Valuation

My exploration of environmental economics is off to a good start. Today I want to discuss putting a price on things that are priceless.

Yes, I am an economist in my heart. I believe things can be broken down into what efficiencies they provide. This process can easily be misguided. The basis of any model is its assumptions about how things should be, or are. There are things that should be protected beyond the ability to price them into non-existence. I'll use an example that I am taking from someone else.

Say someone asks how much each individual person is willing to pay to protect an aspect of the natural environment, say an endangered species. The price will vary depending on economic status and how much the person simply values the thing in question. Average it out, get a rough total, and then conclude that if more profit can be made than people are willing to protect, that, let's say, endangered species should be sold, and, in theory, the money distributed to the people. It is more efficient to profit from this species than it is to drag our feet protecting. This makes sense. Economic growth is the most important statistic in this world. It lifts people out of poverty and makes nations stronger.

If you ask people how much they would demand for the extinction of an endangered species, the numbers would be astronomically higher, sometimes people would not accept any amount of money. If we want to exploit a resource, we ignore this fact, because people always demand too much. But, they have a right to not lay down for people exploiting public resources.

Most people don't have too terribly much to spare to save the world's endangered resources. But, they value those resources and don't want them sold to a soul-less corporation. Because corporations control the political system, have the money to be involved in the process, they get away with this all the time.

Once something is developed, it can never go back to its natural state. But, if you delay development, then it can become something if it truly is worth it to develop said area. Economists that betray the public trust do not place value on the future. Only the present has value.

Yet, when you/I say something has value and should be protected regardless of the fact that somebody can make a dollar seems to be a case of imposing values on people. There is always the trap of dystopia, premised on good intent. This is not SF. The means aren't there to engineer society. There is only the goal to make people sit back and think about shared resources and humanity.

I need to form an action plan.