> "net good?" Perhaps ... an economic argument ... [but] "Productive Use" is a dangerous phrase.
You're not wrong, but even from a purely philosophical perspective it is not at all obvious that solitude is a greater good than the structures that make up human civilisation - I won't make an argument that forests are bad, but I'm perhaps more making the point that "forests are more important than corporations and deserve greater legal protection" is an opinion that stands in defiance of political reality, and is only supportable with some specific and frankly fringe definitions of good. I'm pretty sure that any definition of good that privileges human wellbeing over animals is going to agree that corporations are a greater good than forests and lakes (notwithstanding that we obviously need some forests and lakes, and that I'm not about to start buying property next to a polluted lake).
We have pretty good polling on what people value in practice. There are people who honestly care more about forests, but they are a minority to the people who downright fear solitude and want more community and human built environment. Biodiversity in particular is a lovely idea until it meets humans in practice, where we actively choose to extinguish it wherever we gather in groups. Very much a NIMBY phenomenon.
> As far as I'm concerned, people who do live in cities are disadvantaged by their constant immersion in a world where perverse incentives for corporations...
The better hospitals, places of higher learning, food and entertainment tend to be in cities. It is quite hard to argue that those things are less important than harking back to the cradle of the natural world that was awful and primitive. A society built promoting the natural world over human endevour would be horrific, barbaric and very hard to defend as more moral or 'good' in any meaningful sense.
You're not wrong, but even from a purely philosophical perspective it is not at all obvious that solitude is a greater good than the structures that make up human civilisation - I won't make an argument that forests are bad, but I'm perhaps more making the point that "forests are more important than corporations and deserve greater legal protection" is an opinion that stands in defiance of political reality, and is only supportable with some specific and frankly fringe definitions of good. I'm pretty sure that any definition of good that privileges human wellbeing over animals is going to agree that corporations are a greater good than forests and lakes (notwithstanding that we obviously need some forests and lakes, and that I'm not about to start buying property next to a polluted lake).
We have pretty good polling on what people value in practice. There are people who honestly care more about forests, but they are a minority to the people who downright fear solitude and want more community and human built environment. Biodiversity in particular is a lovely idea until it meets humans in practice, where we actively choose to extinguish it wherever we gather in groups. Very much a NIMBY phenomenon.
> As far as I'm concerned, people who do live in cities are disadvantaged by their constant immersion in a world where perverse incentives for corporations...
The better hospitals, places of higher learning, food and entertainment tend to be in cities. It is quite hard to argue that those things are less important than harking back to the cradle of the natural world that was awful and primitive. A society built promoting the natural world over human endevour would be horrific, barbaric and very hard to defend as more moral or 'good' in any meaningful sense.