Karen DeCoster reckons that people who care about their carbon footprint are a bunch of Commies: “The latest craze for people who hate free markets and a rising standard of living for everyone is the obsession with the notion of one's ‘carbon footprint’." Karen refuses to feel any guilt about how much carbon she spews into the environment.
There’s nothing anti-free market or anti-prosperity about giving a shit about the environment and your fellow human beings, Karen. It’s an individual subjective preference, and in the example you cited it’s all being done in the free market. Nobody’s trying to make you stop drinking water from Fiji. Sure, they’re making some normative propositions with which you disagree, but you’re doing the same thing in your post by claiming that your preferences are superior to those of the people you are criticizing.
I prefer to support local merchants and farmers and to get as much stuff as I can from nearby. Ideally, I would like to know the person from whom I’m buying. There are a lot of good reasons for this preference. If I want small businesses in my community to flourish, and I do, I need to patronize them. I like to interact with other human beings on a more personal level. I think my food supply will be more secure and safer if it is produced by folks I know and who are more accountable to me than some anonymous producer far away. If I want farms in my community to prosper, and I do, I should support them with my consumer choices. And if I want to live more simply in order to keep from unduly screwing up the environment, one way to do that is to stick with local stuff with a lower cost of transport.
I think I am a better person for making these kinds of choices than someone who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about these things. As a believer in free markets, I don’t reckon that I am obliged to buy the cheapest thing available or to set aside my religious scruples when I consume. Hell, I’m way more powerful as a consumer than I am as a citizen. My choices as a consumer have much more of an impact on the world than my votes or my political activities. And I’m not going to be shy about sharing my views on these matters even if it makes people like Karen uncomfortable.
I recall some economics grad student telling me that my socially responsible investment choices were irrational because the return on investment was slightly lower than what I could get if I invested in evil. How could it be irrational when I was fulfilling my subjective preference to avoid participating in socially irresponsible businesses? It never occurred to the future economist that anyone would take morality into account in economic behavior, even though he was assuming that return on investment was a superior preference, itself a moral judgment.
It is insane, i.e. irrational, to buy water from Fiji if you are trying to fulfill subjective preferences about your impact on the world and other people. If you don’t give a shit, that’s your privilege. You can spew as much carbon as you like, but I don’t have to approve. You can be proud of your profligate ways if you like, but you can’t make me cheer you on. I get to tsk, tsk at you and bask in my moral superiority. You don’t get to question my commitment to free markets and prosperity, though.
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7 comments:
I am inclined to agree. I recently took a blogger to task at the Mises institute who made some contemptuous comments toward folks who are trying to live frugally and buy locally. I don't really get it coming from the Austrians because, as you say, their theory allows for subjective preferences in decision-making, yet some of these folks cannot seem to abide by people who make personal decisions with criteria that go beyond conventional measures of value.
I, for one, care about the maintenance of the soil and the conditions under which livestock are raised. Beyond these "moral" considerations, I believe that paying attention to these aspects of farming has direct benefits for the consumers of such foods. We make a big mistake to think that all food items which are called by the same name are interchangeable, i.e. "commodities".
Sure the division of labor provides great benefits, but as you note there is a downside to being completely removed from the production of most of the things that one consumes. I am not that concerned about this issue when it comes to the car I buy, but I have learned that it pays for me to know something about where my food is coming from.
Finally, can we really be so confident that we are making the "right" decisions based on price alone when there are innumerable subsidies and externalities operating in the alleged free market? Could the market be so distorted that we actually deplete the wealth in this world when we operate on that basis? DeCoster should consider these things before looking down on her fellow humans.
Also, in my spat at the Mises blog, I contended that the blogger's comments would turn off some people who are potentially receptive to Austrian economics. The blogger denied that very many such people would be reading the blog in the 1st place.
Now that we have seen the Ron Paul phenomenon, and know that there are a fair number of Democrats and liberals who are open to his message, we know that some of them are even reading LewRockwell.com. I imagine that folks who are uncomfortable with certain aspects of Paul's platform might really wonder if they are at home amongst libertarians when they see comments like DeCoster's.
Thanks, d. saul. It's good to know that we are not alone in wondering about Austrians' failure to recognize that people's subjective preferences might differ from theirs. Wally Conger has posted a lot of good essays about what he calls "vulgar libertarians".
Austrianism doesn't have to be strict Miseanism, whilst honouring Mises' staggering contribution. Check out Wilhem Roepke for example:
http://thinkingreed.wordpress.com/2007/08/17/mckibbon-roepke-and-john-paul-ii/
The point is the attempt to control behavior by producing guilt. The idea that one should feel guilty over one's "carbon footprint" is a moral issue and it is controversial because not everyone is in agreement that global warming (if it does indeed exist) is caused by human activity as opposed to natural earth cycles. The environmentalists are simply using their morality (religion) to force their kind of behavior, just as they complain about "fundamentalists" forcing their religion on the atheist, agnostic, pagan, etc.(usually state worshippers) segments of society. As a producer of grass-fed beef I think buying locally is a fine idea. Unfortunately, local production is hamstrung by regulations protecting big business from competition by the small producer. PA recently instituted a reg (sponsored by Monsanto, a hormone producer) prohibiting dairies from identifying their milk as hormone free. Meat inspections by the USDA are another example. If you want meat inspected (and we have seen many meat recalls that identify the tainted product by it's inspection number)that is OK with me but you should pay for it and uninspected meat should be an available option. It all boils down to religion, whose is forced on whom.
Regarding above commenter's point"
Joel Salatin's modern classic Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal
http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/2003/Everything-Is-Illegal1esp03.htm
You are full of shit. No one supports going "local" more than I do. However, this is about y'all hating that people have choices. You hate that people want, and buy, water from Figi. The whole "carbon footprint" argument is an anti-human, envirocommunist movement. And you vulgar buttholes have the nerve to mention Salatin (on real conservation) in the same breath as the carbon footprint Nazis who champion the state as "protector" and lord?
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