When the Humber Bridge was completed in 1981, it was the longest single span suspension bridge in the world. 41 years later, it has been reduced to a mere 11th place. The current longest single span suspension bridge in the world, the Akashi Kaikyo bridge in Japan, stands a mere 500 metres longer. This is an unfathomable disgrace for the people of Great Britain and is, quite frankly, a national tragedy and embarrassment. To add to this disgrace, another bridge, the ‘Çanakkale 1915 Bridge’ will soon be completed in Turkey. It will kick the Akashi Kaikyo bridge from its number one spot, and move the Humber Bridge to a measly 12th place.
Therefore, for my submission to The Mallard’s project 22, I would like to make a simple but resoundingly important proposal: build a second Humber Bridge (Humber Bridge 2 some would say) and make it precisely one metre longer than the Çanakkale 1915 Bridge, therefore reclaiming Britain’s rightful place in the world as the country with the world’s longest single span suspension bridge.
This proposal is likely to ruffle some feathers internationally, and I imagine our friends in the East would be quick to try and build another, even longer single span suspension bridge somewhere else. The solution to this possible outrage is, of course, simple: Build a third Humber Bridge.
These proposed projects have a myriad of benefits that I am sure are obvious. I will however go over them in an attempt to convert the non-believers. Not only will these projects drastically increase the infrastructure of the East Riding of Yorkshire and Northern L*ncolnshire, they will also bring desperately needed construction work and employment to an otherwise overlooked region. The construction of perhaps five or six Humber Bridges over the next 50 years would create literally thousands of jobs for engineers, technicians, builders, and labourers.
Coming in with an estimated price tag at just over £2 billion each, I am sure you can see that these bridges would be an absolute steal for the price!
I know what you’re thinking ‘He can’t be serious! This is a joke right?’. No, I am being very serious. As the nation which invented the bridge, I think it is perfectly reasonable that Great Britain goes to great lengths to have the longest one in the world, the lack of one is wounding to our pride. If you do not support the construction of perhaps eight or nine more Humber Bridges in our lifetime, not only are you a coward, but I can only assume that you are also working in favour of foreign governments, which makes you a traitor, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here and be lectured by some fifth columnist.
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The Importance of Brexit
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom: it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” – William Pitt (speech to House of Commons, 18 November 1783).
In light of the recent immigration figures, many are starting to question if Brexit was really worth it. The revised figures from ONS show an unprecedented and almost comical increase in the number of arrivals after Brexit, with net migration jumping from less than 300,000 to over 600,000 between our departure from the EU in 2020 and 2023.
So-called “Bregret” (portmanteau of Brexit and Regret) afflicts both Leave and Remain voters. Even Nigel Farage, the embodiment of British euroscepticism, has been quoted as saying: “Brexit has failed.” Of course, the full comment was along the lines of “Brexit has failed under the Conservatives” but this hasn’t dissuaded journalists and Remainers from circulating the quote as a form of anti-Brexit propaganda; particularly useful when all your senile prophecies of Brexit-induced calamity fail to manifest.
Hoping to capitalise on this growing sentiment, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, after making a long-winded joke feinging ignorance of Britain’s existence, said the UK had “goofed it up” by voting for Brexit and said it should reconsider its decision to leave. Von der Leyen added that it was the job of the young to reverse Brexit and that re-unification was “the direction of travel” for the UK.
Why exactly Von der Leyen believes reversing Brexit is top priority for Britain’s youth, I’m not so sure. Indeed, you’d be hard pushed to find something more lame than bustling about a European bureaucracy, tasked with placating the asinine prejudices of some overpromoted schoolmarm. I must say, I was hoping for greater clarity from the so-called grown-ups. One moment they’re saying good riddance, the next they’re asking us to come back. Truly, a terrible, terrible break-up.
In any case, before we wallow in self-pity about our desire to be an independent country – and it must be said: the British right does love to wallow – let us remember several very important facts about our relationship with the European Union.
First, immigration wasn’t “better” prior to Brexit. Circumstances have worsened, but net migration still increased each year of Britain’s membership. During that time, white British people were projected to become a minority in Britain within just a few generations, a trasnformation which people are slowly beginning to realise would be a disaster for a variety of intersecting reasons, from ethnocultural balkanization to a collapse in social cohesion and civic trust. The EU was more than happy to accommodate these arrivals through direct and indirect means, from inviting migrants to enter the continent en masse to funding NGOs to import them in the name of European Values, a concept which (just like British Values) has nothing to do with being European.
