White House Vegetable Garden and Preserving Biodiversity

Kids Taste a Sweeter Veggie, White House Style

A basic principle of property rights requires that those who degrade the value of property should compensate the owner(s) for the damage done or value lost. If we believe that we all own the air and water, then it makes sense that we should require corporations that pollute the air and water to pay a fee to the people at large in consideration of the fact that their actions degrade the quality of resources that belong to all of us. We should respect public property rights, too.

If we believe that destruction of meadows and forests for conversion to monoculture adversely impacts environmental quality, we might choose to attach a fee on monoculture to offset the economic incentive that drives destruction of biodiversity, to ensure that this kind of environmental impact is not carried to an extent that most people say is excessive.

Furthermore, if a large portion of people surveyed felt that monoculture dedicated to production of sugar cane or tobacco or opium, for example, included these adverse environmental impacts AND that such monoculture supported excessive consumption of sugar or cigarettes or heroin, to the detriment of the human community at large, we might attach a higher fee to this kind of monoculture.

In our not-so-distant evolutionary past, certain foods were quite rare, but necessary and highly beneficial to those who could find them. Our taste buds and physiology are adapted to ensure that we are highly motivated to seek out these (previously) scarce, high-energy foods. Now, with the development of agriculture, modern economic systems, et al, scarcity of these high-energy foods is no longer a factor, but our psycho- and physiological affinity and appetite for them is still strong.

We could design our political and economic system such that we could cause the price of these foods to increase, (through use of a fee system), so that their general abundance will not be driven to inappropriately high levels by our strong appetite (and economic demand) for them. This fee system--which also makes sense as an efficient and fair way to control pollution, manage natural resources and, (through equal distribution of fee proceeds to all), end abject poverty--could give us an efficient and straightforward way to manage the relative abundance of various kinds of foods in the food supply. It could ensure that the mix of foods produced by our agricultural system more closely matches what most nutritionists and most people would agree is a more healthy balance.

This proposal assumes that the decision about how we ought to balance the amount of the Earth's surface dedicated to monoculture versus the amount for meadows and forests belongs to all of us. It implies that ownership of the decision about how we ought to balance production levels of various kinds of food belongs to all of us. These questions ought not be placed entirely into the hands of the minority who are owners of arible land.

Natural Law Requires Respect of Public Property Rights, Too