<< 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. >>

Huh!?!?

Pericles, that’s a load of old cods!

Water resources HAVE become more precarious, compared to demand, in many of our cities and towns. I haven’t heard any chamber of commerce or any individual business ever call for a cessation to the increasing demand for water in places where this resource is stressed! When has any business sector ever genuinely pushed for sustainable secure water supplies?? In reality, they do exactly the opposite!

Crikey, if business DID follow your starry-eyed principle, we (us sensible people) wouldn’t be worrying about continuous rapid unending population growth and the antisustainable momentum that results from it.

If business was as you purport it to be, it would be sustainable, and so would the whole of our society!!

So um, what happened to our last conversation?

I picked you up on a fundamental error to which you offered no response. Most unusual for you. Strongly gives the impression that you realise that you are wrong and could give no reply other than to admit this: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=5719#159980

Just saying so, Ludwig, don't make it so.

>>Pericles, that’s a load of old cods!<<

My point was simply this: businesses that rely upon the supply of a particular input, will always record in their annual reports the sustainable nature of those inputs. Without those statements, the business will be seen to have no plan for its own future, and will therefore die.

Which part of that is "cods"?

>>Water resources HAVE become more precarious, compared to demand, in many of our cities and towns.<<

Quite possibly. But due entirely to the combination of ongoing blindness, complacency and lack of courage of consecutive governments over the past half-century. We have the same problem with our airports here in NSW - no government has had the intestinal fortitude to make a decision, and stick with it. This enables people like yourself to put the cart fairly before the horse: the problems are not caused by the increase in population per se, but the lack of will on the part of governments to plan for that increase.

You see the answer to be a reduction in economic power. Which is fine for someone on an indexed government pension living in the backwoods. But such people are in a considerable minority; most Australians live in our fine cities, quite happily supporting the woop-woop folks' carefree beach lifestyle, right up until the point where they want to lecture us all on what we should and shouldn't do.

>>So um, what happened to our last conversation? I picked you up on a fundamental error to which you offered no response. Most unusual for you.<<

Fundamental error? Didn't notice that you found one. You must have hidden it amongst your usual schoolmarm finger-wagging. You did mention that you disagreed with my view that the population will decline with a zero-immigration policy, only to reverse that view in the following sentence. Forgive me for ignoring it.

<< My point was simply this: businesses that rely upon the supply of a particular input, will always record in their annual reports the sustainable nature of those inputs. Without those statements, the business will be seen to have no plan for its own future, and will therefore die. >>

A simple point indeed, Pericles. Too simple, in the highly competitive business world.

Aggression wins! A business that lays back on its purchase of a particular good because of concerns about a sustainable supply will simply be usurped by a more aggressive business which will purchase more, in an unsustainable manner. It’s classic tragedy of the commons stuff. This is one of the great problems with the business sector and market forces, and one of the great reasons why governments need to be strong in their regulatory role.

Businesses that allow their competitors to get the better of them die!

Now, if businesses could be both highly competitive AND sustainability-minded…. or if they could put sustainability ahead of competition, and hence ahead of their short-term profits, then your simple point would have some credence. But alas, it doesn’t.

Oh how I wish it did!

continued

<< Which part of that is "cods"? >>

The bit about businesses being fundamentally concerned about sustainable resources.

<< the problems are not caused by the increase in population per se, but the lack of will on the part of governments to plan for that increase. >>

I wrote:

>> Water resources HAVE become more precarious, compared to demand, in many of our cities and towns.<<

Pericles, you replied:

<< Quite possibly. But due entirely to the combination of ongoing blindness, complacency and lack of courage of consecutive governments... >>

No. It is due in no small part to pressure from the business lobby to maintain high population growth and hence ever-increasing stress on water supplies… and yes, the lack of courage of government to stand up to it!

<< Which is fine for someone on an indexed government pension living in the backwoods. >>

Oh please!! You’ve mentioned this a few times now. It is just another assertion that you’ve pulled out of your ar… ……mpit!

I am not on any form of pension. I’m nowhere near retirement age! And I happen to live in the largest city in the northern half of Australia – Townsville. (Yeah ok, this WOULD be backwoods to an inner-city Sydneysider like you!)

<< Fundamental error? Didn't notice that you found one >>

Hahahaa. No of course not.

<< Forgive me for ignoring it. >>

You’re forgiven. Afterall, your only choice was to admit it or ignore it. And the former was definitely never gunna happen!

Ludwig, firstly, suppose an ecologist said
“We hypothesise that the distribution of species X is dependent on factor Y. We observe no such relation. But we consider that result unthinkable, so therefore we conclude that the distribution of species X is dependent on factor Y.”

You would immediately recognise this line of reasoning as illogical, and would not accept that conclusion, or any further deductions from it.

But substitute the magical factor of government, and all of a sudden you permit yourself to enter into this logic-free zone.

For example, just because you consider government should manage sustainability, doesn’t mean it can, even in your own terms. There’s a prior threshold question you haven’t addressed. Neither you nor Divergence has yet given any reason to think that government can in fact do what you think it should. Rather, both of you have in effect replied that, since you find the alternative unthinkable, *therefore* government should do it. But of itself this no more justifies the conclusion that government can do it, than that the Country Women’s Association can.

Being a simple logical fallacy I don’t accept that conclusion or any further deductions from it; and neither should you!

Secondly, to demonstrate government can, you would need to define the values that are to be achieved.

(As we have seen, this can’t be done at the aggregate level. For example, take ecology. In the final analysis the distribution and abundance of species is the distribution and abundance of members of those species.)

Then you would need to demonstrate that government has the ability to know those values, and *calculate them in some lowest common denominator*, else it will be faced with the impossible task of how to integrate manifold diverse mere physical quantities.

Government can’t do it obviously, and the fact that you don’t like that conclusion doesn’t supply what your argument lacks.

Thirdly, your answer to my epistemological challenge is the simple blandishment that societies impose laws. So what? That doesn’t mean *therefore* all acts of government are good; else you have no right to complain at population policy.

(cont.)

You have not answered my argument that State decision-making, and common ownership, necessarily entail the evaluational incoherence you are complaining about and want the State to remedy.

Fourthly, you and Divergence don’t appear to understand the issue. Put it this way. Suppose you were the sovereign power, empowered to enforce any decision on population or water. Your job is to achieve sustainability. But in doing so you are to have reference not to your mere private opinion, but to the values that all the people now and in the future, are trying to achieve in the just and sustainable use of the environment.

Okay, so how are you going to know that?

By what rational principle are you going to know:
1. what the distribution and abundance of species should be?
2. what should be produced?
3. what proportion of depletable resources should be consumed now versus conserved for the future?
4. what discount of value people apply to events further and further into the future?
5. how people value different people differently, e.g. family versus strangers in the indefinite future?
6. who should get any unequal benefit of policy?

Fifthly, if a sustainable Australian population can only be achieved at the cost of less sustainable resource use elsewhere
a) how would you know?
b) is that okay? Why?

Sixthly, remember, that’s putting aside any questions of unrepresentative government, the special pleading of vested interests, maladministration, or corruption.

Seventhly, in concluding in favour of the State, you have not even distinguished problems which the State is implicated in causing. You’ve got the tragedy of the commons completely back-the-front – it’s a reason to decrease, not increase common ownership! Increasing government control of the environment will only exacerbate the tragedy of the commons – that’s what the tragedy was!

Government is intrinsically incapable of the task of managing sustainability even in your own terms; to assert otherwise involves a false pretence of knowledge and competence; and both of you have not given any reason to think otherwise.