Bisonomics

Katherine Mangu-Ward | September 21, 2007

bison skulls Time magazine recently noted: "Sometimes you have to eat an animal to save it."

Admire the giant pile of bison skulls circa 1870 at right, then read a neat essay from this month's PERC reports on what drove the near-extinction of the buffalo, and how Ted Turner and his bison-burger restaurants are saving them:

Western orthodoxy suggests the white man’s irresistible drive for wealth led to the bison genocide. Reality, however, proved more complicated. Their near extinction was due to a host of factors ranging from adverse climate issues, introduction of the transcontinental railroad, emergence of a horse culture on the plains bringing more efficient hunting, the advent of the Sharp’s rifle known for its deadly accuracy and distance, as well as government policy that promoted the end of the bison as a means of calming hostilities with the Native Americans.

One underlying factor, however, may have contributed more than any other. The tragedy of the bison was one of the starkest examples of the tragedy of the commons. No one owned the bison. Those who were not the first to capture the economic benefits of a bison lost those benefits to someone else. This created a race to the finish—a bison derby. Recreation magazine captured the essence of the situation in 1901: “A wild buffalo is looked on as a small fortune walking around without an owner.”

Also included in the profile, an interview with a boutique bison outfit:

"If buffalo are going to make a comeback, they are going to have to pay their own way,” says [Dan O’Brien, owner of 300 bison and a company called Wild Idea Buffalo].

More on killing animals to save them here.

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|9.21.07 @ 10:37AM|#

Their near extinction was due to a host of factors ranging from adverse climate issues, introduction of the transcontinental railroad, emergence of a horse culture on the plains bringing more efficient hunting, the advent of the Sharp's rifle known for its deadly accuracy and distance, as well as government policy that promoted the end of the bison as a means of calming hostilities with the Native Americans.

With the exception of the highly-questionable climate claim, every one of these items appears to support the "greedy white man" thesis.

A fine article otherwise, but weakened by the need to leap to the defense of the anti-Indian/Manifest Denstiny period.

robc|9.21.07 @ 10:42AM|#

From sea to shining sea, from baffin bay to tierra del fuego.

Im not sure why manifest destiny ended when we reached the pacific.

robc|9.21.07 @ 10:44AM|#

every one of these items appears to support the "greedy white man" thesis.

railroad - okay
horse culture - indians seemed more than willing to adopt that as quickly as possible
rifle - ditto
government policy - okay

2 out of 4 at best.

|9.21.07 @ 10:48AM|#

Joe beat me to it...Besides, I've always thought the dominant narrative was not so much the "greedy white man" but the "capricious and wasteful white man" doing in the bison, shooting them for the fun of it and not using them efficiently (or at all).

I don't know ho wmany people know this, but in colonial times slaves that were caught violating slave laws could be whipped summarily, but not over 39 times. And whipping was often used where the law may have called for hanging. This was because being property, the slaves were worth a lot and the owners protected them. Markets cure everything, don't they? Who cares about having "wild"life? They'd be so much better off on farms being churned into delicious hamburgers or in zoos where we can pay to see these great works of "nature."

|9.21.07 @ 10:50AM|#

"Im not sure why manifest destiny ended when we reached the pacific."

The indiginous populations of Hawaii and the philippines may suggest that it indeed did not end there and then my friend.

|9.21.07 @ 10:52AM|#

robc,

But the rifle and the horse culture were introduced by Europeans.

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to hold Indians blameless, but to look at the authors' thesis holding "white men's irresistable drive for wealt" blameless.

I've been saying for a long time that the african elephants that are being hunted for their tusks need to be "farmed". This would actually be pretty easy: Give the parks they reside in the authority to sell ivory.

Ivory would be in constant supply since it's doubtful they would kill the animal, it wouldn't add any extra to cost them that they couldn't easily recoup, and the huge influx would drive prices down enough that pouchers wouldn't bother. And if there's no more pouchers, the population increases, further driving down prices.

|9.21.07 @ 10:55AM|#

The bison were on their way out long before the white man began to populate the West. Just like the woolly rhinocerous, the mammoth, and innumerable other large animals, Native Americans were hunting the Bison to extinction.

Anyone who believes the claptrap about Indians only using every part of the buffalo and wasting nothing (living in harmony with nature) just needs to visit one of the many "buffalo jump" sites throughout Montana and the Dakotas.

