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Guybrush · 05-12-2011, 03:08 AM

I think it's rather naive to believe that supply and demand is all you need to best manage resources or education in society. I'll expand on the fishing example as I still believe it demonstrates how more management is needed and can demonstrate how a democracy benefits from better educated voters.

There are more problems with fishing. One is that our methods for fishing are highly effective and so uncontrolled fishing will generally be "easy" up until the point when the populations are severly reduced and may crash. When the fish has become hard to find, then the fish population may already take decades to recouperate and it may also cause a problem for other species and potential resources that ecologically interact with the fish you've taken out. You could have some kind of domino effect where taxation of one resource reduces the availability of another.

Furthermore, fishing is done with nets which are selective for size; larger fish are taken out while smaller may escape. This is intentional and a way to avoid bycatches, but it also introduces a selection pressure for fish in the taxed population to reach adulthood at a smaller size. If the major risk of death in the environment is being fished and only fish of a certain size are, then the adaptive benefit of being small should be appearant and so that's what happens, fish populations evolve to become smaller. The more you tax a population with nets, the stronger that selection pressure is and the faster you'll see the response which is smaller sized adult fish. To avoid fish populations from becoming smaller, you have to manage fishing in a way which somehow reduces this pressure. For a fish population to evolve back to the general adult size fish had before taxation may take a lot of time.

I'll mention some problems with management by supply and demand the way you suggest. First is that the supply becomes rare when the population crashes and the bulk of damage is already done. A modern day example could be the fishing crisis in Newfoundland where fishing was managed by supply and demand (there are still cod there though, just very small ones). The second is that even if fishermen tried to manage the fish better f.ex by taking out less, without a government which forces them to do so, you get an environment which would in short-term reward the fishermen who would not cooperate with the others. If you have 50 fishermen and 49 of them reduce their fishing in order to secure their jobs in the long term, that simply means more fish for the last guy who does not reduce fishing because he only cares about short-term benefits. Maybe he only plans to fish for a few more years before changing careers so for him, taxation of the population does not pose the same long-term risks. The kind of management suggested by you enables this guy to make money by screwing over the fishermen. Government control is needed to manage fish populations for maximum societal gain over time and in order to make society an environment where such "exploiters" like mentioned above don't thrive (I'd call him an exploiter because he exploits the efforts by the other fishermen to protect the resource by fishing less, but you're free to call him something else).

You write that I don't believe people can act rationally. I don't remember writing that. The reason I want to educate people is because in a democratic society, the people are the ones who ultimately govern and I believe a better common education makes them better suited for that task. Take the evolutionary size reduction of fish as an example - people can't govern fishing with that in mind unless they know about it and understand it when they hear about it. If they've never learned about evolution, they may not understand the problem and so a common education which makes the people understand the principles of evolution may help bettter management of fish resources.

Ultimately, however you feel, I am proposing a democracy which would perpetuate politics because they work and people generally feel happy. I'm not proposing keeping a political system by moral brainwashing or anything like that. If it didn't work and people didn't feel happy and felt there were better alternatives, then they would be free to try and change society in a different political direction.

05-12-2011, 03:08 AM	#190 (permalink)
Guybrush Juicious Maximus III Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Scabb Island Posts: 6,525	I think it's rather naive to believe that supply and demand is all you need to best manage resources or education in society. I'll expand on the fishing example as I still believe it demonstrates how more management is needed and can demonstrate how a democracy benefits from better educated voters. There are more problems with fishing. One is that our methods for fishing are highly effective and so uncontrolled fishing will generally be "easy" up until the point when the populations are severly reduced and may crash. When the fish has become hard to find, then the fish population may already take decades to recouperate and it may also cause a problem for other species and potential resources that ecologically interact with the fish you've taken out. You could have some kind of domino effect where taxation of one resource reduces the availability of another. Furthermore, fishing is done with nets which are selective for size; larger fish are taken out while smaller may escape. This is intentional and a way to avoid bycatches, but it also introduces a selection pressure for fish in the taxed population to reach adulthood at a smaller size. If the major risk of death in the environment is being fished and only fish of a certain size are, then the adaptive benefit of being small should be appearant and so that's what happens, fish populations evolve to become smaller. The more you tax a population with nets, the stronger that selection pressure is and the faster you'll see the response which is smaller sized adult fish. To avoid fish populations from becoming smaller, you have to manage fishing in a way which somehow reduces this pressure. For a fish population to evolve back to the general adult size fish had before taxation may take a lot of time. I'll mention some problems with management by supply and demand the way you suggest. First is that the supply becomes rare when the population crashes and the bulk of damage is already done. A modern day example could be the fishing crisis in Newfoundland where fishing was managed by supply and demand (there are still cod there though, just very small ones). The second is that even if fishermen tried to manage the fish better f.ex by taking out less, without a government which forces them to do so, you get an environment which would in short-term reward the fishermen who would not cooperate with the others. If you have 50 fishermen and 49 of them reduce their fishing in order to secure their jobs in the long term, that simply means more fish for the last guy who does not reduce fishing because he only cares about short-term benefits. Maybe he only plans to fish for a few more years before changing careers so for him, taxation of the population does not pose the same long-term risks. The kind of management suggested by you enables this guy to make money by screwing over the fishermen. Government control is needed to manage fish populations for maximum societal gain over time and in order to make society an environment where such "exploiters" like mentioned above don't thrive (I'd call him an exploiter because he exploits the efforts by the other fishermen to protect the resource by fishing less, but you're free to call him something else). You write that I don't believe people can act rationally. I don't remember writing that. The reason I want to educate people is because in a democratic society, the people are the ones who ultimately govern and I believe a better common education makes them better suited for that task. Take the evolutionary size reduction of fish as an example - people can't govern fishing with that in mind unless they know about it and understand it when they hear about it. If they've never learned about evolution, they may not understand the problem and so a common education which makes the people understand the principles of evolution may help bettter management of fish resources. Ultimately, however you feel, I am proposing a democracy which would perpetuate politics because they work and people generally feel happy. I'm not proposing keeping a political system by moral brainwashing or anything like that. If it didn't work and people didn't feel happy and felt there were better alternatives, then they would be free to try and change society in a different political direction. __________________ Something Completely Different Last edited by Guybrush; 05-12-2011 at 03:18 AM.