| By Gavin Chait,
on 05 January 2007
|
 Fewer of these go to sea every year
In the case of water, it falls out of the sky; air is always around; and fish breed without any human intervention.
And, since they are free, no-one is responsible for them. Factories and households happily dump their waste (organic and otherwise) into the nearest river or ocean; cars and factories belch fumes into the sky; and wild fish stocks are almost finished.
Governments have attempted to shore up fish stocks by issuing permits for quotas but these are only as good as their ability to enforce them. European and Asian fishing fleets have a wonderful time over-fishing in the territorial waters of developing countries who lack the navies to protect them. Carbon credits are an attempt to put a price on pollution.
Yet any attempt to place a value on fresh water, clean air or available seafood tends to result in screaming and vociferous exclamations that these things should be free since they turn up on their own.
Love is touted as free; see what happens to you if you attempt to love everyone equally. Even cell-phones are given away on contracts for free. Richard Branson has had an impossible time trying to convince South Africans that this isn’t so - that “free” phones get priced into the contract - but he’s had to give in and offer his own “free” phone.
The same goes for development services which are given away – you guessed it – free. If the services were truly free then none of these organisations would be permanently attempting to raise money.
Call it a rule: the quality of any “free” good will degrade with time if there is a significant demand for it.
In reality the very claim that things should be “free” creates an implacable and insurmountable lie. Rather we should discuss efficiency and cost. When a good is given away via an implicit subsidy then the real cost is hidden from the end-user. When a charity raises funds with the intention of giving something away then, without an external and impartial observer (such as Whythawk), it is impossible to measure the efficiency and cost of the service they provide.
There is an intrinsic cost to everything. If we fail to express that value the danger is that the free good will be used up like sweets at a children's birthday party. Deforestation around Lake Victoria - shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania - makes the area a less efficient rain catchment for the lake, and overfishing and pollution are damaging its $ 400 million-a-year fishing industry. Imagine that anyone using Lake Victoria in any way had to pay for that use, from dumping pollution to cutting down the trees that support it, then we could put a value on the lake. Without value, it becomes a puddle. Say what you like about the evil intentions of private water companies, at least they place a value on their product and so have a vested interest in ensuring its continued availability. The danger is that, slowly and implacably, the things that the poor, dispossessed and uneducated could do to earn a living and support their lives are starting to run out. There are few coastal fish left to catch from small boats, polluted water is degrading subsistence agriculture, and bad air causes illness and entrenches poverty. The technical skills required to work are rising rapidly so that the average factory no longer has place for a completely unskilled person. The barriers to stepping up and out of poverty are starting to rise. Unless new and determined energy is put into re-inventing development the gap between rich and poor may be as severe as that facing the Incas when confronted by Pizarro and the might of the Spanish .
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