Indians would drive an entire herd of buffalo off a cliff, killing hundreds or thousands, resulting in probably 99% waste.

Head-Smashed-In, Montana is my favorite site...

Mistah Niceguy,

In the "dominant" narrative of campus leftists, insatiable lust for wealth and waste on a massive scale are the same thing.

I'm not quite sure how that works.

ed|9.21.07 @ 10:55AM|#

Plains Indians had no written language and only a cursory notion of property rights. They were nomadic and they domesticated only dogs and horses. The idea of "ranching" in the common sense was alien to them. So the tragedy of the commons certainly applies. Another myth among many is that they used every part of the bison. When times were good and animals were plenty they took the hump and tongue and some organs and left the rest. By the way, bison burgers are delicious and highly recommended. And if you can afford Whole Foods' $18 a pound bison chops, get 'em. Best...red meat...ever.

|9.21.07 @ 10:56AM|#

Coveaxe-that is such a great idea to save the elephants, since we know private owners are always such great stewards of their natural resources. I mean, they would never overplant their land until it becomes worthless or stripmine land until it becomes worthless, or overfish or overhunt a natural resources until their very livelihood becomes endangered or extinct. Sarah Silverman had it wrong, it's not Jesus but Markets that are MAGIC!

You overstate your case, Ralphy.

There were millions of bison prior to the European settlement in the west. They were not headed to extinction.

|9.21.07 @ 10:57AM|#

every one of these items appears to support the "greedy white man" thesis.

We all KNOW that the Native Americans lived in complete harmony with "nature" and had no hand in the extinction of any species.

|9.21.07 @ 10:58AM|#

Give a man a fish and he will eat it.
Teach a man to fish and he will eat the rest of his life.
Tell a libertarian about the idea of the tragedy of the commons and they will apply it wishfully to everything whether empirically supported or not.

|9.21.07 @ 11:00AM|#

ed,

And yet, because of population and technological limitations, the plains Indians didn't hunt the bison to extinction, or even scarcity.

It's interesting to speculate what a few hundred more years of history and cultural development would have wrought. If their technology did advance and the scarcity problem arose, what sort of an order would have arisen to deal with that?

VM|9.21.07 @ 11:00AM|#

looks at package of ground bison that's in the freezer.

mmmmmm.

|9.21.07 @ 11:01AM|#

And we see why the mammoth died off: limited brain power left it incapable of recognizing and reacting to challenges in its environment.

|9.21.07 @ 11:02AM|#

Combined with poor eyesight which led to constant misidentification of predators as prey.

joe - yes, there were still millions of bison on the Great Plains when the white man arrived, but the population had already been reduced significantly, perhaps by as much as 50% before a single buffalo was killed by a white man.

If the white man had not shown up, the buffalo would have been extinct by 1900.

|9.21.07 @ 11:04AM|#

that is such a great idea to save the elephants, since we know private owners are always such great stewards of their natural resources

You can mock it if you want, but it's clearly obvious that the current system isn't working. Pouchers have no incentive to keep an elephant alive (Indeed, they may have an incentive to kill it to prevent others from getting ivory later). A park that has ownership (Especially one whose stated goal is to preserve animals) is unlikely to kill them.

|9.21.07 @ 11:10AM|#

Didn't cattle ranchers consider bison a nuisance they would be well rid of, since they often carried diseases, such as brucellosis, that could damage their herds?

BTW, while I don't go out of my way to torture sentient animals, I save my real compassion for sapient ones.

Kevrob

|9.21.07 @ 11:14AM|#

And we see why the mammoth died off: limited brain power left it incapable of recognizing and reacting to challenges in its environment.

Yep. Those challenges including, drumroll please, an invasive species, human immigrants from Asia.

ed|9.21.07 @ 11:14AM|#

Ironically or tragically--depending on your own worldview--it was westerners' introduction of rifles and horses to the Indians which sped up the bison's demise. It's doubtful that they would have invented the rifle--they had no metalurgy--and their populations were never so plentiful that they would have wiped out the bison on their own with just horses. Add a short life expectancy, no modern medicine, perpetual warfare with their neighbors, and you could make a good case that the bison would have lasted a good deal longer. But eventually they would have run out if they had not been domesticated and ranched. That's just a guess. We'll never know.

|9.21.07 @ 11:15AM|#

General question - was the situation with the American bison really a Tragedy of the Commons? I don't think that "communally owned" and "unclaimed" are really the same thing.

|9.21.07 @ 11:20AM|#

Combined with poor eyesight which led to constant misidentification of predators as prey.

