Mark Vande Pol

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SUNNI: Yes, I'm seeing indications of that refocusing on state law happening. But wouldn't it have been better for the Court to have refused to hear the case -- keeping it a matter of state law, rather than taking it federal? Their ruling really was a severe blow against the Bill of Rights. And I just read somewhere that the Institute for Justice has filed for a re-hearing of Kelo at the Supreme Court ...

MARK: It was a blow in that the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment property rights advocates anticipated, extending Federal protection of property rights to individuals, wasn't adopted. It effectively cemented the status quo ante, particularly common here in California. Now, I'm not happy at all about the consequences of the ruling, but I'm cautious where desirable ends are pursued by dubious means. We already have too much federal power expressed through the courts and need to make local government more meaningful to voters, else they'll keep asking for control of other people's land, expecting there won't be any adverse consequences when it comes to their houses. While it's true that federal power has addressed injustices visited by some states, it is also true that we don't optimize the blessings of freedom by competition because federal mandates so heavily constrain deviations from established norms by local governments.

SUNNI: Good points, Mark. Time and again in Natural Process, you point out that individual property owners are often the best stewards of the land, especially when compared with the EPA and other government bureaucrats whose diktats are arbitrary and inflexible. And that makes perfect sense: it's the owner's nest, so to speak, so they've a vested interest in keeping the land decent. How, especially in this country, did we shift from personal stewardship to idiotic regulations controlling land management?

MARK: As opposed to "how" -- which is a very long story -- let's stick with "why". Regulations are a very profitable way to manipulate the market for those with the political clout to manipulate the government. The power to regulate is the power to put your competitors out of business. Regulations reflect the interests of the politically dominant and not necessarily the benefit of the asset at risk. Once agencies gain control, usually via the courts, they are then constrained by the means they used to take control: laws supposedly precluding harm to the asset at risk. The precautionary principle then mandates that no harm can be done, when inaction is often the worst thing anyone could do! The bureaucrats are protecting but one element in a complex system of competing risks with continued funding justified by continuing problems! Finally, virtually nobody in a bureaucracy is fired for incompetence. That's why the diktats of the resource agencies are inflexible.

It's no way to run an airline, so expecting it to work efficiently for something as complex as managing natural habitat is plainly silly.

SUNNI: Agreed. At the risk of getting me started on the precautionary principle, your answer highlights some interrelated, tricky subtleties of land management. The definition of "doing no harm" changes, of course, depending upon whose context is being considered. Bureaucrats love to point to their habitat-preserving rules, but ignore the fact that they often destroy property values -- and many people rely on their property as a sort of investment, something to get value from by use or selling it. You've pointed out that doing nothing doesn't equate with doing no harm ... and what's viewed as harm changes, as we understand better the many, complex dynamics at work in the environment. Forest fires used to be considered very bad for forests, until research began to show that they promoted new growth, and in fact do a lot of good. And as you say, these rules address only one element of a complicated system, and often treat it as a static element at that! It's mind-boggling to think of the harm being done now, let alone into the future, as the regulations get amended and expanded, rather than tossed in the dustbin. It's likely to be worse than Internal Revenue Code!

MARK: The Forest Practices Rules here in California are over 1,000 pages long. The state is about to add an overlay of water quality regulations. It's not getting better.

SUNNI: As far as I've seen in your book, the focus is primarily on the land, and plant resources that can be harvested from it -- timber and so forth. What's your view of protecting endangered species, plants and animals? Isn't that rather close to playing God?

MARK: It is rather funny that dogmatic evolutionists are also hell bent on halting natural selection. I'm going to quote Natural Process from a discussion about the Convention on Nature Protection mentioned above:

SUNNI: Powerful point there, but it doesn't appear that many understand that, Mark. And it's gotta be true that people's emotional attachments to some animals, whether they're attractive, like pandas and tigers, or tasty, like salmon, lead them to want to do something to keep those critters around. Is there something inherently wrong with trying to keep some species around? Or is it simply that laws like the Endangered Species Act are the wrong way -- because they aren't private efforts -- to try to accomplish that goal?

MARK: Actually, I think people do understand the central tenets of natural selection. Unfortunately, they have become so accustomed to holding "endangered species" in a separate context that they don't experience any cognitive dissonance as regards natural selection, simply because communications media tend to shape the things distracted people think about (as well as what they don't think about). Still, even when confronted with that paradox, they rightly prefer conservatism in the face of ignorance. People do exert massive influences on natural habitat, extinction is, after all, permanent, and the issues are complex.

As to emotional attachment to various species, even brilliant people can derive any number of internally logical arguments founded in emotional constructs and there's nothing wrong with that. It's an important aspect of being human and a means by which we have historically dealt with unknowns. It produces diversity in the face of uncertainty which is a tried and true strategy. That points out yet another thing wrong with a global orthodoxy. Even so, people desperate to prove how "sensitive" they are via their ability to care for the seemingly insignificant show themselves more than willing to get all worked up over some small variation in tarweed, a species that is so dynamic, rugged, varied, and adapted to disturbance that it is in no danger of extinction unless it is protected from any disturbance.

This is where markets that measure the interactions of species and integrate into the decision matrix the recovery cost discounted by the probability of the need for restoration versus purchasing contracts for use of offsetting habitat come in. That gets people acting logically on logical elements without having to confront the total complexity of the problem. If a species gets scarce, the price offered for restoration or offset then goes up. If no one will bid the contract to protect it because the allocated budget can only support other recovery efforts with a better chance of success, that defuses emotional concerns as well.

SUNNI: It amused me to see that you mention ISO standards in your chapter Getting Off on Good Behavior. I've a friend in a manufacturing industry, and regularly hear of ISO idiocies -- rules that fill notebooks and codify practices, but don't help the company produce better, cheaper products. A lot of people tout it as good for industry, but it's still a quasi-government solution, since it derives from the UN through UNESCO. Won't that kind of "solution" be more common if America was to try to move from government-mandated regulation and oversight to privately-written certification standards and compliance testing?

MARK: I once conceived and implemented an ISO 9001 compliant design control system for a medical device manufacturer because they didn't have one and I had a project that was required to comply. It was a very simple, menu-driven system that kept stupid paperwork to a minimum but assured appropriate disclosure on my part as a project manager. That disclosure also assured inescapable management accountability for a decision (which didn't make me popular with management). So I can say with some authority that much of what your friend experiences is, to some degree, probably self-inflicted on the part of his industry.

ISO scares the hell out of managers, so, they usually hire consultants or internal specialists to help them qualify. The consultants, if they're smart, make the system convoluted because that makes for the gift that keeps on giving. Once those precedents are set, they become the standards the ISO auditors look for. The whole thing produces a paper trail that isn't that productive for anybody but the lawyers who come in to sue when -- not if -- something goes wrong anyway -- which shouldn't be surprising seeing as everybody is forced into obsessing about compliance instead of focusing on the product. Some global corporations love ISO; it makes the rules the same no matter where you locate. It makes purchasing compliant parts and sub-assemblies far less of a headache and makes it possible to do discovery on one that provides a bad product. But there is a dark side to that love affair as well: ISO gives a big advantage to big companies because of economies of scale in the paperwork and legal business. Doesn't that sound familiar?

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