Rationalizing Economic Values

The argument from productivity alleges that privatizing public lands would make them—and the resources now committed to their management—more productive. I have spent the last two chapters interpreting and evaluating this factual claim. In my view, there is no sense of “more productive” for which it is both interesting and clearly true. But if there were, it would not immediately follow that public lands should be privatized. In order to reach normative conclusions, we need normative premises. In the argument from productivity, these are essentially that situations are better as resources are more productively employed and that we should arrange for the best possible situation. In this chapter I consider how such assumptions might be rationalized. One of the attractions of productivity, I suspect, is that it seems to offer a way of evading this task, a way of taking values into account without taking sides. People disagree about ends, for example, about whether old-growth forest is best reserved for spotted owl habitat, or cut on a sustained-yield basis, or liquidated to improve quarterly reports to stockholders, or carved into woodland estates. It would be nice to resolve such disagreements by demonstrating the superiority of some particular end. But a demonstration would be an argument from normative principles, and such principles themselves are disputable. How, then, can policies or institutions designed to promote some particular end, such as preserving spotted owl habitat, be defended? Though they might be rational relative to that end, how is the end itself to be rationalized? Better to sidestep the problem by letting individual consumers rank ends (I prefer other consumption plans to those I characterize as “poor”), seeking only arrangements (such as private property rights) that serve whatever preferences they might have. While there are certainly difficulties here, it is a delusion to think we can avoid them by deferring to the desires of consumers. When privatization advocates claim that public lands and resources would be more productive under private management, they aren’t merely describing what they take to be facts.

Marketization

As noted toward the end of the previous chapter, the very existence of collective values or citizen interests adds to doubts that privatizing federal lands would better satisfy our desires. But it may also be argued that we are better for having such concerns and, accordingly, that privatization would not be in our interest, inasmuch as it would eliminate opportunities for developing them. Joseph Sax observes that “at a moral and ethical level, collective values can be judged just as personal preferences can be,” though he refrains from judging them. In discussing the desire to be a part of some larger enterprise, he speaks the language of social psychology, not ethics: “there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that one of our strongest urges is to identify ourselves with a source of moral or communal authority, and to subordinate our autonomy to it; that we draw strength from values external to our purely personal convictions; and that we draw values from collective solidarity.” Yet Sax clearly thinks that instead of denying this part of “human nature,” we should arrange for its constructive fulfillment. And he evidently thinks that giving people the opportunity to join with others of like mind and debate the use of public lands in a broadly democratic system does so. Mark Sagoff’s views are similar: other things equal, it's good for people to develop and pursue common ends. As something of a Kantian, he thinks of communal action as at once constrained and called for by respect for persons. The constraint is partially embodied in certain basic rights that communal action must not violate; for example, death threats made by Idaho ranchers against USFS personnel in a controversy over grazing are clearly out of bounds. But Sagoff would argue that respect for persons demands more than merely securing the person and other property of each individual. For it is in the roles they assume that individuals develop the interests and values that give them a sense of who they are, that define them as persons, that give direction and purpose to their lives.

Self-interest and Collective Management

Arguments for privatizing public lands that appeal to the virtues of markets don’t look very good under close inspection. The free market may, in some sense, maximize the satisfaction of desires. The property rights which define it may, to some degree, institutionalize respect for persons. But such justifications are quite incomplete, for they do not explain how we are to encourage respect for humanity in one’s own person or the formation of desires worth satisfying. Before enlarging the market by privatizing public lands, we should ask whether we wouldn’t thereby eliminate institutions that help do this. I have suggested that this is indeed the case. It doesn’t quite follow that privatization is a bad idea, for under scrutiny the federal land-management system may not look very good either. The extravagant claims privatization advocates make for markets create unrealistic expectations, but privatization might still improve on what we now have, if that system were as fundamentally flawed as critics like Stroup and Baden allege. In that case, the good I see in it might be outweighed, and we’d have to look for other ways to achieve that good. So in this chapter I consider attacks on the current regime, attacks which appeal to problems that are supposedly inherent in the collective management of resources and are therefore remediable only by privatization. A good deal of it concerns the claim, made by premise 1 of the argument from productivity, that individuals are self-interested. Like the philosophical thesis of determinism, 2 this one challenges us to give a reading that is both true and non-trivial. As detailed in Chapter 3, privatization advocates argue that, while self-interest rules everyone’s behavior, the current system doesn’t constrain it in a socially productive way, for it allows people, particularly those with a role in shaping public land policies, to gain by shifting costs to others. After reviewing this argument in the first section, I suggest in the second section that, if self-interest were really as advocates of privatization conceive it to be, privatization would be a hopeless cause and an ineffective remedy to these problems.