I was unawre that paleontology had advanced to the point of determining the ocular characteristics of extinct species. Please provide a link so I can catch up with the latest.

|9.21.07 @ 11:23AM|#

Ok, it's inferred by their similarity to elephants. Not conclusive, but I'll buy it for now.

|9.21.07 @ 11:24AM|#

Seriously, Ralphy? I would need to see some evidence that the bison "population had already been reduced significantly, perhaps by as much as 50% before a single buffalo was killed by a white man." Who has accurate statistics of pre-Columbian bison populations? No one even knows how many people lived in North America 500 years ago (or 1000 or 10,000 years ago for that matter).

When you assert so confidently "If the white man had not shown up, the buffalo would have been extinct by 1900." It sounds like you're just making stuff up.

Bhh|9.21.07 @ 11:24AM|#

Trader Joe's buffalo steak burgers are very very good.

rho|9.21.07 @ 11:27AM|#

What does bison taste like anyway? Gamier than cow, or what?

|9.21.07 @ 11:29AM|#

What does bison taste like anyway?

Tastes like chicken.

|9.21.07 @ 11:31AM|#

J sub D,

I was just mocking "The Last Mammoth" up there for his poor reading comprehension skills and the silly, politicized straw man he thought was such a brilliant rebuttal to my comment.

I wasn't actually commenting on what killed off the mammoths.

|9.21.07 @ 11:33AM|#

I found bison to be like very, very lean beef.

Red meat so dry you need oil if you want to brown it. Sort of like venison, maybe?

Also, elk burger = teh yummy.

rho|9.21.07 @ 11:33AM|#

Tastes like chicken.

Free-range, or mutant KFC Quadruple-breasted Footless™?

|9.21.07 @ 11:34AM|#

What does bison taste like anyway? Gamier than cow, or what?

Not really gamier. It's like a very lean beef. The problem with Bison (at least the stuff that I get at my local markets) is that it is really really easy to overcook and dry out. You don't usually cook Bison past Medium.

I also like Ostrich quite a bit, esp. as hamburger. Again leaner and easy to overcook.

rho|9.21.07 @ 11:36AM|#

Red meat so dry you need oil if you want to brown it. Sort of like venison, maybe?

A mix of ground beef and venison makes for my favorite burger, so I suppose I should find a bison store.

WRT ivory farms, I think DuPont does a better job of saving the elephant, for the same reason they (metaphorically) saved the whale.

MattXIV|9.21.07 @ 11:36AM|#

JBinMO|9.21.07 @ 11:39AM|#

"Native Americans were hunting the Bison to extinction."

That happened with horses. Horse skelitons were found in the americas but the last on live around 1200 (AD or BC not sure which).

Iceberg Slim|9.21.07 @ 11:39AM|#

MattXIV|9.21.07 @ 11:40AM|#

Awesome strawman, MNG. Been saving that one up for a bit or did you come up with it on the spot?

|9.21.07 @ 11:42AM|#

American-Americans, with the railroad, the rifle, et al, didn't quite manage to wipe out the bison by 1900, and yet we're supposed to believe that Native Americans would have done so, by 1900, pre-horse, pre-rifle, no railroad, etc?

That's harder to swallow than a well done bison steak.

JBinMO|9.21.07 @ 11:43AM|#

"Combined with poor eyesight which led to constant misidentification of predators as prey."

Wouldn't their "prey" have been grass? They must have had really bad eyesight to mistake a pack of wolves for grass.

|9.21.07 @ 11:46AM|#

Dan T./Mr. Nice Guy,

How do you arrive at the idea that the overhunting of buffalo isn't a "tragedy of the commons" scenario? It's pretty much a text book example of the mechanisms involved. Nobody controlled the right to take buffalo from the herds, so everybody took them whenever some marginal benefit would come from it.

I suppose so - I was assuming that common ownership was an element as opposed to non-ownership.

It seems like this is more an issue of people assuming there were more buffalo than there really were - nobody took control of buffalo rights because there was no need to. It was easier just to go hunt more.

|9.21.07 @ 11:47AM|#

JimBo,
I was making a little joke at "The Last Mammoth's" expense.

