In continuing discussion when the cameras went down after last week’s NBC 10 Wingmen, both Bob Plain and Bill Rappleye challenged my trust in the mechanisms of the free market.  As a general rule, I suggested, as a resource becomes more scarce, the price goes up, which will either decrease demand or increase the incentive to find alternatives.

One counter example they offered was the Atlantic salmon.  Under the free-market thesis, as the salmon became harder to find and catch, the fishermen would have to spend more in order to catch the same amount, forcing them to charge higher prices.  That, in turn, would reduce the demand in the market for salmon, which would begin to give the species some space to recover.  Why didn’t this happen?

The first thing to note is that the effective end of wild Atlantic salmon was a story of the 1800s.  Although human society, including the fishing industry, has grown and advanced continually, we aren’t in this case looking at a consequence of motorized boats using sonar to scrape the sea for every last fish, like aquatic truffula trees.

Moreover, a little research shows that it wasn’t just commercial fishing that wiped them out.  The NOAA Fishwatch page for the subspecies blames “a variety of factors, including acid rain, habitat destruction, dams, and historic overfishing.”  A history of Atlantic salmon in New York gives a sense of how a population of fish so plentiful that “farmers living near the smaller creeks easily supplied their families with salmon caught by means of pitchforks” disappeared.  The story is, in large part, one of general development, not of fishing.

A growing nation transformed the land, draining marshes, filling in dams, and rerouting water for canals.  Some of the steps were taken by businesses, some by individuals, and some (yes) by government.  Greg Gerritt, of the Environment Council of Rhode Island, gives a local example:

The Industrial Revolution in North America began in Rhode Island with the construction of Slater Mill, the first mechanized spinning mill in North America, in Pawtucket in 1793.  To power the mill Samuel Slater and John Brown built a dam across the first falls of the Blackstone River.  Fishermen rioted when the dam blocked the fish runs up the river by salmon and shad and destroyed their livelihood.  The federal courts ruled for the mill owners, here and in every contested case of damming rivers for the next 40 years.

It is possible that the more-global availability of salmon as transportation improved kept prices from having the hypothesized effect on the specific subspecies in the northern Atlantic Ocean.  (That is, prices didn’t rise as much as they otherwise would have because salmon could be imported from elsewhere.)  Even so, Gerritt’s history shows that financial incentive put the fishermen on the same side as the fish when it came to their mutual survival.  Indeed, this incentive has led to the practice of cultivating farmed salmon in hatcheries, ensuring that the fish cannot be entirely wiped from the region and keeping alive the hope that they can be revivified.

Ultimately, the interaction of humanity with its environment comes down to the question of what society values, and the progressives repeatedly try to steal bases by giving government credit for social changes. This came up during the second portion of the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s debate, this weekend: Did government end child labor, or did the advancing wealth of our society give us the latitude to value labor-free childhood?

In terms of salmon, to some Americans, salmon are mainly a resource — a food source.  To others, they’re more like a sacred bloodline of the the animal kingdom.  How do we decide the balance?  One suspects that progressives rewrite history to make government the hero so that they can use government to their advantage when it comes to answering this question in the future.  In effect, they want society to be distrustful of itself in the absence of the benign controlling hand of our public-sector betters.  

So the answer to the question of why the free market didn’t save the Atlantic salmon is that the market is only one mechanism within society.  After all, the government didn’t save the salmon, either.

Even a benign totalitarian government won’t change the underlying reality that these “evolved” policies of planetary care-taking can only appeal to a wealthy society.  If the family is destitute, the children will work.  If the community is starving, the endangered species will be eaten with the rest.  When that tide turns, a democratic government will not be a means of preserving the values and priorities of our wealthier ancestors, but a reflection of the society’s more-immediate needs.  

Of course, those who make their livings in the government industry will push back like the fishermen against Slater Mill.  That’s why the progressives — who have benefited more from the West’s prosperity than any other ideological group — want to empower unaccountable bureaucracies and private-sector activist groups.

When humanity is seen as the problem, humanity cannot be allowed to propose its own solutions.