As the wildfires raged, apologists for government thought they had a trump card against libertarians and triumphantly concluded this was the latest proof that the government and its firefighters remain that thin line between order and chaos. Unfortunately for them, however, history has now made it abundantly clear that the true driving force behind the increasingly large mega-fires that plague public lands are the product of decades of mismanagement by the forest service. That is, we can thank the government for putting out the fires it is responsible for.

This has been well documented in some research published by the Property and Environment Research Center here and here.

Briefly put, decades of fire suppression and bans on logging by the feds to protect obscure rodent species has doomed the forests to massive wildfires which thrive on forests where underbrush piles up and creates a “fuel ladder” which in turn ignites the trees.

More logging, more small, natural fires, and more decentralized management (including privatization) is the answer, but don’t expect the politics to line up behind any of these sensible solutions any time soon. Most Americans now have utterly unrealistic expectations for forests. Forest fires are going to happen, and short of an army of robots to clean out and manage forests constantly, lighting will ignite forest fires in even the most well managed environments. The idea is to let these fires happen. The politics is against this however since wealthy vacationers with second homes in forested lots think that they should be able to build mansions in the wilderness and not be subject to the basic laws of nature.

Thus, the forest service gets huge funding increases every year to badly manage forests, and when that fails, spend tens of millions on fire suppression.

But don’t worry, it turns out that forest service has spent the last eleven years developing a plan for the forests. They’ll be finished sometime before the end of the next decade.

The tech world has become a patent war with innovation taking a back seat.  Eduardo Porter writes in today’s New York Times business section,

High-tech behemoths in a range of businesses like mobile computing and search and social networking have been suing one another to protect their intellectual property from what they see as the blatant copying and cloning by their rivals. Regardless of the legitimacy of their claims, the aggressive litigation could have a devastating effect on society as a whole, short-circuiting innovation.

Patents are supposed to encourage innovation, writes Porter, but, “The belief that stronger intellectual property protection inevitably leads to more innovation appears to be broadly wrong.”

Porter goes on to write that IP hinders innovation.

One study found that the number of new rose varieties registered by American nurseries fell after the passage of the Plant Patent Act of 1930, which allowed for the patenting of new rose hybrids. Another study concluded that copyrighting new gene sequences sharply reduced scientists’ subsequent experimentation with the decoded genes, even if they were later placed in the public domain. Surveys have found that the risk of patent litigation deters firms from pursuing innovations.

Porter stops way short of calling for an end to Intellectual Property laws.  But he does seem at least a bit skeptical of the purported benefits of IP laws, concluding,

Intellectual property, meanwhile, keeps growing. The United States patent office awarded 248,000 patents last year, 35 percent more than a decade ago. Some will spur innovation. But others are more likely to stop it in its tracks.

I established the journal Libertarian Papers three years ago, in Jan. 2009.¹ Over this time we published 127 articles and kept improving, expanding our editorial board and innovating–from volunteer narrations to print-on-demand and ebook versions.² As I noted recently, Matthew McCaffrey, previously the Managing Editor, has agreed to serve as the journal’s Editor starting with Vol. 4 (2012). I’ll serve as Executive Editor.³

Matt has announced a few changes:

There have been some recent alterations to the Libertarian Papers website which may be of interest to readers and authors. Below are listed some of the most significant changes:

 And the first four articles for 2012 have just been published:

1. “The Role of Work: A Eudaimonistic Perspective”, by Michael F. Reber

2. “The Internal Contradictions of Recognition Theory”, by Nahshon Perez

3. “Norms and the NAP”, by Kris Borer

4. “Recompense for Fear: Is Forced Russian Roulette Just?”, by David B. Robins

1. Welcome to Libertarian Papers! ↩

2. Libertarian Papers at Six Months; Libertarian Papers: Fifteen Minutes that Changed Libertarian Publishing; Libertarian Papers, Vols. 1 and 2, Now Available in Print and Ebook ↩

3. Matt McCaffrey Named Editor of Libertarian Papers. ↩