Tap tap tap. Is this thing on?

Is this a libertarian blog or an oil painting?

|9.21.07 @ 11:51AM|#

Substitute ground bison the next time you make tacos. Use a bit more cumin than normal and maybe a little tomato puree to keep it from drying out. Afterward, sprinkle a little gorgonzola and some thinly sliced red onions on top...pure heaven. I've done this three times with guests, who didn't know they were eating bison meat until I told them. Whole Foods has ground bison for a reasonable price.

|9.21.07 @ 11:55AM|#

Good pizza topping. Healthier than ground beef, too.

Episiarch|9.21.07 @ 11:55AM|#

The Indians were just as wasteful of bison as the white man, they just didn't have the population or technology to devastate them. So nobody gets any bullshit moral edge here.

Also, something would have happened to the bison whether or not they were overharvested, because you just can't have 1,000,000-head bison herds walking across people's neighborhoods and roads. The would have been herded at the very least--and guess what, that's how they're making a comeback now.

I have a bison farm near me in Canterbury, CT. They sell cuts of steak, ground, and organ meats (that's some powerful liver, baby). It's good, just like super-lean steak. Since I like my meat basically raw, drying it out isn't an issue.

|9.21.07 @ 11:57AM|#

They were nomadic and they domesticated only dogs and horses

I thought the indians got their horses from the Spanish.

ed|9.21.07 @ 11:58AM|#

Is this a libertarian blog or an oil painting?

It's a dessert topping.

Bison is way better than beef if you can find a good cut and way worse if you attempt a pure-red slab with no marbling. You'll need to pound it and marinate it first. But trust me when I say again: those 2" thick chops at Whole Foods are a meal you won't forget. A little olive oil and garlic, a pinch of rosemary, cracked black pepper...just don't overcook 'em.

|9.21.07 @ 12:00PM|#

I mean, they would never overplant their land until it becomes worthless or stripmine land until it becomes worthless, or overfish or overhunt a natural resources until their very livelihood becomes endangered or extinct.

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the concept of a renewable resource? Mines generally do not contain them. Overharvesting of fish and land game is a classic examples of a tragedy of the commons that is currently being addressed throughout the world through the assigning of property rights. It is not perfect, there is a huge incentive to cheat, but it is far better than no policy. Do you have few examples of companies that are destroying their own property by overplanting? Why would they do that?

robc|9.21.07 @ 12:05PM|#

It's a dessert topping.

It's a floor wax.

|9.21.07 @ 12:11PM|#

It's a dessert topping.

It's a floor wax.

ed, robc, stop! You're both right!

|9.21.07 @ 12:14PM|#

It's a floor wax.

It's both!

|9.21.07 @ 12:15PM|#

Bah! Must hit refresh....

|9.21.07 @ 12:29PM|#

MNG -
I gather you don't believe in the study of incentives?

|9.21.07 @ 1:47PM|#

joe, et al...

The bison only arrive in North America about 10,000 years ago. It replaced some other megafauna which had been hunted to extinction after the introduction of arrow heads.

However, prior to the white man's arrival, the bison was already on it's way out. When the Spanish first explored the US, they never encountered a single buffalo.

However, the introduction of diseases from Europe decimated the Native American population, which lead to a rapid explosion in the buffalo population. So, the 10-20 million buffalo that roamed the great plains at the time of Lewis & Clark benefitted from a greatly reduced hunter population (supposedly, there were only 10,000 Native Americans in all of the Great Plains).

If the white man had not shown up, the Native American population would have continued to grow and they would have extirpated the buffalo, just like they did all the other large mammals they came across...

VM|9.21.07 @ 2:03PM|#

Ralphy - do you mean

VM|9.21.07 @ 2:05PM|#

dammit...

do you mean: this?

Andrew C. Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison (New York: Cambridge, 2000)

...and Andrew C. Isenberg, a professor of history at Princeton, all have produced challenging new studies about Indians, whites, and the Plains environment. Most of all, they all have offered significant revisions of the views that Americans have held regarding the destruction of the buffalo. [...]

Isenberg wonders whether the North American bison herd was already falling below replacement levels before white hunters arrived.

otherwise, please give sources, cuz it really did look like you simply MTSU...

ed|9.21.07 @ 2:07PM|#

That's sketchy history, Ralphy. Are you saying that the plains Indians had suffered widespread, European-caused epidemics at the time of Lewis and Clark? In 1804? Most at that time had never seen a white man, save the rare trapper.

|9.21.07 @ 2:11PM|#

VM - this is all coming from memory, based on books I read and a couple courses I took at Colgate U. in the early 90's.