Considering that we are navigating a new political relationship with the EU, our departure should’ve sparked greater interest in European politics. Alas, many politicians and commentators have chosen to overlook Europe in favour of America and the Third World. As such, many have forgotten (or just don’t care) about the state of EU governments and their ability – or rather, their inability – to grapple with mass immigration. Take the hint: our continental companions aren’t voting for nationalists in record numbers because they believe immigration is too low.
In the Netherlands, net migration spiked from less than 100,000 to over 200,000 between 2020 and 2022. Likewise, Germany and Spain experienced a sharp increase in arrivals around this period, whilst Sweden, Denmark, and Italy continue to experience mass immigration and its consequences, despite their ongoing efforts to reduce the number of asylum seekers.
Second, Britain’s membership of the EU didn’t just coincide with mass immigration, it deliberately made immigration far harder to control. Since Brexit, the government has used its powers to liberalise border restrictions, thereby dishonouring the spirit of the vote to Leave. This isn’t inconsequential abstraction. Our membership of the EU was officially discontinued via an act of Parliament, the European Union Act 2020. As Montesquieu tells us, for a law to be interpreted correctly, one must give credence to its unwritten aspects; the reasons behind why it exists at all. As such, it is more than legitimate to factor in the motivations behind the Leave vote, it is required.
Minus a few liberal commentators on the SW1 circuit, the vote to leave the EU was motivated by a desire to see immigration reduced, giving rise to inquiries about the condition of our national sovereignty. In the field of electoral politics, this fundamental concern motivated support for a referendum, coinciding with the rise of the BNP in the early noughties, UKIP’s historic success in 2015, and the Brexit Party’s equally historic victory in 2019.
The failure of the Rwanda scheme was an unfortunate setback for immigration restriction, but the Supreme Court didn’t strike down the Rwanda Scheme because of Brexit, the judges struck it down due to our commitments to the ECHR via the Human Rights Act (1998) and our status as signatories of the UN Refugee Convention (1951) and Protocol (1968). Indeed, realising our circumstance for what it is, it’s clear the solution isn’t less Brexit, but more Brexit.
The EU’s cornerstone commitment to the free movement of people within its borders, alongside various liberal and humanitarian dogmas imposed at the supranational level via the European Court of Justice, doesn’t override such commitments, it compounds them. As such, EU countries trying to get a grip on migration have had to square off against the EU, ECHR and the UN simultaneously. Denmark’s own Rwanda scheme hasn’t borne fruit precisely because of its run-ins with EU law.
Rejoining the EU, throwing away our potential to regulate migration because the current government is doing the opposite, wouldn’t be tactical, it would be stupid. It is like a freeman reapplying his shackles to avoid sticking his hands in a hot furnace.
Third, if we re-enter the EU, we won’t have any bargaining power whatsoever. It’s evident that the EU is moving in the direction of more federalisation, not less. At the end of last month, the European Parliament approved a major treaty reform proposal, spearheaded by everyone’s favourite Belgian liberal europhile: Guy Verhofstadt.
The proposal intends to transform the European Commission from an over-glorified think-tank, one comprised of representatives from every member state to a fully empowered executive cabinet, one comprised of individuals selected by the President of the Commission with less-than-reassuring guarantees of equal representation.
The European Council and the European Parliament would be transformed into upper and lower houses respectively. In possession of equal power, the former would be headed by the President of the EU Commission (thereafter, the EU President) whilst the latter would be allowed to propose laws, remove commissioners, and nominate the President. National states would surrender control over policy pertaining to public health, law and order, industry and energy, education, foreign policy, defence, and border control, whilst giving up environmental policy in its entirety, entrenching a division of devolved, shared, and centralised competencies.
However, the most consequential reform in the proposal would see an end to the EU’s principle of unanimity (all states must agree to a proposed reform) to QMV (Qualified Majority Voting) on a variety of areas, in which just over half (ranging from 55% to 65%) of all member states can initiate EU-wide reform. Touted as a means of making the EU more efficient and decisive, it would effectively allow countries to impose reforms one each other, without regard for democratic consent or national interest.
