THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE: Transferring the Cost

...Nobody threw bottles away, and all were recycled...

...With property of your own you can get others off your back, and also lend them a helping hand...

...But they are not borne by the manufacturer, and are distributed so widely that no particular group is singled out as the victim...

...Certainly, at the local level, private deals have all the beneficial and freedom-enhancing characteristics that Hayek and Friedman emphasize...

...In short, global capitalism is no longer an exercise in free market economics, in which cost is assumed for the sake of benefit, but a kind of brigandage, in which costs are transferred to future generations for the sake of easy rewards...

...However, there is a deeper problem...

...Disraeli’s concern was directed to the condition of the new urban working class, and environmental problems were not high on his political agenda...

...Property means the ability to shut a door, and also the ability to open it...

...Libertarian economists have rightly emphasized the role of the market in spreading freedom and prosperity, and have shown clearly that the wage contract is not, as Marx supposed, a zero-sum game, in which one party gains what the other loses, but an arrangement for mutual benefit...

...Our world was rimmed with grass, not glass...

...Even if the state withdraws, as it should, from economic activity, therefore, it must prevent businesses from transferring their costs...

...Conservatives believe in private property because they respect the autonomy of the individual...

...In those and a multitude of other ways the supermarkets have succeeded in externalizing the real cost of their success—success in eliminating local stores, in compelling people to drive to the mall for their provisions, in distributing cheap food to every part of the country without the trouble of dealing with local producers...

...Nowhere in the verges or along railways lines would you ever see the gleam of castaway glass...

...M a R c H 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 4 5 T H e P u R s u I T o f K n o W l e d G e Even socialists steer away from any criticism of corporate predation...

...But it is fair to say that too many conservatives have failed to take seriously the many abuses to which property is subject...

...For Marx and other 19th-century socialists, therefore, the emancipation of mankind required the abolition of private property, so that no person could be in a position to condemn another to “wage slavery...

...But it is a democracy in which all property owners, whether individual or corporate, bear the full cost of their freedom...

...It is therefore one aspect of the individual’s sovereignty over his own life...

...Now that bottles can be cheaply produced in both glass and plastic, a manufacturer finds that it costs less to abandon them to their fate than to reclaim them...

...But it is all but unmentionable in political debates either in America or in Europe...

...There are states considering similar measures to retrieve white goods like cookers and refrigerators from the ever-expanding trash-heap, and in Europe automobiles have been brought under the same close scrutiny, as potential candidates for recycling...

...That explains the emphasis on property rights in conservative political thinking...

...Unfortunately that idealized vision of the market is increasingly far from the truth...

...would be concerned to defend private property T n d n a , i h t f o r a e r a s e t i r w l . s o t r o s i d i l ae r i D y b d e t o m o r p t a t e i l h c i h w the em — erg k ence h of a new form of conser s vatism — , tec t t th i e n pub A lic l intere r st from aw the e effe ct o s f colorf a o r p o t d e c fi f u s r e ev n s a h l e b i f o w a l e t d n a s d r o w he best hope for mankind, it seems to me, is confid , ence— h all are l threatened by irresponsib u le - l unwritten code of conduct constrains them to think against those who abuse it, and to secure the freedom of the long-term effect of their words before presentof the present generation without cost to the next...

...After all, to pass on your costs without accounting for them is not merely to impose them on others...

...He has responsibilities toward the less fortunate, toward the unborn, and toward the inheritance in which we all have a stake...

...In the matter of bottles, some states of the Union have already taken action, obliging manufacturers of drinks to sell and repurchase the bottles in which they package them...

...The conservative cause remains that of a “property-owning democracy...

...It can be told about the building materials industry, about the manufacturers of soft drinks and candies, about the makers and distributors of tools and hardware...

...At the same time there are enormous environmental and aesthetic costs to this extensive distributive network...

...Writers, editors, and publishers are aware that the freedom they enjoy through the ownership of words is constrained by the thought of the damage those words might do when released for public consumption...

...Why do the 4 4 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a R c H 2 0 0 8 Wconservative cause, to be defended qualification, that the h t f o a p g e i n s a w y t o r p hen p e d r israeli a first n t saw ra l that r t private e socialists, he added an important right of with all possible vigor against the R o G e R s c R u T o n defenders of the market not raise their voices against the practice of externalizing costs in this way...

...One very important example of this is the bottle...

...accounting, and local ties are given the place that they deserve—the place without which the market will not return to equilibrium, but proceed helterskelter towards environmental catastrophe...