Back then, everyone was awash in the glow of Dances with Wolves and the Native American Studies course were full of kids with very romantic notions of Indian life... as one of those kids, I wrote my term paper on the Plains Indians and was disabused of most of my juvenile notions.

I think the 10,000 Native Americans number came from "Undaunted Courage". Some of this stuff came from the book "Americans before Columbus"... some of it might have come from "Crazy Horse and Custer", as well.

|9.21.07 @ 2:12PM|#

ed:

yes, that's what I'm saying. Disease spread from Indian-to-Indian and didn't have to involve direct contact with white folks.

|9.21.07 @ 2:14PM|#

VM|9.21.07 @ 2:14PM|#

I was in school at the same time as you - just up the road in Clinton, NY... And I certainly remember the orgasmic wonderment with Dances with wolves!

And an arch feminist prof in a "modern theater" class completely ripped that film a new one. It was AWESOME!

most hier are familiar that the "Romantic Savage" didn't exist, but it's the extinction element that's controversial/ needs some sort of source!

Were you at Colgate when the anti fraternity people broke into the DKE house and quoted their log books (out of context, naturally)?

|9.21.07 @ 2:15PM|#

Hey, look what I found on wikipedia, not that that proves anything...

"In this theory, it was only when the original (Native American) population was devastated by wave after wave of epidemic (from diseases of Europeans) after the 16th century that the bison herds propagated wildly. In such a view, the seas of bison herds that stretched to the horizon were a symptom of an ecology out of balance, only rendered possible by decades of heavier-than-average rainfall.

|9.21.07 @ 2:19PM|#

No, I graduated the year before the break-in at DKE. They actually didn't break into the DKE house, but the "chapel", which was a weird brick building with no doors or windows.

Apparently, the log book listed the names of all the girls the frat had "conquered", if I recall correctly...

VM|9.21.07 @ 2:26PM|#

that's right! among other things, IIRC...

good times. The break in was my senior year, and all the anti fraternity types went the short trip to Hamilton from Clinton to join in the protests.

Then several of 'em threw a desk through a DKE member's (at Hamilton, not Colgate, mind you) window! He got charged for dorm damage ('provoked incident') - he sent the bill and letter to the school paper!

as I say, good times!

|9.21.07 @ 2:52PM|#

"The bison only arrive in North America about 10,000 years ago. It replaced some other megafauna which had been hunted to extinction after the introduction of arrow heads."

I think you're mistaken about how long bison have been in North America, Ralphy. They actually got here something like 150,000 years ago.

Some population genetic analyses suggest that a significant decrease in bison population size began around 37,000 years ago (admittedly with a fairly wide confidence interval on that date), possibly due to climatic changes. Further, the analyses suggest that the rate of population decline increased significantly around 10,000 years ago at roughly the same time as the arrival of humans to North America.

See Shapiro et al (2004) Science 306:1561-1565 and Drummond et al Molecular Biology and Evolution (2005) 22:1185-1192.

ed|9.21.07 @ 2:53PM|#

He is, in fact, correct.

Nice timeline. Short on actual numbers, though.

robc|9.21.07 @ 3:15PM|#

Funny (to me) Dances with Wolves story. After graduating college, I got a job working in Switzerland. DwW made it to European theatres while I was there, I had never seen it back in the US. I went to see it with a group of Europeans of random nationality. The movie wasnt dubbed, but had subtitles in French and German. This was fine for me, except for the parts in Sioux, which were subtitled in French and German, neither of which I speak or read. The original english subtitles were MIA.

I was sitting next to a Brit who spoke French, she translated for me, only poorly.

Afterwords, a German made fun of me for not speaking one of my nations native tongues.

|9.21.07 @ 3:16PM|#

It strikes me that there are thousands of women raped a year in our country, probably millions worldwide. Clearly if someone owned these women they would be taken care of much better. Currently men have little or no reason to protect these women, but once they are owned and can be prostituted out in a healthy market, then they will be well protected

News flash! Women already have human owners: themselves. It's not only men who are capable of acting as owners because (in case you were not aware of this) women are human beings too.