Even if this proposal doesn’t produce something ‘radical’, federalisation remains a significant threat to national sovereignty across Europe. Keep in mind, the Lisbon Treaty took roughly eight years to materialise. Throughout those eight years, many compromises were made, but the end goal was fulfilled: it moved Europe towards unification with a Soviet disregard for democracy. At the time of our departure, the EU was already on the brink of federalising, possessing all the essential characteristics of a federal union minus central powers of tax-and-spend, something which could change in the near future.
Despite our departure, it’s been business as usual, the EU’s transition from a trade confederacy to a political union hasn’t slowed down. If anything, it has sped up, spurred on by current events and heightening pre-existing political tensions within the union.
As it stands, two blocs dominate European politics: a centre-left bloc lenient to federalisation and a centre-right bloc hoping to dilute and/or reverse certain aspects of federalisation. Many of the right-wing populist parties the British press enjoys construing as hardline fascists have little-to-no intention of leaving the EU. They belong to the aforementioned centre-right bloc, hoping to leverage fiscal handouts from the EU by using the principle of unanimity (hence why many are so keen on getting rid of it) whilst pursuing a more conservative approach on specific issues, such as immigration and judicial matters.
As the three main net contributors to the European project (at least, since Britain left), the establishments of France, Germany and the Netherlands have become increasingly hostile to the perceived impertinence of their Eastern neighbours as well as eurosceptics within their own borders, eager to suppress the political influence of both to make their investments feel like a worthwhile endeavour.
President Macron has waxed lyrical about “Strategic Autonomy” – that is, unifying Europe in response to the threat from Russia and ensure Europe can defend its interests in a world dominated by United States and China – whilst Chancellor Scholz has continuously voiced support for a federal Europe, classing it as politically inevitable and a top priority of his centre-left coalition government. As for the Netherlands, despite the triumph of Wilders, whose government is bound to face legal trouble with the EU over its immigration policies, the country has merged the last of its combat troops with Germany, further raising concerns about the possibility of an EU defence union, shifting the allegiance and direction of militaries away from their respective countrymen and towards a supranational authority.
Erstwhile, Meloni’s Brothers of Italy softened its position on EU membership prior to its electoral victory, partially out of practical considerations (e.g. the failure of Salvini’s hard Eurosceptic approach, Italy’s relatively integrated relationship with the EU, and to maintain access to certain economic packages) and partially out of ideological hangovers, such as trying to pursue a diluted form of the European New Right’s “Right to Difference” at the continental level, coinciding with her party’s historical association with the Italian Social Movement.
Orban’s Hungary also falls into this bloc but is a net beneficiary, meaning the desire to leave is far less potent. However, despite its generalistic support for EU integration, Hungary is decried as a subverise contrarian state, protected from having its voting rights revoked due to an informal alliance with Poland, another major net beneficiary. That said, since Donald Tusk’s victory in the recent general election, this alliance has basically broken down, making the Polish state’s position antithetical to what it was only a few years ago – that is, when it was decrying the EU as Germany’s Fourth Reich. There’s been talk about Hungary forming an alliance with Slovakia’s newly elected left-wing populist and eurosceptic government, but this seems more hearsay than fact.
If Britain were to rejoin the EU, it wouldn’t matter if we aligned with the centre-left or the centre-right, as the outcome is very much the same: should we rejoin, we’re destined to be less free than ever before. A unified continent has never been in Britain’s interests. It wasn’t in our interests in the 1800s and it isn’t in our interests now, and there should be absolutely no excuse for empowering an organisation which does not respect our interests, regardless of our membership status.
The Conservative Party is going to lose the next election because of its reactionary liberal tendencies, having betrayed the trust it was bestowed to act as custodian of the Brexit revolution. Consequently, a neo-Blairite Labour Party is going to take up the reins of government, not because of popular support but because disaffection with Britain’s increasingly unresponsive political institutions.
Ever since the referendum, the entire political establishment has been scrambling to find a different route to the end of history, but these are largely short-term fixes. If the UK can be pushed back into the EU, the centrist anti-political demagogues of British civic life will be more than happy to oblige, and it is this reality which the Conservatives must face.
If the Conservative Party wishes to survive the impending electoral winter. It must undergo a metapolitical transformation, the likes of which it hasn’t experienced since Disraeli carried the party across the threshold of the democratic age. It must realise the historical significance of Brexit, as a genuine and outright rejection of a depoliticised consensus, one which has moved democratically sovereign nations in the direction of becoming technocratically managed open societies.
