“Dar’st thou measure this our god!”

January 9, 2024 12:55 AM

Through most of modern history the idea that the value of a whale was not discoverable through its market price would have seemed silly, at least to anyone operating in that commercial market. But for three centuries whales have occupied a peculiar point where economics and the environment meet, their fortunes tracing the changing relationship between the two. In the 19th century a drop in the demand for whale-based products worked to the whales’ benefit. In the 20th century, though, the supply of whale-based products became much cheaper and demand returned redoubled. Whales became increasingly endangered until societies newly focused on the environmental costs of affluence imposed a worldwide whaling ban. That made them literally priceless. from Where capitalism and conservation meet [The Economist; ungated]
posted by chavenet (8 comments total)

It is still hard to believe so many things about this, but there's 2 that I still can't get my head around:

1. Commercial whaling peaked in 1964, the same year The Beatles released Hard Day's Night
and
2. The margarine my mum (my dad was from a small town whose main employer was a creamery) ate as a child was mainly made from whale oil

Just amazing.
posted by ambrosen at 5:10 AM on January 9 [1 favorite]

1. natural capitalism (1999!)
2. public goods are priceless :P
posted by kliuless at 5:37 AM on January 9 [2 favorites]

This article really wonders far too much at the practice of monetising external costs and benefits. This method is the basis for a lot of public decisions in Europe at least, a fairly simple way to avoid the fallacy of ignoring the external impact of commercial or government actions. If we build a port here and the approach cuts through a favourite whale spot, what's the probability a silly young whale has an accident due to the increased ship traffic? Multiply that by the amount of traffic and yes, the symbolic unit price of one whale's benefit to the environment (which would ideally be age-dependent, taking into account breeding potential), and off it goes in the cost column to balance the benefits of, say, shortening shipping routes and avoiding overland transport.

They do note the main issue with it, that your assumptions all need to hold water and be up to date, but that's a problem in any forecast. And of course modelling is statistical, which was so fun when the same methodology was used to assign concrete goals to small road projects - if on average your redesigned roundabout should cut fatalities per year from 5 to 3, you only need one car of drunk students on the way home from the club to drive into the side of the building to ruin your goal report.

Sorry. Pet peeve.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 6:15 AM on January 9 [3 favorites]

I haven't read Marx, but I read David Harvey's summary of Marx ("Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason") and Marx has a phrase, he says that in capitalism, the capitalists are benefiting from 1) the value produced by the laborers' work (as well as the unpaid work of e.g. women), AND 2) by selling "the free gifts of nature".

But we're pretty quickly approaching the point where the free gifts of nature ain't free anymore, and the whole point of economics as a discipline is to assign numbers to things that maybe weren't previously measured with numbers. So monetizing external costs and benefits is a pretty natural evolution of government managed capitalism from where I'm standing.
posted by subdee at 7:22 AM on January 9 [3 favorites]

General Douglas MacArthur, who administered the American occupation of Japan, encouraged the defeated and semi-starving country to use its decommissioned navy ships to hunt whales in the Southern Ocean.

Admittedly, the MacArthur biography I read had a stronger focus on his military dealings than his administration of occupied Japan. But wouldn't it be nice to have any knowledge of this after going through the trouble to read up on the man.

Anyway, the take of the Wikipedia article on Whaling in Japan is ' encouraged to continue' instead and 'its decommissioned navy ships' becomes 'two navy tankers repurposed as factory ships', which sounds a bit different in scope (but it's possible it omits other decommissioned ships repurposed for different whaling activities, I guess?).

Sorry for getting stuck on a sideshow like this.
posted by Ashenmote at 8:42 AM on January 9 [1 favorite]

But the biggest 'today I learned' of it all is the Margarine thing. Didn't that taste like...whale?
posted by Ashenmote at 8:48 AM on January 9 [2 favorites]

Tragedy of the Commons (Wikipedia). It is also worth noting that the authors of Natural Capitalism (linked by Kliuless above) regret their title, no doubt because capitalism is a loaded term. It was coined by Marx (though published at least once beforehand, unknown to him) and reflected his then common belief in the metallic gold standard and money as means of production, apart from its potential means of distribution (now common). In contrast, the term "economics" has potential as a word, though currently conceived as the "dismal science" of managed scarcity, which presumes a natural scarcity after "free riders" have grabbed what they could with minimal effort, as opposed to a limited license to extract. If economics emphasized the preservation of abundance as stored wealth, it would put the "eco-" front and center. Anyway, humans need to manage all natural production as owners who are paid a dividend for their natural joint interest, and not merely as downstream recipients who are tempted to seize industrial processes as a method of distribution, which is missing the point. Owning all resources as denizens works to disincentivize a large family labor pool for survival, instead preserving what we control in order to pass on a least-polluted birthright to our children. Innovation would no longer be conceived as postponing our end, but instead as the ability to manage our stake in the future.
posted by Brian B. at 12:18 PM on January 9 [1 favorite]

But the biggest 'today I learned' of it all is the Margarine thing. Didn't that taste like...whale?

Whale's got a pretty strong taste but maybe once it's been processed enough it can be as neutral as any other food oil.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:29 PM on January 9 [1 favorite]