The problem of some human beings preying upon each other and not respecting each others' human rights is not a "tragedy of the commons" problem like the near-extinction of the buffalo, the extinction of the passenger pigeon, and most other human-caused extinctions are.

lunchstealer|9.21.07 @ 3:28PM|#

Some population genetic analyses suggest that a significant decrease in bison population size began around 37,000 years ago (admittedly with a fairly wide confidence interval on that date), possibly due to climatic changes. Further, the analyses suggest that the rate of population decline increased significantly around 10,000 years ago at roughly the same time as the arrival of humans to North America.

The 10k number for first human habitation of North America is now beginning to be seriously questioned. Sites which are believed to represent pre-Clovis habitations have been found now in Texas, South Carolina, and several other locations.

lunchstealer|9.21.07 @ 3:29PM|#

News flash! Women already have human owners: themselves. It's not only men who are capable of acting as owners because (in case you were not aware of this) women are human beings too.

In many ways, Stevo is correct.

|9.21.07 @ 4:02PM|#

lunchstealer,

The number I've usually heard for arrival of humans in North America is 12,000-14,000 years, but I'll take your word for it if folks are starting to think it's older than that. In any case, unless the new date is changed quite a bit, it's probably still pretty close to the confidence limits of the 10,000 year population decline in bison (and one could imagine that once humans were here it would take them a while to have population sizes large enough to have that sort of effect on bison; that date might still be well within the confidence limits). These sorts of genetic analyses necessarily have pretty broad confidence intervals, which of course makes it harder to draw conclusions about things like the role of humans; it's still pretty cool what you can do though.

|9.21.07 @ 4:16PM|#

"Do you have few examples of companies that are destroying their own property by overplanting? Why would they do that?"
Private land owners have throughout history ruined there soil by stupidly overplanting. You really need me to prove that by examples?

The point of my "straw man" is that while markets are indeed great things, they are simply not apporpriate to fix every problem. We don't have a market in child pornography so that there will be less for pete's sake or a market in minorities to "protect" them. People concerned about protecting "wildlife" are not satisfied with making them all farm animals because we wanted "wildlife" protected. A market "solution" does not fix the problem that concerns people. They can't do EVERYTHING for God's sake...Jesus.

MattXIV|9.21.07 @ 4:47PM|#

People concerned about protecting "wildlife" are not satisfied with making them all farm animals because we wanted "wildlife" protected. A market "solution" does not fix the problem that concerns people. They can't do EVERYTHING for God's sake...Jesus.

But in this particular case there is a market-based solution that would have improved outcomes. Similar managment techniques have been applied to fishing stocks, which still consist of "wild" animals as the delegation of property rights is an effective way to limit the overusage of renewable resources, even when the resource of question is a stock of wild animals that is used as a food source on a commercial scale, as bison was in the 19th century. Stating that markets aren't a panacea doesn't prove that they aren't a useful mechanism for resource management.

|9.21.07 @ 5:07PM|#

"One underlying factor, however, may have contributed more than any other. The tragedy of the bison was one of the starkest examples of the tragedy of the commons. No one owned the bison."

Actually, only true in a semantic sense. There were owners, just as there were owners of land (cannot a group of people form a corporation and own something in joint? Prof Brainbridge has argued that corps are just contractual groups of people), it was something else entirely.

Those who owned them, had inferior technology and were unable to protect their investments against the "might makes right" advancement from the east.

Violence works. Especially superior violence. The "Indian wars" proved that.

The victors (my ancestors) saw little need to cultivate (until recently) that particular part of the property that they took by force.

This is not a criticism of such economics, when aliens begin the planet clearing, I will be the first to argue that their superior technologies entitle them to the same things my European ancestors were entitled to in this dog eat dog universe........

Victory.

As Greenspan himself implied recently in reference to Iraqi oil, and implied to the Bush administration when he supported the invasion, violence is an acceptable application of capitalist economics. If it is to insure future growth and the materials to continue that growth.

|9.21.07 @ 6:05PM|#

"MNG -
I gather you don't believe in the study of incentives?"
No, you should gather I do. But I'm not sure if many of the libertarians here do. Incentives do not just work by providing economic benefit to those who go along with them, they also work by providing harms to those who do not. If governments put a high enough price on killing endangered species and enough support for enforcement then this becomes a huge incentive not to do it (sitting in jail can be a bummer). Libertarians who think only the market can provide incentives are out of it.

abu hamza|9.21.07 @ 6:19PM|#

no there's more to the near-extinction of bison in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Back then people just didn't have a concept of conservation. That picture of skulls is just grotesque. I don't think people would proudly pose in front of it today.

for example, Missouri has lots of caves. A cave tour guide told me that in the 1920s one of our best, biggest, most spectacular cave was used as a dancehall/ballroom. They poisoned the bothersome bats, and actually used dynamite to grade/make more developable sections of the cave.

