Feb
20
2008

Grr

Seen at Joel Achenbach's Achenblog today:

Here's a depressing piece in the NYT about fishermen in Jamaica poisoning a stream. It's tragic, and it's not really just a Jamaica story: It's a tale of what happens when you have a completely unregulated free market.
Wha?

Now you can click over to the NYT piece; somehow missing is any indication that the Jamaican fishermen were acting under the nefarious influence of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. They're harvesting shrimp from Jamaica's Rio Grande river by dumping in agricultural pesticide, and grabbing whatever rises to the surface. (The article notes that they sometimes also use an American favorite, dynamite, to the same effect.)

This is not a result of an "unregulated free market" of course; Jamaica doesn't have an "unregulated free market." Heritage's Index of Economic Freedom ranks Jamaica at number 45 out of 157 countries, with relatively poor scores on "Property Rights" and "Freedom from Corruption."

Instead, it's yet another instance of Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" where free access to a communal resource results in over-exploitation and pollution. It happens under all types of economic systems; ask any Russian. My bet would be that relatively free-market societies tend to handle such problems better than others through a mix of property rights, torts, and (when necessary) law and regulation. (This (different) study on comparative economic freedom seems to bear me out on that.)

The NYT article quotes Kimberly John of the Nature Conservancy, and there's more from her at the Nature Conservency site.

Both articles make it clear that what's failing in Jamaica isn't the "free market". In fact, the Nature Conservancy article mentions that stream monitoring is being conducted by "national park rangers"—this is not happening in Galt's Gulch, but a national frickin' park.

River-poisoning is as illegal in Jamaica as it is in America, but enforcement and punishment is lax. One allegedly-ex poisoner interviewed for the article was released the first time he was caught; on his second offense he got a "community service" sentence. Again, not particularly a "free market" problem.

I've been a Joel Achenbach fan for a long time, own some of his great "Why Things Are" books, but this drive-by shooting at the free market is just ignorant and disappointing.