The lauderdale paradox - Essay Example

THE LAUDERDALE PARADOX The problem of ‘nature’ as is advanced through the article in ‘Lauderdale paradox’ revolves around capital (riches and wealth) where according to the Marxist position, the interchange between humans and the nature brings about materialistic as well as metabolic approaches. The main line of discussion in then paradox is around the private riches and the public wealth. Maintland James developed the paradox where he stated that there is interrelation between the cause and increase of public wealth with an inverse relation between ‘private wealth’ as well as ‘public wealth’.

James had the opinion that the private riches and public wealth correlate inversely with the definition of public wealth as being what humans enjoy while the private riches being what humans enjoy but which is scarce (Enstitüsü 2013). The article postulates that the interaction of humans with the natural environment produces a degrading effect which causes the environmental resources to be less. This in effect causes private markets to develop for the scarce environmental resource and as such, for human beings to enjoy the benefits of such environmental resources as they used to before, a cost must be incurred.

The humans are left with only one option of purchasing the benefits from such private controllers of these markets and hence the paradox. The article is based on a city within South America ‘Lauderdale’ where such public resources like water would easily be converted into privately controlled resources and thus the discussion. Accordingly, the article exposes the discourse between how the environmental resources which could be used for the common good of all get transformed to benefit a few ‘capitalists’ at the expense of the general public who are the majority.

In the capitalistic systems, individuals strive to amass own wealth with little attention to safeguarding the welfare of the general environment. A good illustration is on extraction and use of fossil fuels whose effects is much more and detrimental into the environment. The products emitted into the atmosphere by combustion of oil and natural gases contaminate the air and would result into environmental degradation while few individuals benefit. However, the main question that arises is on whether then there is ethical justifications of allowing predominance of capitalistic systems of maintain the socialist regimes which would support the maintenance and exploitation of natural resource by general public.

Communal or free products would be sited to have little motivation to proper maintenance of the environment. On the other hand, while the investor in the capital market would be interested in creation of private wealth, there would have the basis of having them manage and maintain the natural environment and resource. It would therefore be pointed out that the article has main focus on wealth as pertains to individuals or the general public as pertains to the ideologies of capitalism and socialism.

As James reasoned, the increased scarcity of resources led to value and as such the importance of such scarcity in creation of value and wealth in general. In conclusion therefore, from the paradox arguments, wealth is more important than riches are and hence the need to have everything transformed into wealth. ReferencesEnstitüsü F. (2013). ‘Lauderdale paradox’ IFE Retrieved from http://www.istanbulfikirenstitusu.com/wp/?p=493