Iowa State University
ISU Model Bioethics Institute Wins $100,000 NSF Award
The National Science Foundation recently announced an award of $102,000 to enable two universities to recreate the Iowa State University model bioethics institute on their campuses. The official title of the project will not win awards for brevity, but it is descriptive: Life Sciences Bioethics Institute: The Iowa State University Model Bioethics Program in Ethics and Environmental, Food, and Agricultural Biotechnology at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana (1994-95) and Michigan State University (1995-96)
For the first time since Iowa State began the institute in 1991, eligibility will be open. All ]ife science faculty members from colleges and universities across the U. S. are invited to apply. Each institute will last one week. The dates for the 1995 institute hosted by the U. of Illinois are one week. The dates for the 1995 institute hosted by the U. of Illinois are May 14-19, 1995. The dates for the Michigan State institute are May 12-17, 1996. All participants receive a stipend of $250. The institute is designed to help ]ife science faculty members to introduce discussions of ethical issues into their classrooms and labs. The on-site coordinator at the U. of Illinois is Professor Robert McKim (Philosophy Department and Religious Studies Program). The other core faculty members are Professors Jefferson McMahan (Philosophy, Illinois) and Gary Comstock (Iowa State). Comstock is the NSF grant project director. The on-site coordinator at Michigan State is Professor Fred Gifford (Philosophy). He will be assisted be Professor Tom Tomlinson (Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences).
For further details see the bottom of this newsletter.
For: Jan Narveson
In a free market, individuals own and may do what they want with things, without fear of interference by others. Free market society is consensual society: exchanges occur only when owners believe they would be better off from them, compared with any other use they could make of their resources. If everything were owned by individuals or voluntary groups such as companies, the only means of dealing with what are usually treated as political matters would be private means. Would that be a good thing? I think so, but discuss here only the environmental questions. The free market philosophy's proposed moral rule for everything is: "No force or fraud, except to protect or compensate victims of force or fraud." On environmental matters, then, it is: "Do not use force against persons's utilizations of the environment, except by way of this very rule." The agreement not to employ force against each other is a strategy for handling the major source of evil in human lives - other people's actions. Each refrains from worsening the situation of the other provided the other will return that favor.
This version of a "social contract" is, in my view, the best and perhaps the only rational solution. [1] It is hard to see how the use of force against people who have followed the above rule could ever help matters. Forcing is inherently antiproductive. Freedom allows each to produce whatever they wish, given the available possibilities. Would-be aggressors can put their energy to better use. Confining us all to activities agreed to by all affected persons is the better way; unlike any others, it is "win-win."
The Environment
One's environment is the rest of the world outside of oneself - the nonhuman part, for present purposes. What do we do about nature? My answer is the classic one: anyone is free to take anything not already taken by anyone else. This is effected simply be commencing to use it - say, by working on it. This classic view is shared by ordinary people, but denied by many philosophers, who think that the environment is everybody's, and that central control over it is essential. Let's see why they're wrong.
Suppose we all have our plots, our houses, our businesses. Where do environmental problems come in? There are two popular ones: resource exhaustion and pollution. Putting resources into the hands of individual people wanting to do the best they can with them solves the first problem, insofar as it is one. For the story on why resource exhaustion is not a problem, see my bibliography; I'll address only the pollution question. [2] Pollutions are side effects of otherwise voluntary interactions, on people who didn't ask for them and don't want them. Polluted air or water has stuff in it that the breather or drinker disvalues: it stinks or it makes him sick. Some impurities affect health, some affect taste; both are evils, of different kinds. And frequently there must be tradeoffs: manure makes the crops grow better, but it stinks. Each individual farmer decides whether he'd rather have the crops than the smell. But suppose the manure makes the neighbors' air smell worse? What are the rights and wrongs of this? They own their lungs; you insert things they don't want into them, violating their property rights. In principle, then, the free market view says, they may sue. But will they in fact? That depends on two things: how much they dislike it; and how much benefit they get from it. (I omit litigation costs. [3]) Lower food prices made possible by your greater production may provide all the compensation desired, until smell free fertilizers come along.
