Ecology has faded somewhat from the political landscape as of lately. This is probably because of the ongoing economic troubles the world was plunged into by politicians. But ecology is one of those things that you can’t just ignore. When you least expect it, it will turn around and bite you in the ass. We cannot stop being poisoned no matter how much we may want to. Mandated ecology has failed miserably. It simply does not work because it depends of a non-functional political system. It is time we try ecology through self-interest.

 

PROPERTIES - THE ACQUISITION OF

In the Absolute Austro-Libertarian system we have only two kinds of properties: either they belong to somebody or they don’t belong to anybody.

You can acquire property through contract as specified in the Master Contract. But what happens if the property does not belong to anybody?  You have to make the property economically and financially active in some way, so that you can take ownership of said property.

If you don’t do that, it’s not your property. Even if you fence it or declared it yours it’s not enough because you must make the property economical y and financially active.  It does not need to be financially viable.

If you proclaim to be doing that but in reality, you are not doing it, then somebody may come along and take it from you. They can take it simply by making it economically and financially active or they can go through a mediator and show that you are not doing anything of the sort. The mediator will determine that you don’t own the property; that the property is un-owned and then they can just take it.

Will expand on this subject in a different article, but for now it suffices.

 

EXTERNALITIES

These ways of acquiring property tends to create a closed system where everything is owned by somebody.

In Physics, Chemistry and sometimes even in Mechanics, we speak of a closed system in the same terms of what somebody would normally understand. Nothing gets in and nothing gets out. Whatever happens inside, stays inside.

Now, in an Absolute Austro Libertarian system whatever you do in your property you can do because your rights are absolute. However, the second you do harm to somebody’s property, you owe that person a debt because you don’t have a contract allowing you to do so. It may seem a harsh approach, but it is a fair approach. You cannot ignore the price of the damage you produce on other people’s properties. There is no free lunch.  This idea of a free economic lunch is what economists call externalities. You dump your garbage on somebody’s else’s properties and you don’t pay for the damage. The damage is “external” to your property.

This is, in today’s world you can export the consequences of you economic and financial activities somewhere else where you don’t pay for the damage you create. This cannot happen in an Absolute Austro-Libertarian system because it is a closed system. There is nowhere where you can go and dump the stuff you don’t want; garbage essentially.

You can contract with somebody to dump your garbage in somebody’s property, but of course, you would need to have a voluntary contract to do so. And those contracts won’t be cheap because nobody wants garbage and the few that will take it will be well aware of the fact that you have no choice.

So again, you have a choice in an Absolute Austro-Libertarian system. You can be very conscientious and arrange your affairs in your property such that whatever you do inside does not affect any other property outside, in which case you are fine. Or you can be an idiot and export anything you don’t want out of your property without a voluntary contract,  in which case you will be automatically in debt with the owner of that property.

Which means, of course, that all your rights under the Master Contract have just been forfeited except for your right not to be enslaved, this is.  You can review the lesson Justice in the Austro Libertarian System to see how this would go, which is not to your advantage by the way.

Therefore, as a matter of self-interest you do want to take care of other people’s property simply by not interacting with those properties. This is a very powerful concept, particularly in Ecology.

For example you can’t’ just go and dump your garbage in somebody else’s house. You can’t burn your garbage in your backyard without polluting somebody else’s atmosphere. You can’t take radioactive waste and dump it in the middle of the ocean because somebody or some company actually owns that chunk of ocean.You can’t play loud music at 3AM in the morning because those sound waves are crossing from your property into somebody’s else’s property and causing damage. All of this and any other form of unwanted pollution is interacting without a valid contract with somebody else’s property.

So, in an Absolute Austro-Libertarian system is in your best interest no to do something stupid that affects somebody else. The smart behavior is to solve your problems through voluntary contracts or not to have the problem in first place..

This is again a balanced approach because I become responsible for what I am doing and everybody else is responsible for what they are doing. Everybody is doing the same based only on self-interest and nothing more. Which is an extremely powerful incentive.

It is balanced because the rest of the people don’t have to clean up your mess through their taxes. Your mess is your mess and you are fully responsible for it. It is balanced because less damage occurs to nature and less damage occurs to you and your property. Therefore, you end up with a much greener, safer and stable world than any other political proposition out there.

 

COMPARISON

The current ecological thinking is that there should be more regulation and higher prices to diminish and control pollution. The idea is that you control people through rules and also through making dumping garbage something very expensive in an artificial manner. But this is very stupid for two reasons.

The first is that people are very clever and will always find ways around those regulations and they will always find externalities where to dump their garbage.

The second is the issue of higher prices. Technically speaking we can artificially rise prices but then people will simply switch to some cheaper alternative. Let’s say that you want people to decrease car usage, so you increase the price of gasoline by 50%. But then, people will simply switch to gas oil, or kerosene, or cooking oil, or wood; generating more pollution than the original consumption of gasoline would have!

Yes that’s right wood has been used for many years and most buses in England in WWII were adapted to use wood; and it worked quite successfully. That’s exactly what people will do, people will just find a different work around.

There really is no better system than the Absolute Austro-Libertarian system because everybody is responsible for what they do. It does not matter who they are or what they are, they are responsible.

When you are in a closed system and you are responsible for what you do, the costs of what you do will go up, that’s for sure. So, yes, in the beginning the prices of different goods and services will rise just because of all that garbage has no way to go and dealing with it is expensive.

The problem is not the Absolute Austro-Libertarian system but the legacy infrastructure we have today because it is designed to use externalities. Therefore, everything will have to be retrofitted and redesigned so that externalities are not necessary any longer. Until such time, yes, things are going to be more expensive, but once this happens prices will start dropping. Furthermore, companies will start looking for other options that will provide them with lower costs without using externalities. This means an increase in R&D in all kinds of ecological issues which today it is not being done simply because there is no market, there is no money in it precisely because there are externalities. Externalities are free or dirt-cheap. Externalities are a transference of the true costs to other, unsuspected, people.

In other words, why would you burn you garbage and install a high tech scrubbing system in your chimney to prevent pollution going out, if you can just take your garbage and dump it in your neighbor’s backyard? It’s that simple, it comes down to that. But you cannot do that in an Absolute Austro-Libertarian system. Therefore, instead of using a garbage burner maybe you can use a composter. For the garbage that’s not compostable what you can do is to compress it and dump it in a large hole in your backyard. But you have to be careful that that hole does not pollute the water table that’s underneath your house because then you are damaging somebody’s properties. But that’s OK because we have plenty of technology that let you do just that. We have all kinds of septic tanks, that are made of cheap plastic which is water proof and everything else proof for hundredths of years, so you just dump your garbage in there where it will stay there until it decomposes. Eventually it may get full and then there will be a company that will take it of your hands and dump it into a big garbage dump for a price, which obviously won’t be that cheap.

Because this is expensive, people will simply choose to buy products with less waste, which will create market pressure for companies not to create waste in the first place! Presto! A sound, universal, ecologic working solution without the need of rules, regulations and, more importantly, governments!

 

CONCLUSION

So yes all this is perfectly possible, we have the technology, we have the means, we have the inventiveness and we have the incentives to make it a reality.

Now it’s up to you to determine what kind of world you want. Right now pollution at a massive scale is the one thing you will pass down to your descendants. It’s your choice as it has always been. However, now, you have a way. Take it or not, but you can’t claim ignorance no longer.

Note: please see the Glossary if you are unfamiliar with certain words.