Liberty Maven

I found myself trying to find and read anything that I could find online that was against Ron Paul. In doing so I discovered the web site, “Irregular Times“. Among several anti-Ron Paul postings, a post entitled, “Ron Paul is AWOL on the Environment” caught my eye. Not because of the author’s argument, but because of a comment made by Jason Wharton in response to the post.

But let me quote the posting before going into the rebuttal by Wharton.

The environment isn’t discussed at all in Ron Paul’s campaign for President. Ron Paul doesn’t seem to think that there are any problems with the environment. In fact, if you look through Ron Paul’s campaign materials, he seems to be against environmental regulation.

The emphasis on the last three words are not my own. The author emphasized them as if it was a bad thing. See the article for yourself.

Then in the comments a gem of a response illustrating the unintended consequences of this type of government regulation. Wharton writes:

The problem most enviromentalists fail to see is passing regulations empowers the corrupt and stifles the honest and conscientious who respect the environment.

For example, I own a gold mine in Eastern Oregon. I bought it from an old-timer for $700,000. Shortly after I bought it the environmentalists sued the forest service over a trivial mistake. Because of this lawsuit a judge ordered all mining to cease in that forest service district. Now I can do nothing to reap any productivity in 2006 and 2007 and I don’t know for sure when I will be able to in the future. They won’t even allow me to do sampling and exploration.

I have studied the law and I know that if I were to take them to court I could sue for damages and force them to allow me to mine but I cannot afford to. However, those who do have the money or paid legal staff will push forward and instead of winning their suit they will get some kind of special concession to mine while others cannot.

What this does is make it so that the big corporations have no competition from the small-scale miners. The same goes for loggers, ranchers, farmers, etc.

Middle-class America is being obliterated in favor of big corporations who will ultimately end up with the super-rich and the serfdom. Most environmentalists mean well but they are serving to create the web that only the super-strong can penetrate and escape. These super-strong are unconsciously motivated by profit and are in fact the most likely to violate the environment.

Because they are strong enough to penetrate the web they are also strong enough to thoroughly abuse the environment with impunity. While regulations are being passed they are actually giving allowance to certain amounts of pollution and negative impact which become nothing more than political bargaining chips that are sold for gain and used in back-room deals.

Ron Paul’s principles will do more good for the environment than harm because it would eliminate this web that is used to give the corrupt such power and advantage.

I cite this as an example of how regulation taken to its logical conclusion in many cases ends up backfiring. In the great book by Walter Williams entitled “More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well these ideas are explored in depth issue by issue.

It is important to attempt to go beyond the surface solution any law or regulation is trying to accomplish and investigate what really happens when the regulation is put into practice. Who does it really hurt? Who does it really help? Many times, the answer on the surface is very different than the one lurking beneath.