Suppose that what the owner puts in his neighbor's lungs not only stinks but harms his health. Does this automatically make it unacceptable? No. It still depends on the same two things: how much it damages their health, and how much that amount of health is worth to them. Some people prefer a smoke-filled life to a long life - say, 70 years with smoke to 80 without. It's their choice. But if their smoke infects my lungs, that is not their choice - smoke is no pleasure to me. You should refrain from smoking in my presence whenever we both have the right to be in that place together, unless you make it worth my while. Which you might: the pleasure of your company may outweigh both the risk to my health and the aesthetic cost of your smoking. People differ, and it is impossible to get a uniform schedule of costs for all. So it is inherently wrong-headed to go about such problems in the usual way: to empower a public law- making body with the power to make laws requiring all to conform.
Further problems arise from today's techno-political climate. Have scientists "discovered" that a certain body of water is "contaminated with a deadly poison"? Sounds bad - until you realize that every body of water in the world contains plenty of deadly poisons, as does practically all the food you eat, especially if it is "naturally" grown. [4] To the question, "Could it kill you?" - the answer is always, "Yes" - if you eat enough of it, combine it with the wrong things, and so on. Should we avoid carcinogens? If we did, we'd all starve. But most carcinogens give us cancer at the ripe old age of 120, which we don't reach anyway. Even if they give it to us at 80, that might still be a good risk, especially if one would die of something else at 79 anyway.
It would be nice if we could know that x will give you cancer at age y. But we don't. We know only that the incidence of such-and-such types of cancer in populations that frequently eat x is higher than in other populations that don't. If eating x gives the Rs a longer life expectancy than the Ks, a higher incidence of cancer among Rs may be due to that very fact, since cancer increases dramatically with age. That's why so many of us get it now: not because we produce carcinogenic food additives, but because before our time people didn't live long enough to develop most cancers. In the above example, the Rs should do nothing - least of all, stop eating x! Especially if they smoke.
Most of the touted pollution risks of death are on the order of 0.00000005. Should we do anything about that? No. The probability of death from other causes is several hundred times that. Imagine a pack-a-day smoker taking great care not to eat some food whose probability of inducing cancer is about 1% that of the cigarettes he smokes. He's like the man about to be executed who refuses a last cigarette on the ground that smoking is bad for his health! Almost all "environmental legislation" is exactly like that.
Before any action is taken, risks must be significant. Would I be able to distinguish my risks given the proposed procedure from those I face without it? Once we get into significant levels, we may negotiate: continue the pollution, with continued or increased compensation? Or decrease pollution and pay the costs of the decrease? In principle this is a situation between you and me, which we can settle to mutual advantage. Thus the free-market, libertarian solution to such problems lies precisely in the fact that liberty is not, contrary to Tony Smith's claim, a "moral absolute." Just the opposite: that's the contemporary regulator's view of it, not ours.
Pollution problems exist, of course. But they are always confined to particular groups of people, and usually to relatively small groups. What matters, for any given person, is whether that person is affected, and how much, and whether there are benefits derived from the pollutions that he prefers to the costs of cleanup. In all the currently popular cases, the benefits win.
Consider garbage, which in almost all of North America is handled by public agencies, and the frequent subject of newspaper diatribes about how the planet will ere long succumb to garbage unless we do something, and so forth. On this basis, people are required to spend hours sorting their garbage into two or n distinct varieties, each handled separately, with compulsory recycling - at four times the cost of unsorted garbage, not counting time lost. There would be no talk of a general garbage problem if we allowed these things to be handled rationally, on the free market. There it would be a private business. Garbage companies would charge by the bag, giving people an incentive to minimize garbage production, would dump it on land somebody owns. If it's poor for other uses, using it for waste storage will look attractive, if the price is right. And neighbors of a land-fill would be compensated, for any damage to their property caused by leakages and the like - which will induce the garbage dump owners to minimize such leakage.