Given this, British politics should be bursting with excitement, overflowing with zeal about how best to navigate these unchartered waters, yet the political mainstream is utterly stagnant. It’s aware of its own imaginative poverty, yet does nothing to remedy it, opting to regurgitate the last ten years in whatever way it can. To spectate British politics is like watching a perpetually vomiting ouroboros, gagging on its own tail and drenching its body in sick, yet persists on its quest of self-consumption.
This peculiarity is compounded by the fact Britain’s next steps are obvious. At home, we must undertake a great, national effort to ensure Britain can stand on its own two feet, building up social and economic capital in whatever way it can and without hesitatation. We must adopt a survivalist mindset, comparable to Singapore in the aftermath of its ejection from Malaysia. Abroad, we must realise that we have a hostile empire on our doorstep, headed by a vanguard of vandals dedicated to plucking the jewels from Charlemagne’s crown, eradicating any trace of its eclectic ruggedness and vitality, and melting it down for gold in the name of inoffensive minimalism and utilitarian ease.
Downstream of their inability to let Brexit go, these vampires will stop at nothing to collectively punish the British people for voting against their influence. They’ve said so themselves and the people of Europe understand this. We should be funnelling money to hardline eurosceptic parties to undermine the EU from within. Instead, the British government is trying to out-regulate the Germans.
At this moment, Britain is more than a nation, it is a political experiment, one which the entire world is watching. Having rejected the embodiment of the end of history, of the end of politics itself, we must consider ourselves the last hope of democratic sovereignty, the final chance for the nation-state to prove its worth in a world of empires. Should we rejoin the EU after only a few years of independence, the entire world shall bear witness to something far worse than the end of British freedom: the end of alternatives in an age of necessity.
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The Impossible as Motivation
“I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”
– Antonio GramsciLike all disaffected individuals who supported the Conservatives in 2019, I too find solace in the work of a certain Italian Marxist philosopher and his insights. The simplicity of that quote often speaks to a dormant impulse in the human condition, the belief that things really can change; that, when everything is said and done, we will win. We must, as President Trump once said: “…treat the word ‘impossible’ as motivation.”
In the history of Great Britain, this nation has faced many challenges and many dark days. Those dark days still lay ahead, for that can be assured. Those obstacles within our national politics seem numerous: civil servants, fifth columnists, various media establishments and even entire political parties which claim to represent the interests of the country. Out of this election, it is plain as day. Labour will win, through sheer dullness and the fact that Sunak has clearly given up and not even attempted to try during this race for his own premiership. The reason why people do not like Sunak is because, at his core, he represents ultimately why people do not like Conservatives or politicians in general. They are mostly losers who want to be liked and be seen as important by others; they want to be winner but have never fought truly for anything in their lives. It is for this reason, they are not worthy of any votes or seats. It is not because they have fought and failed, it is that they have never even tried or put up a fight.
From this, the only cure that needs to be given is that of Zero Votes and Zero Seats. Vote Reform now, Cummings later. This can be summarised as voting Reform now to give the Conservatives zero seats, thus ending them (at least, as much as possible) as a political force within Great Britain. Out of this, we should unite around a different right-wing party, one that genuinely seeks to change the direction of the country and prepared to ask and answer the questions that matter. Why are we having these problems? Why are people struggling to buy a house? Why is this country declining?
Following on from this, it is clear that Farage is here to stay and can become a massive nuisance for the administrative state, the state that is allergic to change and remains prestige-orientated. As such, Farage is not the man who will do these things; he is a media personality, not someone who is interested in the nitty gritty of continuing (starting with Brexit) a decade-long (if not century-long) process of fixing the foundational issues of this country. Farage is an Einstein in an Oppenheimer world, it would seem.
Farage understands the need for generating a new excitement around a political issue, he understands that nothing is impossible, even that the mere usage of the word should be taken as motivation. Indeed, his lifelong struggle to get Britain to leave the EU is one such endeavour which, even at the best of times, felt like an ultimately impossible task until it wasn’t. This is not dissimilar to Trump, a figure who isn’t sensitive to the nuance of details, but fundamentally understands the broad picture, why things needs to change, and how to go about doing it.
