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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 6, 1975)
Page 2 THE BATTALION THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1975 Two plans One not too bad, another not as good By ROD SPEER The city of College Station is deeply involved in two projects de signed to guide and order priorities for needed improvements in the city. One project, long-range in scope, concerns almost all aspects of city growth, deals with large potential funding sources and involves the work of a Dallas-based urban con sulting firm. The other, relatively short range, concerns the needs of low and mod erate income areas, deals with a very limited funding source and re quires citizen participation. In terms of value to the commun ity, the latter project is proving to be far more dynamic. The former project, initiated in January of 1973, is the making of a Comprehensive Development Plan, outlining programs the city needs to do in the next 15 years. The consulting firm hired by the city to do the plan examines and makes re commendations on future land use, city size and character, economic development, parks and recreation, education, city administration, health and safety measures, cultural development and citizen participa tion in city government. Citizen participation was as in tegral part of formulating the goals and objectives of the comprehen sive plan, but the lasting effect of that participation is questionable. The long and short-range goals of the comprehensive plan, presented to the City Council in a summary report Tuesday, are largely rhetori cal and, at best, are overgeneraliza tions. For example, the long-range goals of educational development in the city are to “provide each citizen the opportunity to fully develop his or her individual capabilities and potential. The short-range objec tives include supporting three A&M Consolidated School District projects, encouraging commun ity-wide use of school facilities and encouraging the full use of all educa tional programs offered through the university. For these type of comments, a citizen advisory committee was es tablished and an estimated 500 Col lege Station citizens were con tacted. Citizen participation in another city project, the implementation of the Community Development Block Grant Program, has taken a different form and, in contrast, ap pears to be having an immediate positive effect on the community. This year’s bolck grant, adminis tered through the Department of Housing and Urban Development, amounts to only $71,000, not very much money in terms of city pro jects. (At the going price of $24 a linear foot, a city could pave only a short segment of street with that money.) Use of the funds is limited to low to moderate income areas or to “urgent community development needs. ” Evidence of citizen input in setting spending priorities and ap proval of the final plan is essential. At first glance, the citizen partici pation procedure for spending the meager federal funds seems over involved. However, the low- income neighborhoods affected by the grant are about to realize more than $71,000 worth of city services. The citizen participation process began with the city planner desig nating four neighborhoods in town to benefit under the grant. Since mid-January, a representative of the planner’s office met separately with residents of the four areas to hear their problems. The response was good and, lo and behold, the city staff learned these areas are long overdue in get ting some very basic city services. The neighborhood residents didn’t ask for parks, recreational facilities or the planting of trees—they asked for street paving to get to and from their homes, storm sewers so that rain doesn’t make lakes out of front yards, adequate water pressure to run washing machines and street lights for security. Al Mayo of the planner’s office, who met with the neighborhood re sidents, has told those residents most of their requests should have been taken care of out of regular city maintenance efforts and the city en gineer has promised action along that line. When representatives of the neighborhoods met with the Plan ning and Zoning Commission Mon day they asked that the $71,000 (and Community Development funds for the next couple years) go for street pavings in their areas. As it looks now, the depressed neighborhoods will get their cake and eat it too. The city (pending the certain approval of the council) will give them the paved streets and are committed to solving the drainage, water pressure and other pressing problems in those areas. That’s a far cry better than the rhetoric- oriented citizen involvement in the Comprehensive Development Plan , j PTalE5 QF THE 6l6A(bsTj- 'Hl, FERGUSON, FBI . . . OH, HI, KELLY, CIA . . MEET WILSON, PHONE COMPANY . . . HI . . fW HAT WAS l THAT? , _L _JWHAT was] WHAT? J , r A Bat! a BAT fil BiU) aa A tajckhI l HWEAfT 1 SAW lil it Flew Right 6y| THE WINDOW! Hi AN invasion! CAli I THE AWA FORCE',CLI THE COAST GUAEfl : POORwl IfinauMiI l.idhJL l AND InSIOE ThUTooNBAT;'] HOW DO I STtCRl THIS STOPlC* THlNfJ nAVSt if i ?m\ this Sutton, TOLD IE. R ... HOL.Y CRUDl I WHAT 1 lb VTHAV? © brdcWo fobwJ^H FT Jr ;! Tm% !l ll &UTTO* \ •ji'/TcLL LTE You' 1 ' SAW IT TOO. m eBay! telliaD / ^ pib&i flfftepggfe foram) ’Gator aid i Aw Conservation not economically sound R. B. EKELUND, JR. . Professor of Economics It is doubtful that Adam Smith, philosopher and “father” of economics, ever saw an alligator. (In a zoo perhaps?) But he might have