REXCURRY.NET DEBUNKS CAPTAIN MEL BERMAN & HIS WFLA RADIO SHOW

    It is amazing how fishing enthusiasts are usually capitalists, except when the line is in the water.  They wheel and deal to buy and sell rods, reels, boats, trailers, and trucks, and they'd laugh at the argument that all those goods and the resources used to manufacture them were "publicly owned resources" that needed to be rationed.  Yet, once the fishermen reach the water's edge, suddenly they tout "public resource regulations" to save fisheries and they toss overboard all free market economics and private property rights.
    Here is artwork on this topic:  http://rexcurry.net/ecoart.html  and  http://rexcurry.net/ecotags.html  and http://rexcurry.net/ecoturtles.html  
    Imagine if fishing fans applied public resource regulations to all food, clothing, shelter and fishing gear -the result would be the same shortages that plague fisheries.   Chicken, cattle, cotton, concrete - everything would be "overharvested," underproduced and in constant threat of shortage if fishing fans were able to apply their system, subvert private property rights, and regulate all goods with harvest controls.  Why is it so hard to see the similarity between the domestic approach to fisheries and soviet-style regulation?       
    The bureaucratic, regulatory approach to "protecting" fisheries does not work. Government does not prevent overharvesting of fish, it causes overharvesting. Overharvesting results from soggy socialism's "tragedy of the commons" - the race to overuse any resource that is not protected by private property rights.  Under socialism, success is measured by how quickly fishing crews can find and raid dwindling fish populations, not by one's success at increasing fish size or reproduction. Controlled breeding, scientifically assisted reproduction, domestication techniques, machinery improvements and better farming methods result in higher productions of all meats, but not wild fish.  "Public" (state) ownership of large bodies of water has long defeated fish aquaculture and other undersea farming along with its abundant ecology.  Socialism has been as environmentally disastrous underwater as it has been on land.
    Government's historical response to the overharvesting it causes to fish has been bureaucratic regulation: limit the harvest size, limit boat size, limit fishing seasons, restrict netting, and other attempts at soviet-style rationing.  All of these simplistic rules are then circumvented by smarter entrepreneurs through more sophisticated fishing, different and better equipment and techniques, and the inability of government to enforce the endless rules.  Regulations that reduce domestic fishing are circumvented by the growth of foreign fish markets and imports.
    Regulatory failure is forcing bureaucrats to adopt capitalism by establishing property rights with "Individual Transferable Quotas" (ITQ's).  Through ITQ's each fisherman owns a property right in a fixed proportion of the total allowable catch each year.  Government has been slow to adopt the ITQ system of free enterprise and deregulation.  It's time for bureaucrats to fish or cut bait.
     As usual, socialism's ruinous effect has been a catalyst for capitalist solutions: farmed fish.  Due to collectivism, wild fish are overharvested, while farmed fish are better, commonplace, cheap and come in more consistent sizes and qualities than Mother Nature can produce.  Thanks to capitalism, farmed fish are saving wild fish from the socialism that caused, and still causes, overharvesting.  Yet fishing fans purchase farmed fish, beef, poultry and produce and never see any hypocrisy between their daily economic decisions and their attitude toward wild fish. Fishermen swallow underwater socialism hook, line and sinker.
    The confined stream of capitalism forms new channels. Entrepreneurs create their own water rights by turning terra firma into fish farms, and by  "fencing" sections of open water with enclosed netting underneath barges. Fish farms let individuals establish property rights in the same way cattle ranchers did with barbed wire fencing.
    Capitalism's high technology is also providing satellite methods for pinpointing locations anywhere on earth, including defining and locating property boundaries on the high seas. Yet fishing fans ignore the idea of private property rights in water.  If the first cattle farmers had consulted modern fishermen, they would have been advised that private property in land would not work and that fencing land was a wacky idea.  Fishing is trapped in modern feudalism.
    Objections to property rights in water are equally silly if applied to property in land.  Imagine if property in land was opposed with the argument that, "No one will be able to go anywhere because landowners won't let others go across their land." Or, "If landowners erect barriers surrounding their land, or corral animals, society will not function."  And what if the explanation that paths would be established or even that helicopters and planes would take people across large expanses of land, was met with the blank look that follows when the same explanation is offered for how to travel around private property in water?
    Water provides more avenues than land for going around private property.  In water, travel is made on the surface, above the surface and below the surface. On land, travel below the surface is only possible through permanent tunnels.           
    The typical fishing commentary in television, radio or print is a constant whine, "if only there were more regulations,"  "if only there were more law enforcement officers."  It is such a gestapo drone it is a comedy, made funnier by the complete blindness to the only meaningful alternative: private property rights and free market economics.  Fishing fans know a lot about the act of catching a fish, but they don't know much about fishing.  There is no reason why private property rights should end at the water's edge.