An Economic Analysis Of The Law Of The Sea Treaty
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Foreign Affairs | Law Of The Sea Treaty — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I must confess that I feel much better about my position concerning the Law of the Sea Treaty when I see that Tyler Cowen is, at best, very, very ambivalent about the whole thing. And I really wish that Professor Cowen was invited to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before the Committee voted the Treaty to the full Senate favorably. The Senators would have done well to hear this:
Economic mining of the deep ocean is decades away. But the ISA has veto rights over developing ocean resources and this hardly seems conducive to increasing the value of those resources. Nor does the "some regulatory framework is better than none, if only to alleviate uncertainty" argument apply. No entrepreneurs are sitting around waiting for the U.S. to ratify the convention so they can proceed with their deep sea mining platforms. there is a potential commons problem but right now it is best to simply wait; no current "solution" will end up sticking or much reflect the actual problems that will arise.
When deep sea mining emerges as economically relevant, the Convention will have created a now-tiny but eventually clueless, bureaucratically crippled, and possibly even corrupt multilateral institution with veto rights over economic development. Once the landscape of the issue becomes clear, we'll have to rewrite plans and agreements anyway. Why support this extra level of veto rights, namely the ISA? ISA has dispute resolution powers and of course it is geared to levy taxes and redistribute the proceeds as it sees fit.
I don't hold the extreme view that the UN always fails. It is possibly good when there is a general consensus for action (UNESCO World Heritage sites), or when a well-targeted military action has a defined purpose. The UN is very bad at developing and enforcing open-ended commitments, and very bad at constructing well-run institutions.
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An Economic Analysis Of The Law Of The Sea Treaty 3 Comments (0 topical, 3 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Last night I had a semi-heated exchange, all in good fun of course, with Neil Stevens in which we debated the wisdom of excusing so many "ordinary people" in our country when they want to sit back, not care about what's going on in Government, drink a six-pack and watch TV.
Well, the LoST Treaty and the fact that it is reaching the floor of the Senate for consideration is conclusive evidence that they shouldn't be so easily forgiven, because it's the kind of thing that happens in Washington when people at home think these debates are meaningless or too opaque to be understood by the Average American. While average Americans are watching reruns of Gilligan's Island the U.S. Senate is seriously considering this treaty. They'll wake up ten years from now and find out about it, I suppose.
The World Heritage sites (Agenda 21) are merely another form of international control over assets in the developed countries, i.e., loss of sovereignty. If the UN can't control Darfur, do you expect them to pay any attention to nature preserves in the third world?
The UN is very bad at developing and enforcing open-ended commitments, and very bad at constructing well-run institutions.
And this, of course, is why the United States Senate is seriously considering handing over so much power and influence over the future to these retards. The mind reels.