"Superficially, Australia looks very big and sparsely populated, but it is actually a small to medium sized country wrapped around a big desert."

Beautifully put, Divergence. I like it.

Divergence
The control of people moving in to a country is one of the core claims of state prerogative.

In saying that if you don't like the overcrowding, you can move to the country, I'm not defending the government interference that is immigration policy. I'm simply pointing out that in the country, you don't get a feeling of overcrowding and infrastructure isn't as crowded.

The libertarian solution to the problem first of all recognises that the socialisation of any resource inevitably leads to a 'tragedy of the commons' situation which is essentially what Ludwig is complaining about. Yet he himself is foremost in defending that prerogative of state. When it yields exactly the undesirable results that libertarian theory correctly predicts will result from government handling it, Ludwig doesn't get it, and thinks the problem is too many people. He has clearly never thought through the alternatives.

The problems that concern Ludwig with high immigration are called externalities in economics, that is, the beneficiaries are able to internalise the benefits to themselves - enjoyment of life in Australia including so-called public goods - while externalising the costs onto society at large - strains on infrastructure etc.

The libertarian solution is to internalise the externalities by making the beneficiaries or their sponsors bear the costs of the benefits they receive by immigration. But that can't be done by giving government more control, and what is policy but control? More government control can and will only exacerbate the original problem. Not even Ludwig agrees with government policy on immigration. He is always telling me how necessary and desirable it is; is caught in a self-contradiction; and doesn't re-think his views even when this is pointed out.

The political appeal to "science" is completely vapid. Science doesn't supply value judgments, while policy requires them.

To give you some idea of the libertarian argument as it applies to water, please see these two short critiques of water policy:

"Water Down Government" by Benjamin Marks
http://mises.org/daily/1586/Water-Down-Government

"Government's Water Shortage" by Justin Jefferson
http://blog.libertarian.org.au/2007/02/26/governments-water-shortage/

Jardine, could you possibly elucidate the last point in my previous post:

< It would seem to me that you are making assumptions which haven’t been thought through, and which are really quite alien to me. I mean, I’ve never heard the notion before that it is not the role of government to plan for our future… >

You’ve got me phlummoxed. What I would consider to be all-important core duties of government, you are saying they should butt out of!

The same sort of thinking appears in your first link. From this article:

< The solution to our water supply problems is to eliminate government interference >

Then…

< The best solution, in my opinion, is for those with suitable air quality (everyone in Sydney) and roofing to install water tanks and capture rainwater off their roofs. It is easy and beneficial to secede from government’s water grid >

Well, if that was the case (and it isn’t), then it would surely be a duty of government to encourage it! You would surely be calling for government subsidies and incentives. And you would surely be critical of a government that didn’t do this.

Again, the notion that government should butt out seems just completely bizarre to me.

The second article concludes that:

< Governmental ownership and control of water should be abolished >

That is a terrible conclusion. Yes, there are big problems with the management of water. So we should be seeking to improve them. But to strive to eliminate the very body that is SUPPOSED to be in charge of the management of essential resources and infrastructure, and implement a regime of no management or management by economic market forces would be enormously the WRONG way to go!

In fact, it is the continuously increasing demand on our water resources, which comes as a direct result of big business pressure, ie: market forces, and the weakness of government, that is the biggest problem of all in the management water.

Jardine,

I am just as skeptical about government as you are. The only difference is that I am also very skeptical of business. You seem to be very sensitive to political coercion, but blind to economic coercion. There has been an abundance of bad behavior from both government and business. In some cases, the private sector can indeed do a much better job than government. In Tim Flannery's recent Quarterly Essay, he praises the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (which I support) for doing a much better job of protecting endangered species and ecosystems than government. (They buy up private land and turn it into nature reserves, which they manage properly.)

It is very doubtful if either government or business would be pushing population growth if they had to pay for the externalities, as there is no good evidence of a significant per capita benefit, as stated in the 2010/2011 Productivity Commission Annual Report (p. 6).

http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/113407/annual-report-2010-11.pdf

Science, of course, can say nothing about values, but it can often say a great deal about likely consequences of a course of action. This can feed back into values because not only do different people have different values, but the same individual can have a number of different values, which can compete with each other. Thomas Austin, who is credited with introducing rabbits into Australia, said at the time: "The introduction of a few rabbits could do little harm and might provide a touch of home, in addition to a spot of hunting." If he knew about the damage that those rabbits would do, do you think that he would have wanted to go ahead and bring them in anyway?

You forget the essentially symbiotic relationship involved, Ludwig.

>>In fact, it is the continuously increasing demand on our water resources, which comes as a direct result of big business pressure, ie: market forces, and the weakness of government, that is the biggest problem of all in the management water.<<

The market forces that you allude to must, by definition, require that water supplies are efficiently and effectively managed. If they are allowed to deplete, those very businesses that are dependent upon them will die.

"Big business" did not get that way by ignoring these simple truths. Pick up and read any annual report, and you will see their plans for the sustainability and longevity of their business - these companies are required by their shareholders to describe such plans specifically, and in great detail.

Your starry-eyed view of government's ability to understand basic organizational issues such as this, is a result of your blindness to the fact that politicians are very rarely indeed blessed with the level of basic managerial nous equivalent to that possessed by lower-middle management of a real company.

Show me a government project that has even half-way met its original plan, while consuming less than twice its original budget, and I'll show you my pet unicorn.

Ludwig

To elucidate, suppose someone wanted to use an industrial hammer-drill to make a bed quilt, or wanted a cat to bark as a watchdog, or appointed the Hell’s Angels as the moral guardians for teenage girls.

In those cases, we could see straight away that the means chosen are not suitable for the ends sought.

But when it comes to government, it seems people just project onto it whatever they want it to be and do, without first reflecting whether it is indeed intrinsically unsuitable for attaining those ends.

For example, you consider
a) the management of population and migration to be a core duty of government, and
b) the results of government ‘management’ of population and migration to be chronically highly unsatisfactory.

Can you see the paradox there? You’re actually getting the unsatisfactory results that flow from the means you consider to be self-evidently appropriate.

My theory of government – that it’s a legal monopoly of the use of force and fraud without any intrinsic ability to rationalise scarce social resources to their most socially valued ends – correctly predicts the results that you find unsatisfactory. Your theory – that government represents society – incorrectly predicts that it should produce much better results which in fact fail to materialize. Which theory has better explaining power?

You say you’ve thought through the issues, but you haven’t because you’ve never considered how the ends you are trying to achieve through government policy, might be better achieved otherwise.

To really think critically about the issues, we need to ask, what is it about the nature of that particular group in society – the State – that makes it suitable to achieve the ends of population or environmental management?

Okay so let’s put aside what you think government *should be* for a sec, and let me ask you this. What is it about government that means it’s not intrinsically unsuitable to to use as an instrument to manage population or the environment?