That's you. A lot of people aren't going to act the same way. Just as society can't rely on private donations to fund welfare because enough people aren't going to contribute, we can't rely on everyone doing the right thing as far as environmental concerns go.
There's quite a bit to unpack in this post, but since you gave me the consideration, I will try to give you the same.
At the beginning of the 20th century, private charity was the vast majority of charity. Due to regulation, things like charity hospitals have become all but impossible to run. At the beginning of the 20th century, charity hospitals were actually quite common.
I would also encourage you to look up things like "friendly societies" to see how Healthcare was administered privately.
Farmers in France just drove their sheep through a town square protesting against the government's introduction of wild wolves into the region.
A: That sounds pretty funny.
B: Do you understand the perspective of the people living there? Wolves are kind of assholes if you've ever had to encounter one.
Ranchers in the US used to kill wolves on sight, and didn't care whether they were endangered or not.
My great-grandfather knew people who were killed by wolves. They would jump right up onto your horse-drawn wagon, or they would tear your horse to bits, causing you to fall to the ground and become wolf food.
Something to consider, in the last hundred years a new animal has a risen to fill the niche that the wolf used to fill. The coyote is infinitely more adaptable to its environment than a wolf could ever hope to. The coyote is now replacing the wolf as the Apex pack animal of North America.
Fish move/migrate hundreds and thousands of miles.
So do many animals, including the monarch butterfly. Private land ownership and animal Migration has existed side-by-side for thousands of years with little to no issue.
There's absolutely no reason why the same couldn't apply to the ocean.
We can't give up large swaths of the ocean to private ventures.
Why not? This is the only way you will ever see investment in aquaculture that will actually encourage and cultivate fish populations.
Otherwise no one has any incentive to ever invest anything back into the ocean, and they only have an incentive to take from it.
This is the key issue with "The problem of the commons"
This would totally screw over poor countries , and the working/middle class here.
Not necessarily, considering the ocean would have a much higher fish population.
We end up with a sort of feudalism, where a small minority owns all wilderness & bodies of water , forcing everyone to toil for them into perpetuity How would you like it if Bill Gates, Sting, Buffet, Bezos, Zukerberg and other super rich bought up all the wilderness and farm lands and barred you from hunting, fishing, camping, using recreational vehicles, treking etc..on dam near all the open space in your state and the states around you.
That already happened in the great State of Nebraska. Only his name was Ted Turner. During the 90's, Ted Turner became the single largest landowner in all of Nebraska. He turned the land in the Buffalo grazing ground so he could turn it into a tax write-off.
Us Farmers didn't mind, it raised our land value slightly due to Natural supply and demand pressures, rather than a massive and arbitrary readjustment due to bureaucrats wanting more tax dollars (that readjustment happened under Governor Ben Nelson, it's one of the reasons Democrats can't be elected to state wide office in Nebraska anymore).
Now if you think this is unacceptable, imagine sovereign wealth funds and global super rich buying up vast tracts of wilderness in America and preventing the locals from using it. By government owing soo much public lands, we the public get to enjoy access to it.
Owning large tracts of land for its own sake has no real benefits to a corporate endeavor. What would matter to a corporate entity is that lands productive capacity.
If profit can be derived from a lands productive capacity, this means that the owner of that land has found a use for it that serves others in a way that they're willing to pay for.
I don't have an issue with people owing some small patches of coastline, as long as it is an area of unnatural beauty and utility and the amount of privately owned coastline is but a tiny fraction of all accessible coastline.
This seems to fall more along subjective preference. What constitutes "unnatural" beauty is subjective to our opinions.
Just to give two examples to better highlight my stance:
A: Obviously a place like Venice Beach, that's its right on the edge of a large population Center, and has been a famous public beach for several generations now, should stay open to the public.
However
B: I personally have no problem if someone like Barbra Streisand wants to have a stretch of private beach in front of her house.
Look at places like Indonesia, where the rich and corporations are clearing out vast tracts of wilderness, causing environmental catastrophe. The destruction of habitat endangers Orangutan and other species. The slash and burn clear cutting has caused serious smog health related issues in their major cities. The only reason we aren't as screwed up as many of these developing nations is because we already did a lot of what they are doing now, and then enacted legislation to protect the environment. Remove government safeguards, and you invite pollution of our water and lands. Mining companies do not return expended open pit mines to a state amenable to the flourishing of nature out of some civic duty; they were forced to through legislation.
Something to consider:
Local governments are the ones who grant dumping rights into waterways. If no such dumping grants existed, corporations wouldn't risk the hit to their reputation that such dumping would otherwise bring about.
