Systemic flaws are not reported

What the news media are not telling us: There is a defect in our economic system that threatens the stability and sustainability of civilization.

Self-interest dictates that we look for the low price. Enlightened self-interest suggests that prices should tell us the truth about real costs so that we can make well-informed decisions. But prices do not tell us the truth. We have an economy that hides resource depletion costs and other environmental costs from consumers. There is no general fee or tax assessed in proportion to adverse impact caused or natural resources taken by producers, so these costs are not reflected in prices. 

Because costs are hidden, there is a distortion that leads all cost-benefit analyses and buying decisions to skew toward more environmentally harmful acts. Consumers do things that tend to deplete resources and pollute air and water more than what they would do if the cost of the degraded environmental quality were factored into the prices of the things they buy. 

"Economic externalities" (hidden costs) cause us to do the wrong thing. When markets function with a lack of regard for environmental impacts and quality of life (because natural resource user-fees and pollution fees are not part of the economic calculus) citizens may loose interest in maintaining free markets as an efficient and fair way to allocate resources.

This defect in our economic system harms the interests of all of Earth's inhabitants. It causes long-term damage that will harm the interests of future inhabitants, including our own descendants, by depleting resources that they might rely on and polluting air and water that they will need. They cannot speak up in protest. Should we? Where are the reporters and commentators who will report on and speak out against an economic system that gives us incentive to do the wrong thing?  

If we believe that natural resource wealth is owned by all equally, then the industries that take or degrade this wealth in pursuit of profit ought to be made to pay a fee when they use or mess up that which belongs to all. Any money paid by users of these resources should go to all the people; to each an equal amount. A proper accounting for this wealth would end abject poverty in the world. We would not only improve the efficiency of markets and of our whole economic system in terms of natural resources used, we would also improve the fairness of markets by making access to them (in the form of economic power) universal across the human population. When natural resource wealth is shared equally, disparity of wealth becomes a much smaller problem.

It is immoral--particularly so for journalists--to acquiesce in a system that gives people incentive to do the wrong thing. It is immoral, also, to acquiesce in a system that gives (at most) mere lip service to respect for public property rights, while making no effort to manifest that concept in reality. If a more efficient and fair accounting of natural resource wealth (necessary as a foundation of a sustainable civilization) would bring an end to extreme poverty, it seems to me something worth talking about.

There is deafening silence in discussion of and reporting on systemic flaws--in economic and political realms.

I hope a reporter or editor somewhere can explain why this analysis is flawed; or start reporting on natural resource wealth accounting.


Open Letter to Secretary of State Clinton

Natural Law Requires Respect of Public Property Rights, Too