Is garbage disposal a looming environmental disaster, as we are told? Not at all. The fact is that it is quite trivial on the global landscape. All of the garbage that will be produced in North America in the entire 21st century would fit in a square landfill 9 miles on a side and 300 feet deep - 1/40,000 ofthe land surface ofthe United States. Some "disaster"! And of course, within that century better technologies will emerge anyway. Extensive recycling now is a waste of time and money. [5]
To which we should add that giving a lot of power to certain people to decide what should be done about the environment and then do it is not a good way to do anything: the assumption that somehow state officials - especially democratically elected ones - know what to do about such matters boggles the mind (try Al Gore, for starters). Note how Tony Smith is forced to suggest, lamely, that the effect of absurd regulations will be to motivate entrepreneurs to find better ways of doing these things.
Aristotle pointed out that people tend to take the best care of what they themselves own. By contrast, they are not nearly as good at looking after other people's property- or, especially, other people's money. That, and only that, is the story of The Environment now, as always. In sum: what we should do now is extend the market principle much farther than we have, get government out of the act - and live better lives as a result. That is the rational way to deal with environmental problems.
Notes:
[1] I keep trying to present the argument as clearly as possible. My earlier book, The Libertarian Idea (Temple University Press, 1988) will do. My more recent book, Moral Matters (Peterborogh, Canada: Broadview Press, 1993) has a much more condensed account (in Ch. 1).[2] High litigation costs are due almost entirely to the fact that we have a State run legal system. These are largely avoidable. See Bruce Benson, The Enterprise of Law (Pacific Research Institute, 1990).
[3] The currently best source on these matters is Julian Simon, Population Matters (Rutgers, NJ: Transaction, 1991).
[4] See C. Roy Bennett, Risks in Environmentalism: Comments on the Canadian Green Plan (U. of Waterloo: Institute for Risk Research, 1992). I can obtain copies of this upon request.
[5] The information comes from the text of Julian Simon's forthcoming book, The Ultimate Resource II, which is not yet published. Verification available if required, but a modest bit of home arithmetic (use a decent calculator) will get you a similar figure if you aren't wildly off in your assumptions.
Appendix: Narveson's Environmental Book List
Andersan, Terry L and Danald R Leal. Free Market Environmentalism Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991.Bennett C. Roy. Risks in Environmentalism: Comments on the Canadian Green Plan. U. of Waterloo: Institute for Risk Research. 1992.
Lind, N.C., J.S. Nathwani, and E. Siddal. Managing Risks in the Public Interest. U. of Waterloo: Institute for Risk Research. 1992.
Michaels, Patrick J., Sound and Fury - The Science and Politics of Global Warming. Washington: CATO Institute. 1992.
Ray, Dixie Lee. Trashing the Planet. Washington: Regnery Gateway. 1990.
Simon, Julian. Populatian Matters. Rutgers, NJ: Transaction. I99l. Wildavsky, Aaron. Searching for Safety. Rutgers, NJ: Transaction 1988.
Against: Tony Smith
Free market environmentalists believe that the extension of private property rights and market transactions is sufficient to address environmental difficulties. They rest their case on four arguments. The first is the "tragedy of the commons" argument: whenever something is subject to collective use, individuals will tend to use it up as fast as possible. If we wish to see pieces of land, bodies of water, or plant and animal species used in a sustainable way, private property rights to these entities ought to be created, for owners tend to preserve their property.
Second, if polluters are able to externalize the costs of pollution onto others, they have no motivation to reduce or eliminate that pollution. But if property rights are extended and strictly enforced, owners will be able to sue polluters for damages to their property. When these suits are successful, the polluters are forced to internalize the costs of pollution, leading them to reduce those costs in the future.
