--- Anton Sherwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > it has tended to create massive and comparatively sudden surges > of water down the rivers, where in the past the water would > have been delayed for days or even weeks as it meandered across > the river's natural flood plain. > a genuine public goods problem.
It's really an externality problem, and only secondarily a public good case. > I suppose cities downstream > could contract with owners of land in the floodplains upstream, but that > just transfers the free rider problem. Any ideas? The problem was caused by government, typically providing current benefits at the expense of future troubles that later governments and populations will have to deal with. It is a future-generations externality. In a pure free market, it would not have been profitable for a firm to straigten a river. It takes a government to ruin a river. Now that the engineering has been done, it is most likely irreversible, so the Europeans just have to lump it. As for the future, they have not learned the right lesson, as huge dams and other current works will continue to alter the natural flow of Europe's rivers. China has also not learned the lesson, as it is building a horrendously huge dam that may well later dwarf the European troubles, especially as there may be construction flaws. Some of these project are not even affordable by governments, and the World Bank has supplied the funds. Fred Foldvary ===== [EMAIL PROTECTED]