The Ethics of Privatization

Insofar as arguments for privatization can be read as appealing to general ethical conceptions, they acquire greater depth and, perhaps, respectability. The argument from productivity suggests a rule-form of preference utilitarianism: by changing institutions (in this case, by substituting private property rights for collective management of public lands), we’ll promote people’s welfare by enabling them better to satisfy their desires. But we can also glimpse in the recommended institution of private property rights a more Kantian commitment: where I can acquire what’s yours only with your willing consent (and generally in exchange for something of mine you value more), I can’t treat you simply as a means, at least in certain respects. However, in my view, such appeals do little to advance the argument for privatization; on the contrary, they reveal weaknesses in it. The property rights recommended by privatization advocates provide for individual freedom but not for its wise use. They do not help people to treat humanity in their own persons as an end or to form desires worth satisfying. There is an opening here for arguing that privatization is a bad idea, not because the current system, despite appearances, is relatively efficient or the cost of dismantling it is too great, but because what we’d get is inferior in a more basic sense to what we now have. Public land management promises greater protection of our natural and cultural heritage than the market—at least if we can resist the seductive suggestion that it be marketized, i.e., that we aim to allocate the resources of public lands as would an ideal market. Furthermore, the opportunity to define and defend values in public debate rather than simply buying what we happen to prefer (and can afford) is one we should, in our own interests, preserve. It is primarily on such grounds that I oppose privatizing public lands. To get this argument off the ground, we must allow that what I’m interested in can differ from what’s in my interest. I shall spend much of this chapter meeting objections to such a distinction and arguing that the free market can’t be expected to help people take an interest in what’s in their interest.

The Productivity of Privatization

If we agree that resources should be employed as efficiently as possible, then the case for privatizing public lands can be reduced to two issues: (1) Would privatization make resources more productive? (2) If so, is it worth the trouble? None of the improvement standards that give definite content to (1) appear to advance the argument for it. Judged by the Pareto standard, it’s clearly false: someone is going to prefer what federal land management delivers. Understood in terms of one of the net-gain standards, (1) may be true, but these standards are so hard to apply that we’re going to have trouble justifying a belief that it is. They are too closely tied to facts about individuals (or what we hope are facts) that are inaccessible to the analyst. So we must either find a way to apply them indirectly or develop some other standard. The indirect approach involves seeking to correlate productivity with some measurable feature of allocation systems. Were such a feature P to be identified, we could determine whether II was more productive than I simply by comparing their P-values. Unfortunately, if there’s something about an improvement standard that makes it hard to decide whether II is productively superior to I, then it’s also going to be hard to establish that systems with higher P-values are more productive, at least for any measure P we can easily ascribe to them. Now we could propose replacing the problematic standard with whatever index is developed: “II uses resources more productively than I” just means that II has a higher P-value than I. The problem here is arguing that systems with higher P-values direct resources to uses that better satisfy the desires of consumers. The net-gain standards derive from analyses of this notion. If we abandon them because they are difficult to apply, we may at the same time break the connection between greater productivity and better satisfying desires. Some of the arguments of privatization advocates can, I think, be construed as appealing indirectly to net-gain standards or directly to other notions of productivity.

Productivity Standards

The USFS often sells National Forest timber at a loss. Although loggers may pay market price for it, the agency absorbs various costs—stand thinning, roads, sale preparation, reforestation, etc. Environmentalists view below-cost sales as evidence that “the Forest Service continues to treat timber as the number-one priority on every acre of land not otherwise designated by Congress.” Appealing to the multiple-use language of NFMA and other legislation, they point out that the forests are not to be managed solely for timber production and that “optimal policy requires a harmonious blend of land uses.” The USFS, however, defends below-cost sales partly in the same terms, claiming that “[t]imber harvest is often an efficient tool that can be used to achieve non-timber objectives and the desired ecological conditions outlined in forest plans.” Its friends in The American Forest and Paper Association suggest, for example, that cutting aspen in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest improves habitat for the small mammals that support the local wolf population and maintain that sales of this low-value timber “provide the most cost-effective means to provide prey for the wolf.” Some natural resource economists also endorse this general position, albeit more cautiously. John KKrutilla and Michael Bowes, for example, claim that “on public land, occasional timber sales below cost and timber management can be justified economically on the basis of the long-term improvement in multiple-use value that may result from harvesting.” Evidently, multiple use is an accommodating ideal. Appeals to “multiple-use values” remind us that the National Forests can produce a variety of things in various “harmonious” combinations; they do not settle what “blend” of outputs is “optimal.” We might be able to do this if we could agree on some standard of productivity that gives sense to claims of the general form “this use of those resources is better than that one.” Since the case for privatizing the National Forests and other public lands rests largely on the claim that their resources would thereby be put to better use, such a standard would also help in assessing the proposal by clarifying what is being claimed for it.