As such, one hopes that if Reform becomes akin to UKIP, they can become a political force that asks the big questions that the majority of the population want asked. Additionally, Reform should be able to shift the Overton window on a series of issues, bringing them to the forefront of politics from outside of the mainstream political parties. These should range from immigration, the economy, the housing crisis, and the need to dismantle the administrative state.
This being said, like UKIP and the Brexit Party before, when Reform has kicked through the door, it should again vanish. By the end of the decade, Reform should be as important as UKIP is in 2024. Reform should not be here to stay in the long term. Now that it seems possible that Reform will replace the Conservatives, just as the Labour replaced the Liberals throughout the 1920s, allowing them to fully turn their guns on Labour, exposing them as being no better. Of course, Labour is not up to the task of governing and will almost certainly do damage to Britain. Given that Starmer is a wet lettuce of a man, unlikely to last long in post, they’ll have plenty of material to work with.
From this, Reform can generate space for something to be built for the 21st Century, something with real long term vision and purpose. Insert “assorted weirdos” reference here. Indeed, it is rather fitting that the two individuals that are attempting to offer real alternatives to the current issues facing this country are the same two which brought Brexit home (twice if you count the 2019 general election). Now we could realistically see this occur again. Farage’s media personality pushing the core issues into the forefront of British political life, while Cummings dominates the nitty gritty of how to get from ‘A’ to ‘B’ and securing the real victories. Additionally, both men want the complete destruction of the gate keeping Conservatives and are radically anti-establishment and Westminster, something the vast majority of the electorate share.
Although Cummings has modelled his work on Singapore’s People’s Action Party (I would encourage all to read ‘From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000’), and its stewardship under Lee Kuan Yew, it is another Southeast Asian leader that he should also look at too. Ho Chi Minh (hear me out), and his leadership of North Vietnam, can be summarised as that of revolutionary self-belief and determination. The clinical and principled nature of Singapore, combined with the zealous optimism of Vietnam, would propel the country back into a forward-thinking, functioning 21st Century nation state. It should be hoped that, when Cumming’s Party is ready and the door has been blown open by Farage’s Reform, it too should move into place. A tech-focused, big tent, anti-establishment party that seeks to radically fix the core issues within the country. Radically reduce immigration, tackle the wealth disparity and tax avoidance, and dismantle the permanent administrative state.
In conclusion, Politics is Never Over. Things have returned to being interesting – we could witness another realignment in our national discourse. This should be motivating for people like Farage and Cummings. We can smell blood right now on both Starmer and Sunak, so we must take this chance to end the declinist duopoly once and for all, and scramble to build something in its place thereafter. As Farage stated in a mere four words: “We’re just getting started.”
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Private property and the environment: competing or reconcilable objectives?
When it comes to the question of the environment and what to do about it, there are a number of assumptions—the outcome of which does, for the most part, map nicely—with respect to who will be saying what about it. For example, that a Leftist is more inclined to refer to themselves as an ‘environmentalist’, coupling their ideological convictions of social progressivism with concern for ecological damage, is, for the most part, true. Equally, that a right-winger is less likely to refer to themselves as an ‘environmentalist’, is also, for the most part, true. I suspect that the inclination of the latter is more out of reaction to the prevailing Leftist narratives around environmental protection, rather than a genuine indifference or lack of concern around the matter considered in itself. Certainly, with respect to myself, as I refer to myself as both a Right-libertarian (of the more ‘reactionary’, as it’s often called, conservative inclination) and an ‘environmentalist’, I seek to present the case in favour of private property and environmental protection as being reconcilable, not hostile or competing, objectives. This I aim to do without too much of a foray into the dense political-philosophical and economic-statistical thicket, where one can get lost rather easily and squarely miss the point.