had them in mind in his “Wealth of Nations” (1776) when noting that; (a) government interference in “natural” systems would produce undesirable results, often the opposite of those intended, and; (b) that unregulated private property and self-interest would promote the interests of society. Though Smith really had human social systems in mind, his principles apply, even more dramatically, to regulation of ecological systems. A hilarious example of legislative bumbling may be used to illustrate Adam Smith’s point. The Louisiana alligator “problem” has received a good deal of attention recently, but its plight harks back to the 1950’s when hunting gators for fun and profit all but decimated the popula tion. The State of Louisiana acted on PFANUTS AD ti- (fciAkxdh&Ufitrtt. ‘‘RlSHHALlEOUOOOO'7 IF HOU don't know how TO SPELL IT, FAKE IT! / ^3 V 0 )! pressure from environmentalist groups and its Wildlife and Fisheries Commission by passing a law protecting alligators. In 1972 and 1973, however, the population had so increased that the state Commission legalized brief hunting seasons in those years. Predictably, environmentalists were outraged, and with the passage of the federal Endangered Species Act, the gators came under the umbrella of legislative protection. The Louisiana alligator, for the present, has been saved from man, but who will save man from the al ligator whose swamp population is now conservatively estimated at 300,000, with 25,000 to 30,000 on private fur refuge lands. A full-, grown 400-pound alligator con sumes 40 to 70 pounds of food frogs, fish, corn, calves and deer a week. A chief administrator for the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission argued that 50,000 could be hunted and killed each year without affecting population growth. Federal bureaucrats, how ever, under pressure from groups such as the National Audubon Soci ety have steadfastly refused. The NAS did help the state transfer 5,000 gators to other states recently, but not nearly enough to offset a burgeoning population. One of Smith’s great principles, and a corollary of his principle of natural liberty, is that man can never know enough to tinker suc cessfully with natural systems. Suc cessful gator aid would require the bureaucrats implementing the En dangered Species Act to first have a good idea of what an optimal or de sired population of gators is. Sec ondly, and more importantly, they must possess a fundamental know ledge of the natural ecological sys tem surrounding alligators, includ ing human participation in that sys- Cbe Battalion Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the editor or of the writer of the article and are not necessarily those of. the university administration or the Board of Directors. The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting enterprise operated by students as a university and community newspaper. ■Editorial policy is determined by the editor. The Battalion, a student newspaper at Texas A&M, is published in College Station, Texas, daily except Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and holiday periods, September through May, and once a week during summer school. Mail subscriptions are $5.00 per semester; $9.50 per school year; $10.50 per lull year. All subscriptions subject to 59r sales tax. Advertising rate furnished^ on request. Address: The Battalion, Room £17, Services Building, College Station, Texas 77843. LETTERS POLICY Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words and are subject to being cut to that length or less if longer. The editorial staff reserves the right to edit such letters and does not guaran tee to publish any letter. Each letter must be signed, show the address of the writer and list a telephone number for verifica tion. The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to the use for reproduction of all news dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited in the paper and local news of spontaneous origin published herein. Right of reproduction of all other matter herein are also reserved. Second-Class postage paid at College Station, Texas. Address correspondence to Listen Up, The Battalion, Room 217, Services Building, College Station, Texas 77843. M$n4)bers of the Student Publications Board are: Jim Lindsey, chairman; Dr. Tom Adair, Dr. H. A. Albanese, Dr. H. E. Hierth, W. C. Harrison, Steve Editor Assistant Editor Managing Editor Assistant Managing Editor Sports Editor Photo Editor City Editor News Editors Eberhard, Don Hegi, and John Nash, Jr. Represented nationally by National Educational Advertising Services, Inc., New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. Greg Moses Will Anderson LaTonya Perrin Roxie Hearn Mike Bruton Glen Johnson Rod Speer Barbara West Douglas Winship Reporters . . . T. C. Gallucci, Tony Gallucci, Paul McGrath, Robert Cessna, Gerald Olivier, Rose Mary Traverso, Steve Gray, Judy Baggett, Alan Killingsworth, Sayeeful Islam, Mary Jeanne Quebe, Cathryn Clement, Robin Schriver, Cindy Maciel. MEMBER The Associated Press, Texas Press Association Photographers Douglas Winship, David Kimmel, Gary Baldasari, Jack Holm, Chris Svatek, Steve Krauss, Kevin Fortorny. tern, so that the desired optimum stock could be maintained. On these counts, how have bureaucratic interferences fared? The alligator is simply a lot tougher and durable than was anticipated. In a food crisis, they will eat any thing, including people (rarely) and each other, not to mention all man ner of wildlife. The sexual proclivities of al