The Case for Privatization

Should groves of quaking aspen in the National Forests of southwestern Colorado be maintained for those who delight in them, “so vibrant with light and motion, forever restless, always whispering, in tune like ballerinas to the music of the air,” and for ranchers, whose cows perhaps delight in the grass and shade they provide? Or should the trees be sold to Louisiana Pacific, which has figured out how to turn them into a cheaper substitute for plywood, thereby providing jobs in a not-too-prosperous area? Should portions of BLM land in the Mohave Desert be open to motorcycle races that draw thousands of participants, who “really love this sort of thing” and spend a lot of money in local communities? Or should they be withdrawn from off-road use as “critical habitat” for the endangered desert tortoise? Answers to questions like these may add up to one sort of answer to the question, “How should public lands be managed?” Insofar as the uses proposed for different parcels are consistent (so that, for example, silt from a logging operation doesn't destroy a downstream fishery), these answers will constitute a coherent plan of use for public lands. But this is not the kind of answer privatization advocates give. They do not argue directly for some pattern of use, local or global. Instead, they maintain that a system in which resources are private and individuals decide how theirs are to be used is better than one in which the private use of public resources is regulated by collective decisions. That is, they take the question “How should public lands be managed?” to ask not for a giant management plan that specifies the best use of each acre, but for a description of the institutions which best constrain decisions about use. Privatization advocates do propose to judge land-management institutions by results, but not by how closely these results fit some pattern they are prepared to specify in advance. Like politicians who tailor their pitch to their audience, they may suggest to each of various groups—environmentalists, loggers, ranchers, and others—that their interests in public lands will be better served by private management.

Federal Lands, Past and Present

How did the federal government end up with title to a quarter of the land in a nation with a long-standing distrust of government power, a corresponding faith in individual enterprise, and democratic institutions designed to make government policies reflect its will? While explanation is not justification, an account of their evolution can help make some sense of current federal land policies. In this chapter, I outline the history of federal lands and the shape of the current management regime, indicating what agencies are responsible for what lands under what statutory charters. Readers familiar with these topics will find nothing new here and may wish to skip to the concluding observations. The federal government got into the real-estate business early on. Through a political compromise between the original states, it acquired the old “western lands” between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. During the colonial period, England had rather imprecisely divided the land it claimed in America among its colonies. Charters granted extensive lands beyond the Appalachians to some colonies, sometimes the same lands to different colonies. Connecticut and Massachusetts, for example, claimed the same 26 million acres in the old Northwest (north of the Ohio River, west of the Appalachians). England revoked some of these grants in 1774, but colonies thereby severed from their western lands regarded the War of Independence as a means to regain what had been theirs. States with no historical claims to press wanted to share in what they considered war booty “wrested from the common enemy by the blood and treasure of the thirteen states.” They proposed that the western lands be surrendered to the federal government “to be disposed of for the common good of the United States.” Maryland feared that otherwise it would have to make good on promises of land in exchange for service in the Revolution that the Continental Congress had made to Maryland troops. For the same reason, the national government, such as it was, promoted state cession of western lands: nobody relished the prospect of angry veterans marching on Congress to demand the land they’d been promised.

Introduction

I doubt that Woody Guthrie had public lands specifically in mind when he wrote “This land is your land.” But I am sure he’d be pleased that each American citizen, through the agency of the federal government, is part owner of some six hundred million odd acres, roughly one quarter of the nation’s land. To be sure, a good deal of it would strike most of us as uninviting and not at all “made for you and me.” Guthrie couldn’t have been thinking of the Great Basin when he wrote of “the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts.” Even so, his words do fit the public lands. There we may be uplifted by natural wonders such as the Grand Canyon and what’s left of the “redwood forest.” There we are free to roam and ramble, for the signs read not “Private Property—No Trespassing” but “Please close the gate.” There, far horizons and the “endless skyway” can release us for a time from the narrowness of our lives. The federal estate is also rich in resources of a more conventional and coveted sort: timber, minerals, coal, oil, livestock forage, damsites, etc. Of course, sharing title with a couple hundred million other people would not give you or me much to say about how these lands and resources are used, even if they were managed by public referendum and not, as they are, by federal agencies. Except for weapons test sites and other military reservations, the public generally has free access to federal lands, but that does not mean that we may do whatever we like there. Private use is regulated in various ways. Rights to graze livestock, strip-mine coal, cut sawtimber, gather firewood, drill for oil, develop a ski resort, backpack into certain areas, excavate a prehistoric site, and so forth, are controlled by permit or lease, and some areas are closed to activities that some of us would dearly love to pursue. Extensive public lands and resources, whose use is governed by regulations rather than the wishes of those willing to pay most to satisfy their desires, may seem anomalous in a country ideologically committed to individual freedom, private property, and the free market.