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Comment by crag | Hacker News Reader

"Environmental destruction happens because government restricts property rights and creates commons which belong to no one. For example, when the river waters belong to no one, people feel free to dump into it. As soon as the waters have an owner, the owner has an incentive to protect them."

It's the other way around. When property is owned by all, we take care of it better. Think of parks.

There are already companies who own lakes, rivers, areas of land; and pollute the hell out of them. They used these areas as waste dumps. Which, in the end, end up hurting us all.

Go to any pork farm in NC and have a look around. You'll see first hand what ownership of lands by "the" company does to the land.

Living space: how many landlords you know that actually take care of their properties now - without getting their arm twisted?

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Unfortunately we don't have a great track record of taking care of the commons. Communal ownership almost always leads to neglect of the owned thing - parks have paid employees to take care of them, so (sometimes, if there's enough money thrown at it) they stay clean.

Likewise, your criticism of private ownership is too extreme. The vast majority of landlords take excellent care of their properties for example. Others take the right amount of care so that the place isn't great, but can be rented for less. Some landlords let a place decay until it's unsafe, but that's usually when incentives are set up that its in their best interests to do so. Such incentives are the opposite of private property rights and are usually in the form of rent controls, etc, where you can raise rent only when you drive tenants out, or its not profitable to use a property as housing and the only way to change its use is through its destruction.

On the flip side, the example of privately owned waterways is a terrible one, because there's no way to avoid the communal, commons nature of the ecosystem. And companies might have a use for the lake or river (disposal of toxic waste) that is counter to the common interest, as you rightly point out. Then they poison everyone.

So: communal ownership. Suboptimal but we're stuck with it in many situations, so we need to implement it as effectively as we can.

> Communal ownership almost always leads to neglect of the owned thing

I'm not really sure that you can make that kind of blanket statement. How ownership and care is organized, communal or not, has more to do with how properties end up.

> Likewise, your criticism of private ownership is too extreme. The vast majority of landlords take excellent care of their properties for example. Others take the right amount of care so that the place isn't great, but can be rented for less. Some landlords let a place decay until it's unsafe, but that's usually when incentives are set up that its in their best interests to do so. Such incentives are the opposite of private property rights and are usually in the form of rent controls, etc, where you can raise rent only when you drive tenants out, or its not profitable to use a property as housing and the only way to change its use is through its destruction.

This is really contrary to the history of housing property ownership in the US. Pre-housing reglations saw that properties used by the poorest members of society were not well taken care of and were often extremely dangerous due to lack of adequate plumbing, structural integrity, lighting, etc. Even today we have issues getting landlords to obey regulations and provide adequate housing as they are required to by law, although the state of housing will vary by locale. Also, landlords have no incentive to fix property issues until there is a legal threat that affects their ability to operate a property and even then getting action may be difficult, esp. if you are a poorer tenant and do not have the resources to take action against your landlord to suddenly move to a new place.

Yes, the solution would be more along the lines that the owner or one of his direct descendants has to live at the site. Then hurting the environment hurts yourself.

Or make the property(rivers, parks and roads) public and force the government to keep it in shape.

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