As a matter of first principles, it almost goes without saying that the Right-libertarian stance is one which emphasises the importance of private property, and therefore of property rights by default, in all human affairs. It is a case of ontological significance for the human being to be able to determine the boundaries and limits, the inclusion and the exclusion, the ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ before one is able to situate themselves appropriately in dealing with the community. In other words, a distinction between what is private, and therefore one’s own, and what is not, is antecedent to one’s proper place in wider society. This is not simply a matter of distinguishing between ‘personal’ and ‘private’ either—a case of semantic hairsplitting if ever there was one—but is a statement of profound significance. That which is privately owned implies not only the antecedent distinction foregoing one’s entry into the community, but further implies the differential of being able to realise gain from peaceful, contractual exchange of one’s goods based upon a value matrix of temporal, or time-based, considerations. It asks: will you defer gratification now for a higher reward at some future date? Some prefer immediate consumption, others delayed gratification; it is the latter case which tends towards a realisation of gain, as foregoing consumption now can provide higher gains, or profit, in the future. Whereas in the case of the former, one values immediate consumption more highly, and therefore does not delay gratification appropriately enough to contribute the necessary goods or assets towards more time-consuming, labour-intensive, and developmental pursuits which tend to appreciate in value. This important factor of time-consideration (referred to in Austrian economic theory as ‘time preference’) is a universal a priori such that it will play a role in any given economic situation. The socialist collective will still include those who prefer to delay gratification and co-ordinate for future returns, and it will most likely be those who form the body of bureaucrats which oversee, and yet do not have a proper investment in (qua non-owners), the administration of things.
From here, the question becomes: who is the right person to which the task may be deferred? There is a lengthy index of things which most of us are happy to defer as a responsibility of someone else. For example, while I could butcher a chicken if required, I would rather not, and am happy to defer that responsibility to another who is paid to do so, providing me with what I need to make dinner. Likewise, I will, in my paid work, take on responsibilities over people and things which others do not wish to do, and are happy to leave to me. Our products or services may be exchanged peacefully through the medium of money (even if, as it currently stands, the money used is horrendously unstable, inflated, untied to anything with a real asset value, etc—fiat currency) and there is no further cause for concern. Similarly, both of us will make our own time-based valuations of goods and capital. Both of us will have to consume immediately at least every day to stay alive and gain some enjoyment of idle time, but one or the other of us may display a greater preference for delaying more capital, in the form of savings and investments.
Carrying this same question over to the issue of the environment, when it comes to making firm judgements with suitable incentive structures, who is the right person to whom the task may be deferred? If the stewardship of the environment is between government agencies and private property owners, then in both cases the task has been deferred to someone else. But who is the better, and why? The Right-libertarian, and therefore my own, case is that environmental concerns are better, as a mutual factor of justice and probability (qualification and quantification), left in the hands of private owners. Those who are more stringently tied to ownership titles are, by default, more inclined to sustain a profound concern over the capital values of assets held.
This principle is equally as applicable to land and what’s on it as it is to anything else in a private economy. At its most basic level, one wishes to realise a greater return on future goods when consumption of them in the present is delayed—why are factors such as land, and how it’s employed, be any different? In the case of government ‘owners’ (nonowners, or ‘caretakers’), there is no stringent incentive structure, and therefore no same level of concern for anything except that which may be looted in a shorter term when held relative to the long-term returns desired by the private owner. These government nonowners may have a concern by way of public law—perhaps some vague notion of ‘value for taxpayer money’ or something to that effect—but this concern alone is not enough, particularly because they do not bear the full cost of waste, inefficiency, destruction, and so on. For example: if 100 people utilise a piece of land and even ten of them trash it, who will foot the bill? Although the clean-up operations will, as things currently are and all else equal, be organised by a local council, there is no proper structure in place to deter or disincentivise such trashing from even occurring. The council clean-up team, and the administrator-bureaucrats who sent them, do not personally front the cost of such measures, and instead rely on a predetermined budget. This means that there is nobody who is personally affected or put out by the presence of trashers. However, were the land privately owned, there is a personal tie (the owner’s) to the asset value of the land, and therefore destructive trashing behaviour will be thoroughly accorded with the appropriate measures, such as compensation, restitution, or expulsion. Equally, the owner being subject to the full-cost principle, will have an interest in keeping down insurance premiums and clean-up costs, and will therefore put in place stringent conditions, e.g. payment-for-entry, as well as security teams charged with monitoring the use of the land by the consumers on it at a given time. A very simple yet very effective yardstick to measure the validity of my claims here—and one which would be satisfactory for those empirically inclined—would be to watch and average the behaviour of consumers when occupying ‘public’ property against utilising space which they have paid to enter and is administered properly, such as private gardens or grounds.