Imagine! Millions of years old, beautiful cave formations being dynamited, for a dance hall! And there used to be a parrot native to the united states, but ladies penchant for fancy hat adornments ensured its extinction. The frivolity, and disrespect for nature, was very different back then.

People just had no concept of conservation back then. now maybe it's market principles, libertarian principles (unlikely), etc. that for whatever reasons, people just don't cotton to the idea of just-for-the-shit-of-it destruction of animals or wildlife. (most people anyway) (okay most CLEAR-thinking people, anyway)

Another Phil|9.21.07 @ 6:25PM|#

VM,

I was at Colgate when they broke into the DKE chapel. I think it was my senior year (but it might have been junior year). If I remember correctly, some of the quotes from the log book were pretty racist.

Also, I remember someone writing an article in the school newspaper defending the break-in as a sort of civil disobedience.

VM|9.21.07 @ 6:49PM|#

Another Phil -
(we're around the same age. Wanna share my kit kat, grin)
I remember hearing a bunch of stuff like that, too, but the sources at Hamilton who were reporting it were unreliable, and they portrayed it as civil disobedience. I do remember hoping that many of the descriptions weren't true, as they were disgusting!

great weekend!

|9.22.07 @ 12:17AM|#

Charles Mann's book about the effect of the arrival of the first Europeans on the Indian populations, civilizations, and their ecosystems dovetails with Ralphy's thesis, I believe. According to Mann, the population of Indian civilizations was much greater, and more sophisticated, than many had previously believed, prior to the arrival of Columbus. Diseases spread like a wild-fire through the continent, ripping the people bodily, culturally, and infrastructurally apart, decimating their civilizations. Indeed, the bison would have faired perhaps just as poorly - possibly even more poorly, against such numbers and stampeding practices, if the Europeans had never set viruses loose on the scene.

MNG,
What Max said. Markets are excellent for tools for managing resources. It doesn't follow from that that libertarians would categorize human beings as resources, void of rights, or that we would believe that markets are the panacea for every problem. You've come up with a reductio absurdum in addition to the house of straw you've built.

|9.22.07 @ 11:22AM|#

If governments put a high enough price on killing endangered species and enough support for enforcement then this becomes a huge incentive not to do it (sitting in jail can be a bummer). Libertarians who think only the market can provide incentives are out of it.

Mr. N.G, is right. We in the good ol' USA have a lot of "commons", national, state, county, city parks and forests. Yet amazingly enough the poaching, illegal logging and mining problems are nuisances at worst, and indetacable in most cases. Enforcement, coupled with environmental awareness makes the west's park systems the model that other societies should attempt to emulate. Of course that model includes sufficient economic opportunity that doesn't involve aforementioned poaching etc. I hate to state the obvious but if the Congo had factories, the rule of law, and Wal Marts, the people there probably could be persuaded to not kill rhinos for their horns. You are not going to be able to preserve the environment w/o a free enterprise, capitalist ecomomy. When you're starving, monkey meat looks pretty damned good, park ranger be damned.

Smiley|9.24.07 @ 1:03AM|#

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano, speaking in 1873: "I would not seriously regret the total disappearance of the buffalo from our western plains, in its effect upon the Indians. I would regard it rather as a means of hastening their sense of dependence upon the products of the soil and their own labors."

Anything unmanaged is the enemy.

The advancement or manifest density of the cowboy cult must take its place among the other "causes" of the demise of the plains bison. General Sheridan is known to have dreamed of the day that all the buffalo were gone, replaced by "speckled cattle." He spoke of how he looked forward to that day of ultimate colonization of the agricultural "revolution."

Everything in nice, neat rows please!

*

BEN|11.23.09 @ 12:19AM|#

“Kill the Indian, and Save the Man”: Capt. Richard H. Pratt on the Education of Native Americans

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