Regarding Sagoff

Two things:

• Does this cause anyone else to worry about applicability issues? Accepting, for the sake of argument, the notion that social regulation shouldn't be defended on economic terms, by what process should a regulator hope to achieve a legitimately fair outcome? Political process, Sagoff's choice, seems weak, as it demands that a pretty exacting and exhaustive amount of democracy occur. I don't see how legitimately shared values can be understood, let alone realized, without recourse individual consumer choice. People don't consciously care enough to make the choices through voting that they make through incentivized consumer behavior. No?
• The Mineral King example is great, but I came to the opposite conclusion as the author. Within reason, isn't there an acceptable and achievable hybrid between the economic and the social good? When Sagoff spoke of the Forest Service violating "the public trust" and of the class and the American electorate responding in "overwhelming opposition", I could only wonder as to how much information digestion was required to manufacture so many opinions. Were people really eschewing the utility that would be derived from the land through its proposed use, or were they maximizing the utility that comes with feeling like a righteous, anti-corporate defender of Gaia? This isn't judgment - I am completely self-righteous. But isn't Sagoff just trading overt consumer choices for covert ones, and, in the interest of consistency with his program, a useful and reasonably legitimate process of preference measurement for an inexact process, one weighted toward the severity, rather than breadth, of public opinion?