuki, all that frivolous stuff is waste. And, he claims, "Zero waste needs to become the basis of the human economy."
Thus: out with the ipods, the wireless phones, and all the other gizmos we don't really need. In his column, Lemieux imagines what Suzuki's zero waste world would really look like: we would eat nothing but soybeans and live in wigwams. As he points out:
With a diet of soybeans and a wigwam for shelter, individuals would leave a tiny carbon footprint. They would also have a life expectancy of less than 50 years, which is still the case in sub-Saharan Africa. There would be no ecological waste, just wasted lives.
At least some of us would survive in the zero waste world, but -- to borrow from Thomas Hobbes -- our lives would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." To Lemieux, and any other reasonable person, this is not enough: "Merely surviving is not the goal. Most people want fun too."
But fun means waste, right? Or does it? Outside the state of nature and in the free market
An individual makes his choices according to his preferences given his constraints, that is, given the configuration of prices and other conditions that reflects other individuals’ choices. He maximizes his benefits over his costs, which is just another way of saying that he doesn’t waste anything.
Not everyone purchases an ipod. A person who chooses to buy one does so because he thinks the benefits of having an ipod are worth the cost -- in terms of what he must give up in order to get one.
But, as Lemieux would argue, there is nothing wasteful about the person's choice. He is putting his resources to their most productive use, as measured in his own terms.
Therefore, when Suzuki and other environmentalists decry waste, his real point is that people are directing their resources in ways he would prefer they not. Spending money on an ipod is wasteful, all right, but only if you happen to be David Suzuki. To the rest of us, an ipod or similar gadget is a worthy investment.
What Suzuki and his friends want is to disregard the preferences of the consumer. The problem is that individuals are not allocating their resources in the way the environmentalists would like.
In the absence of markets, or if markets are overridden, resource allocation is decided by authority. In practice, this allocation method means giving the greatest weight to the preferences of politicians and bureaucrats — or of the autocrat. This is the sort of society that Suzuki and his coreligionists want to establish.
Instead of resource allocation through voluntary trade for mutual benefit, environmentalists want bureaucrats to decide where an individual's resources should go.
Lemieux admits that sometimes market outcomes are sub-optimal. For example, sometimes voluntary trade imposes costs on others in the form of negative externalities. However, these costs can be managed through a well-defined system of property rights. But compared to this solution, rule of environmental priests is a "despicable alternative."
Read Lemieux's column in its entirety here.
Posted by Terrence Watson on November 17, 2008 | Permalink
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Comments
I especially appreciated the sentence about how its cheaper to buy a new printer than to get one repaired. One could go much further and point out how it's often cheaper to buy a new laser printer than to buy a replacement toner cartridge. I do however find a problem with the sentence, "He maximizes his benefits over his costs, which is just another way of saying that he doesn’t waste anything." After all, many government programs, subsidies, tax credits, etc., shield consumers from seeing the complete cost of what they buy. The most obvious example being the fact that roads are paid for from general tax revenue rather than solely from taxes on motor vehicles (or even tolls). It would be nice if Suzukinistas would put more focus on reducing market-distorting subsidies than on regulating individual choices. Of course, that would mean giving up the subsidies that benefit THEM as well. That would never do...
Posted by: Anonymous | 2008-11-17 12:55:03 PM
When I see Suzuki move into an 800 sq. ft. condo and sell off his palatial homes on the west coast I may consider taking him seriously.
Meanwhile David Suzuki can kiss my big old hairy butt.
If you consumer goods off the market to force us to have little or nothing, it will all appear on the underground economy where there is no taxation.
Even in the most socialist of countries there is copious consumerism ... because it's human nature that people like to own stuff.
On of the mental disorders characteristic of the left thinking crowd is that they either deny human nature or simply want to control it.
It ain't gonna happen.
Population reduction is the only answer and that ain't gonna happen any time soon unless the Islamic twits get nuclear weapons.
Posted by: John V | 2008-11-17 1:32:25 PM
"What Suzuki and his friends want is to disregard the preferences of the consumer."
In a nut shell, yes.
But the disregard is based on allowing a choice at all, let alone a preference in selection.
From Suzuki's' view not only should we not have a preference between several dozen car models as a consumer choice, we should only have a choice between a bicycle and mass transit, cutting out the private car altogether.
Yet Suzuki has 2(TWO) homes, each equipped with individual beds, kitchens, etc. while Suzuki travels and resides in neither much of the time.
If there is any waste in this whole scenario, it involves a green banana and a waste of skin.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-11-17 8:19:28 PM
And this all from a man who has 5 children and a home to rival his ugly twin Al Gore. This "fruitfly expert" reminds me of "Murphy's "law #5. "A expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he/she knows absolutely everything about nothing".
Posted by: peterj | 2008-11-17 8:30:10 PM
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