My wife and I were talking a bit about looting. The context of looting arose from hurricanes Gustav and Katrina--specifically the forced evacuation this year and the looting that occured during the Katrina storm in 2005. We wondered if looting would be a problem this year.
To me, looting seems to be one method of wealth redistribution. It's against the law, of course. And it makes me kinda mad if someone thinks they should be able to come into my home and take what they please.
But from a few steps back, I started to wonder: what's the difference between the criminal looting individual homes and the machines of our culture looting the world? Logging, fishing, mining, oil drilling, water, land, and so on. All of these (and much more) are storehouses of energy in some form. Just as the things in my home are storehouses of my energy in some form.
At the microscopic level of someone taking my stored energy (i.e., property), I get pretty peeved.
At the macroscopic level of someone taking stored energy from the commons (i.e., salmon), that doesn't seem to bother me in the same way. It just seems different somehow. Doesn't it?
Sunday, August 31, 2008
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