ligators, moreover, are enough to have made Malthus blush. Out of a large number of eggs laid (often around 100) by a female gator, it is estimated that six offspring survive to adulthood. A little simple arith metic, assuming only a present population of 100,000 females, yields a possible population of bill ions in only ten years! Note that this is a possible result, but it is not probable for yet another principle of classical economics. Smith was clearly on top of the alligator problem in the area of self- interested incentives. Paraphrasing Smith, preaching virtue in the pres ence of such self-interests do no thing, for they are a basic feature of our mortal stuff. Legislative tamper ing with or restricting of self- interest merely redirects it in unde sirable and often unforeseen direc tions. In the gator case, increasing population and the federally- imposed hunting proscription have had several incentive effects. First, the enforcement of laws against poaching will become a large and expensive problem. The incentive to “poach” is heightened by the economic losses which farmers and ranchers are forced to sustain. Sec ond, swamp owners whose land shelters a common property re source — alligators — will drain swamp land for pasturage decreas ing the long-run survival chances for the “endangered” species. There is a good deal of evidence that these private incentives are currently working in the Louisiana swamps. At base, however, the alligator problem is only one. example of a generally mindless legislative ap proach to wildlife conservation in America. Old Adam Smith would know the source of our failure quite well. The foundation of any market or social system, as he pointed out, was its legal system. In fact, one of the principal roles of government was to design a legal system wherein market decisions could produce de sired results. Given a legal system, the market only reacts in a predicta ble manner, and the problems are visible in many areas. If it is costless to entrepreneurs to damage land by strip mining or conscious depletion of fertility, we can expect that situa tion. If a chemical manufacturer faces no legal and monetary conse quences for polluting streams, i.e. if the private costs of this activity are zero, can we ordinarily expect him to voluntarily increase his own costs by proper waste disposal? The mar ket system only works out the solu tion given the constraints put upon it. In wildlife situations, as in the areas of air and water pollution, three types of property rights sys tems can be imagined: no property rights may exist, common property rights may be established by the courts and/or by the legislature or private property rights may be es tablished. In the area of wildlife, Americans have seen the disappear ance of certain species (the carrier pigeon, for example) and the deci mation of others (the buffalo) when no property rights exist. But common property rights over game birds and endangered species, while perhaps better than none at all, have not resulted in optimal conservation. We have seen the pheasant largely disappear from the Midwest and the deer of New York state decimated under a system of common ownership, while game birds, including pheasant, thrive under private management in Eng land and Scotland. Any U.S. hunter would happily pass up the oppor tunity to hunt on public land when given the same opportunity on pri vate land. There are simply no in centives for the individual to con serve wildlife that is held in com mon, and public officials have little incentive to consider the future when faced with public pressure for longer hunting seasons and higher bag limits. The “alligator problem” arose in the presence of a common property rights system, much as wild deer are handled in Texas. The owner of land on which alligators or deer thrive does not own the alligators or deer. They are in effect, common prop erty. If he did own rights in the wildlife the owners would have every incentive to maintain his stock. Part of that incentive would be to enforce laws against poaching on private property (at largely pri vate expense, one might add). Under such a system endangered animals would receive much protec tion and species would have the best chance of survival. Though migratory animals pres ent some special problems, al ligators present a clear example of the advantages of a private-property rights system over a bureaucratically-directed common property system. Indeed, the mar ket system is helping to consume alligators already in the alligator farms, some maintaining a popula tion of 6,000 gators plus, have been established in the interest of profit-maximization. (Legally, it seems, hides can be sold abroad, but not in the U.S.). The problem of wildlife preserva tion, as those of air and water pollu tion, is not due to a failure of laissez faire, but due to a failure of govern ment to promulgate an imaginative legal system. The legislative solu tion to the alligator problem will simply not do; but, unfortunately, we never seem to learn. We are not deterred by the fact that govern ment cannot seem to deliver the mail, that domestic help and the poor — the very group which legis lation is supposed to help — are put out of work by minimum wage laws, the ICC and CAB regulation of transportation has cost the Am can public a bundle. Surely,ifA( Smith were alive today, hew shudder to think what thebure., ratic reaction would be shouldBrj '?' foot, dinosaurs or other t: dangered behemoths be diitn' vered. Coasters and Co. By Rodney Hamms