Peter Hume: "The species" is not a decision-making entity.

The implication is not that the species is a decision making entity, but rather that the members of a species, through the sum of their individual decisions, has a collective impact.

It would seem fair to say that in many cases we as individuals make decisions that fall closely into line by virtue of exposure to common information, propaganda, education, as well as misinformation and mis-education, resulting in a situation where the appearance of at least a socio-politico-economic group-wide decision making entity presents itself. This appearance, whilst not constituting a real entity, is in possession of enough emergent properties that render it entity-like enough to allow us to discuss it as a real phenomenon.

If a town decides to conserve water, that is of course a collective decision made by individuals. Insisting that we cannot say "the town has made a decision" but must instead address the individual decisions of each person regardless of whether they collectively point in the same direction, seems to be muddying waters just for the sake of getting the stick wet.

Peter Hume collectivist attitude? Pete have you heard of things like communities, cities, states, nations in fact society(s). They all are collectivist by nature.

You come across as a capitalist ideologue. Sadly as stated elsewhere argument by contrary extremes and petty semantics (reductionist approach)is at best an intellectually sterile exercise likewise.
Both of us know exactly what the author meant and it was nothing like your attempted demolition.

It was all about priorities, including lack of appropriately allocated resources.
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Hasbeen,
Yet your opinion is based on anything but the topic.
Your clear belief, that the only people who should be listened to are those with your *version* of hard science.
In so doing you, missed the point and you flatter yourself about the level of your relevant expertise.

Fact: There is a *lot* of hard science that goes into understanding ecological and associated processes.

You constant berating of them is insultingly childish to all who study and work in that environment. As I said at the time your third person anecdote is worthless as fact/proof. One girl is hardly representative of the science as a whole. I could point to several Engineers etc whose degrees, were on closer examination little more that attendance certificates. Does that justify slagging off several related science disciplines and therefore the people. All because you have skill qualifications and experience, in a totally different area!

In truth if push come to shove you wouldn't be able to match the author in his field any more than he in yours.

The author's article has nothing to do with survival skills a la Bear Grills. his argument is based on proven research whether you emotionally agree or not. Please, state your views with out the misplaced contempt.

geoffc
The fact that people have a collective impact is not itself the issue. The issue in policy is always whether to use force or not; otherwise, the resolution could be voluntary and there’d be no need for the government to do anything.

For example, Ralf Buckley and all those who agree with him, and there must be millions or tens of millions who do, could simply form themselves into a voluntary association, and buy the lands in question, themselves foregoing soft drinks as the price.

But that's not what Ralf is suggesting, as I read him. He's suggesting that *because* wilderness is in scarce supply, *therefore* political management of it is indicated. It's a non sequitur of course but even if it weren't, it would still be based on a collectivist fallacy.

A town council is a decision-making entity. A town is not.

“This appearance, whilst not constituting a real entity, is in possession of enough emergent properties that render it entity-like enough to allow us to discuss it as a real phenomenon.”

True, but that doesn’t justify the conclusion that the author is contending for. Society is collaboration. That doesn’t mean the collaboration should be based on force.

examinator
That is the point you have missed. You confuse society with the state, and the state with society. They are not the same thing. Adding argumentation by mind-reading and assuming bad faith doesn’t improve your position either. You come across as a socialist ideologue, how 'bout that? There will be an earthly paradise if only we can have full government control of everything. Got a problem? Government is the answer.

“It was all about priorities, including lack of appropriately allocated resources.”

Well guess what? You’re not the only person with priorities, or views about how resources should be allocated. What makes you think you’ve established a justification for forcing everyone else to comply with your opinions?

Peter Hume "True, but that doesn’t justify the conclusion that the author is contending for. Society is collaboration. That doesn’t mean the collaboration should be based on force."

So how do you propose we deal with the problem where only a minority know what's good for humanity (generally not including the political parties and their lobbyists) and another minority is actually cashed up enough to exploit these natural resources, and does not have membership in the former group?

I don’t understand what you mean by a minority who know what’s good for humanity. Who would that be, and how would we know?

Who would that be? Anyone who cares to consider it carefully enough.

How would we know? Logic would dictate clearly based on scientific evidence and a prudent risk analysis where evidence is clouded or inconclusive.

Your comments indicate an anti government-control agenda, which is fair enough insofar as people really know what's good for them with respect to the outside world (and entirely fair when it comes to judgements about their own lives that have little to no impact on others). The current era of individualist capitalism has illustrated that in general we don't care as long as our desires are satisfied and any problems created have no impact upon us which implies that collectively we are poorly equipped to make decisions on such important issues.

What is even more evident is that anyone thinking to exploit whatever resources we might be considering are by their nature even less well equipped to make such decisions.

Essentially, if a satisfactory outcome cannot be obtained via non-force methods, then force must be resorted to, and I contend that when it comes to resources that provide us with non-monetary essentials of existence that we will not see satisfactory outcomes other than by government preservation of wilderness by way of tax money.

Certainly it's true that sometimes the government is the people's worst enemy when it comes to preserving wilderness so issues like this which go to the heart of the issue of the sustainability of humanity should really be determined based on sound scientific principles and moral axioms that all political parties adhere to regardless of transient, propaganda driven voter sentiment or monetary inducement.