...When I was young, bottles were comparatively expensive to produce, and the manufacturers of bottled drinks would charge two pence for the bottle, which charge would be refunded when the bottle was returned to the shop for re-use by the manufacturer...

...But the market is the benign mechanism that Hayek and Friedman describe only when it is constrained by an impartial rule of law, and only when all participants bear the costs of their actions as well as reaping the benefits...

...Perhaps we already have a model for this new approach in the less tangible forms of property...

...The one who enjoys property is also accountable for it, and in particular accountable to those upon whom it might otherwise impose a burden...

...Reputations, relationships, trust, and public Roger scruton, the writer and philosopher, is most Deja Reviews.pdf 1 4 6 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a R c H 2 0 0 8 recently the author of Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged (Encounter Books...

...it is to destroy the process of reward and penalty whereby the market realizes its potential as a selfregulating device...

...And it would present to the people more tangible goods, requiring them to consider of the Western democracies a model of responsible what they are really doing when releasing their prodbusiness, in which small initiatives, responsible uct into the market...

...Two pence was then a lot of money—about half the cost of the drink...

...Could we not hope WTO, or to the new kind of lawless capitalism exem- for a similar moral code among the producers of plified by China...

...Transport networks built at public expense, and zoning laws favoring shopping malls and large warehouses, give supermarkets an When Disraeli first saw that private property was an integral part of the conservative cause, to be defended property is also a duty...

...Instead of the benign competition to maximize profits, we discover a malign competition to externalize costs...

...Most of this packaging is non-degradable, and exists in order to promote the economies of scale that enable supermarkets to undercut the downtown grocery stores that are their only real competitors...

...The firm that can transfer its costs to others has the advantage over the one that must meet its costs itself, and if the costs can be transferred so widely that it is impossible to identify a victim, they can be effectively written off...

...Subsequent history has taught us many things, but perhaps nothing of greater political importance than that freedom and private property are not opposites but on the contrary, deep down, the very same thing...

...This practice has huge environmental and social consequences...

...These less tangible costs are also met by the general public, which will have the long-term responsibility of dealing with the ever-expanding sprawl and the effects of energydependence...

...T H e P u R s u I T o f K n o W l e d G e Transferring the Cost by Roger scruton It is thanks to private property that one person has power to command the labor of another...

...It ing them to the public...

...But today they are at the top of everyone’s agenda, and there is no conceivable chance that the conservative defense of property will gain converts among the young, without the attempt to show that it is not state control but private ownership that will save the planet from human waste...

...How do we restore the “feudal principle” to an economy that has moved so far in this direction...

...Whole branches of the modern economy have grown from the practice of transferring costs...

...The most conspicuous example is the supermarket...

...That ought to be a major and troubling item on the conservative agenda...

...Without private property there is neither home, nor family, nor security, nor charity, but only the subjection of everyone to the all-possessing state...

...A similar story can be told about most other chain stores in Europe and America, and about the myriad rubbishy products stamped with “Made in China...

...Like the elites of New Labour, they live in the same way as the CEOs whom they frequent, transferring the costs of their policies to future governments, in just the way that the corporations transfer the costs of their economic success to the unborn...

...with all possible vigor against the socialists, he added an important qualification, which he called the “feudal principle,” that the right of property is also a duty...

...A culture of criticism helps to could not possibly give more than two cheers—and ensure that the costs of careless words fall on the maybe less than two—to the global economy, to the person who makes them public...

...A great many of the costs incurred by the large-scale centralization of food distribution in the supermarket chains are met by the taxpayer...

...insuperable advantage over their downtown competitors...

...But as soon as we rise above that level, to consider the activities of the larger corporations, the picture changes...

...grass hemmed the roads, tumbled down the banks of railway cuttings, and was never disturbed except by footprints...

...2/4/08 1:41:58 PM...

...The ease with which large producers can transfer their costs is the glaring abuse through which the market— otherwise one of the core values of conservatism—condemns itself...

...We are as yet living in the early years of nonbiodegradable packaging...

...But already many parts of England’s once beautiful countryside are awash with plastic bottles, cups, and sandwich wraps, which clog the streams and ditches, block the drains, exacerbate floods, pose a threat to farming and wildlife, and rub out a national icon, with incalculable effects on the sense of community...

...To those burdens we must add the cost of the packaging, which constitutes 25 percent by weight of the products passing the supermarket till...