Quote:
Originally Posted by ebacon
Jeffersonian Nightmare - that is the latest phrase that echoes though my head.
As a defender of Jeffersonian economics, what I think of as "the logic of the farm", I must admit that landowners are not always the best caretakers of their land.
How much of your land would you be willing to give to a better caretaker? At first the concept is scary.
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I wonder what 'Jeffersonian Nightmare' you have in mind. I googled the phrase, and come up with Chuck Norris (or whoever wrote what appeared under his name) saying it was "material prosperity without character."
The next thing returned was historian Thomas Flemming saying Jefferson's nightmare was of a 'race war,' as exemplified by the massacre of whites in Haiti. (While this was a very influential nightmare in the South, I don't know that there's much reason to call it 'Jefferson's,' in particular....)
As for your topic, some farmers will be good stewards, some will be bad. The same is true of anyone with the power to decide on such matters. The greater the centralization, the greater the power of good stewards to do good, and bad stewards to cause harm. It's an example of the general dilemma of power.
There is no one easy global solution. There are many situations in which mass decisions in the individual interest cause general havoc. Agriculture provides classic examples. Individual farmers are motivated to maximize their production, but the general effect is surpluses that crash the market price and impoverish all farmers. Individual farmers must use large quantities of fertilizer for economic viability; the general effect is runoff that leads to toxic algae blooms in lakes. Governmental response seems called-for, but altogether satisfactory solutions remain elusive.