Third, a trade-off must be made between the benefits of providing environmental amenities and the costs of doing so. Market prices provide an "objective measure" of environmental values, and so the proper trade-offs cannot be made unless markets are established. If farmers cannot prevent fishermen and women from using streams bordering their farms, for instance, they have no incentive to incur the expenses necessary to ensure that these streams are well stocked with fish. But if these same farmers were given private rights to these streams, they could exclude all fishermen and women not willing to pay them a fee. The possibility of collecting these fees creates a powerful incentive for them to ensure an adequate habitat for fish populations. Or consider the relationship between environmental groups and land developers. If the former do not have to bear any of the costs of foregone development, then they are likely to ignore these costs. In contrast, in a market setting environmental groups wishing to keep lands in a pristine condition must purchase those lands from their owners. In this manner they are forced to consider seriously the opportunity costs of keeping the land out of development.
Finally, free market environmentalists argue that the state has no role to play in environmental matters beyond that of enforcing property rights. State bureaucrats have particular interests of their own, and they are also susceptible to the influence of special interest groups. And they are not in a position to weigh accurately the costs and benefits of their policies. Is it any surprise that the government's record of environmental management has been deeply flawed?
Do these four arguments for free market environmentalism hold up? 1. There is no invisible hand operating in markets that ensures that environmentally sound practices will be employed just because property rights are in private hands, especially if the dominant form of property is investment capital. Investment today is more mobile than ever before. Capital accumulated in one region need not be reinvested in that same area; if returns are greater elsewhere there is a great likelihood that it will not be reinvested there. Self-interested economic agents will calculate the costs of environmentally benign practices over against the costs they will incur if they do not institute those practices. If they estimate the former to exceed the latter, environmentally sound practices will likely not be employed. The owners of capital generally make investments in order to attain a return within a given unit of time. The key question for them is not "What will the physical condition of my holdings be at the end of this time period?" but instead "How much capital will I have accumulated by then?" If considerable amounts of capital can be accumulated at the cost of harming their holdings, this is of little concern as long as attractive investment opportunities are available elsewhere. If considerable amounts of capital can be accumulated at the cost of harming the environment, the environment may well be harmed as long as the harm does not foreclose investment opportunities elsewhere.
2. Can we rely on liability laws and the court system to force polluters to internalize the social costs of pollution? Suppose that a firm with a vast army of well paid corporate lawyers engages in poluting activities that inflict damages on a poor household. What are the chances that the household will be able to afford lawyers with the resources of the corporate lawyers? One would have to be quite naive to believe that in these circumstances the legal system can always be relied upon to ensure that the firms in question internalize the costs of their damaging practices.
Another problem is that liability laws work best in cases where tracing the causal chain of events is a relatively simple matter. Unfortunately the world in which we live is not always so simple. In many cases there are a variety of individual firms engaging in a multiplicity of practices that may or may not have had a causal role in bringing about an environmental harm. The greater the number of plausible causal stories, the more difficult it is legally to establish the liability of any particular individual or firm.
There is also the problem that unsound environmental practices can inflict harm on future generations. Future generations cannot sue in court today. No corporation takes into account costs for which it may be liable in two or three generations. And so even if the liability system were to work flawlessly, it would still fail to force polluters to internalize all of the costs of their polluting activities.
3. We now come to the third claim, the idea that market prices provide an "objective measure" of environmental matters. If environmental regulations save or extend human lives, how can that benefit be assigned a market price? The value of lives is often measured as a function of the wage premium coal miners, police, and other workers receive in return for facing dangerous conditions. Is a life worth only the wages necessary to attract workers with few alternatives into dangerous conditions? Other methods of fixing the value of a human life in price terms are equally controversial. This means that cost/benefit analysis performed in market prices has an inherent bias. All of the costs of environmental safeguards can be easily put in price terms by corporations, but many of their most profound benefits are not easily measured in market prices.