Conditions in place, where does environmentalism factor in? Care for and stewardship of the land imply moral/ethical qualia, and therefore a wholly subjective assessment, of what it means to engage with the natural world, itself a changing and at times dubious human construct. In the economic assessment alone, as outlined (albeit briefly) above, there is little intrinsic merit in saying that any one given moral judgement should be imported into the calculations of profit and cost, capital value and loss, asset utilisation and non-utilisation, etc. For example, one private owner of land may realise greater returns on selling up huge swathes of land for environmentally destructive purposes, such as factory- or house-building. (To be sure, these uses are required and, in the instability of the globalised-state economy, probably desirable to some extent.) Yet in this case, what’s to stop him? It is a matter of two further economic injunctions (before we move onto the place of appropriate moral judgement): opportunity cost and insurance premiums. In brief, land is usually a sought-after investment as a way to stabilise one’s portfolio due to its nature of slow-but-sure growth potential; therefore, if one is set to realise greater returns, and a greater opportunity thereof, for maintaining and even increasing the value of the land in the direction of soil quality for agriculture, forestry for timber, pasture land for animals, and so forth, then the sacrifice made in selling up for more environmentally-destructive measures will not seem worthwhile. In a climate where all roads are leaning former—high soil quality for domestic agriculture and high quality timber are increasingly sought after goods, for example—it is only a matter of time before the former outweighs the latter, the opportunity costs favour the preservation, rather than tarmacking of, land. Likewise, one’s insurance premiums are likely to skyrocket if the behaviour and activity conducted on one’s land threaten pollution, despoliation, or threat to quality of life or even, in extreme cases, to life itself. If everything around the piece of land in this imagined scenario is privately owned—including waterways, hedgerows, and so forth—then the constant threat of legal action, coupled with hiking insurance premiums, altogether disincentivise such behaviour. Externalities are more difficult to slip under the proverbial rug if one is surrounded by other owners, with an interest in appreciating returns (all else equal), who are capable of and empowered to take action and injunctions against undesirable behaviours.
Objective considerations aside, what about the moral/ethical injunctions? Admittedly, these being more subjective, it is usually left to a matter of aesthetic taste and criteria for such moral judgements to hold ground. This is much more suited therefore to the realm of opinion, further away from the domain of tangible economic fact. However, it is worth pointing out that many do, annually, seek retreats (either long, short, or permanent), relief, and respite in the aesthetic beauty of the countryside. Lucrative property portfolios, parks, gardens, walkways, vineyards, orchards, woodlands, campsites, activity centres, trusts, etc spring up, suggesting that there are many who are keen to escape the noise, pollution, smog, dust, and psychologically-overbearing atmosphere of the big cities, and instead find some solace amongst birdsong and woodland.
Likewise, there are increasing reports detailing the way in which certain practices are negatively harming the human population, such as bio-chemical engineering, microplastics, and pollution, to borrow a couple of examples. (To refer briefly to an economic consideration: should these reports prove correct, as I suspect they will, then one’s own insurance premiums for engaging in this sort of consumption will go up, and therefore have an average impact of disincentivising the consumption of goods which are, by all accounts, harmful to both oneself, others, and the environment.) I, as a rural dweller myself, am entirely sympathetic to this need, understanding the desire to maintain the balanced, steadier, quieter pace of rural life itself. It is one of those situations more dialectical insofar as if we didn’t have it, and therefore didn’t know any better, then fine—but we do have it, do know better, and therefore should, in my estimation at least, have some concern for its preservation and well-being.
In the absence of any clear governmental responsibility or concern, and in the absence of any trustworthiness for government programmes (and, I argue, rightly so), the purpose of this piece has been to demonstrate that one can indeed hold tight to two convictions which are not mutually exclusive. The first is the conviction that private property rights are essential to human civilisation and peaceful relations, and the second is the conviction that there are reasons, both objective and subjective, for being concerned about the state of the environment. Human stewardship and responsible management have been practised for centuries, and it is worth resurrecting these practices, both economically and morally, before it is too late, without leaning too heavily on tax-funded, unpredictable bureaucrats to do the job.
The latter situation is akin to asking a bank robber to ensure that ten percent of his loot is donated to a charitable cause, and on this condition he will be let off the hook. It is time to reassess the role of private property rights in this equation, without dipping too heavily into the hysteria around total alarmism—although I appreciate that in the span of this article I have only been able to do so cursorily, and therefore have not given a total treatment of the matter.