Leaving environmental tradeoffs up to the marketplace means leaving them up to those with the greatest market power. It is true that groups like the Nature Conservancy Fund have been able to purchase land in order to take it out of development; the major environmental groups in the U.S. together have $414,607,984 in funds that in principle could be used in this fashion. But the vine Company owns land in areas south of Los Angeles whose value has been estimated to be in excess of $10 billion. If all of the major environmental groups in the U.S. pooled their entire resources together in order to prevent the environmental problems besetting Los Angeles (traffic jams, smog, noise, soil erosion, water shortages, etc.) from spreading south, they would still be $9,585,392,016 short of being able to purchase the holdings of just a single landholder in Southern California. Only giant land developers have access to this sort of capital - developers who have all too often not made environmental issues a central concern.
4. Finally there is the question of the state. Free market environmentalists talk of the provision of "environmental amenities." This language is far too weak. Citizens have a right to a livable environment, and enforcing rights is part of the legitimate function of government. The thesis that responsibility for the environment should be left entirely in the hands of private economic agents is as ludicrous as the idea that rights to freedom of speech or freedom of religion should be left entirely to the market. This means that governmental policies regarding the environment are in principle legitimate, such as bans on chemicals that are toxic to humans or that destroy the ozone layer.
Also, whatever the fantasies of libeltarians might be, the state plays a crucial role in the development of technology. Since World War II federal expenditures have financed between one-half and two-thirds of total R&D in the U. S., and over two-thirds of basic research. The aerospace, communications, and electronics industries have thrived as a direct result of these public subsidies. Breakthroughs in environmental technologies are no less crucial to the public good. Publicly funded R&D programs ought to be established to develop manufacturing processes that are nontoxic to workers and pollution-free, along with programs addressing solid waste disposal, alternative sources of energy, environmental clean-ups, etc. Regulations minimizing pollutants and cutting allowable emissions are also a crucial part of technology policy; such regulations guarantee a market for innovations that attain these ends, and thus act as a spur to innovative activity.
It is true enough that state officials have all too often been swayed by the influence of private interest groups when formulating environmental policies. But there are measures that could be taken to lessen the possibility of this occurring (restrictions on lobbying, elimination of PAC funding, public funding of campaigs, etc.). It would be far preferable to explore this direction than to simply rule out any role for public authorities in environmental matters, as the defenders of free market environmentalism advocate.
References
Anderson, Terry, and D. Leal. 1991. Free Market Environmentalism. Boulder: Westview Press.
Foster, Jahn Bellamy. 1994. The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Passell, Peter. 1995. "How Much for a Life?" New York Times. Jan. 29. p.F3.
Life Sciences Bioethics Institute: The Iowa State University Model Bioethics Program in Ethics and Environmental, Food, and Agricultural Biotechnology at the University of Illinois, Champaign Urbana
LOCATION: U. of Illinois campus
ELIGIBILITY: Applicants must be tenured or tenure-track life science faculty members at a U.S. college or university.
STIPEND: All participants will be paid a stipend of $250.
DESCRIPTION: Students in the life sciences face significant and complex ethical problems. The Life Sciences Bioethics Institute, modeled on a highly successful program at Iowa State University, is designed to help life science faculty members to introduce discussions of ethical issues in their classrooms and labs. The institute will introduce state-of- the-art thinking about ethical theory; feature debates between nationally recognized philosophers about moral issues related to the environment, food, and agriculture; and include practical pedagogical sessions covering do's and don'ts of ethics discussions. The core faculty are: Gary Comstock (Iowa State), Robert McKim (U. of Illinois), and Jefferson McMahan (U. of Illinois).
Speakers and topics include:
APPLICATION FORMS CONTACT:
DEADLINE: 15 March 1995
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: All participants sign a statement on the application form promising to revise their courses so as to include at least one one-hour discussion of ethics in each semester length class they teach. Applicant's institution must commit funds to cover applicant's travel to Illinois and lodging and meals from Sunday 14 May through Friday 19 May 1995.
NOTE: The 1996 Institute will be hosted by Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI on May 12-17 1996.