True conservatism isn’t a matter of supporting big business. It’s respecting individual rights and preserving customs and traditions. Within the realm of customs and traditions, Edmund Burke’s “little platoons” are the foundation of civil society, the vast body of citizens interacting outside the immediate family and not within the formal and coercive framework of the political state. These are the large numbers of voluntary associations and groups that citizens evolve over long periods of time to cope with local needs and problems.
The underlying thesis is that individuals, working together in trial and error efforts over time, fashion customs and rules of behavior for specific locales or industries that are far more effective and less intrusive or burdensome that one-size-fits-all edicts from a socialist political state.
The opposing instinct of liberal-progressives is that every problem requires a new government agency to promulgate thousands of rules laying down in intricate specificity what can and cannot be done.
As Mr. Tierney writes:
Dr. Ostrom discussed the damage that had been done by those who had supplanted the local institutions:
International donors and nongovernmental organizations, as well as national governments and charities, have often acted, under the banner of environmental conservation, in a way that has unwittingly destroyed the very social capital — shared relationship, norms, knowledge and understanding — that has been used by resource users to sustain the productivity of natural capital over the ages. The effort to preserve biodiversity should not lead to the destruction of institutional diversity. . . . These institutions are most in jeopardy when central government officials assume that they do not exist (or are not effective) simply because the government has not put them in place...
Here’s a a report for PERC by Donald Leal that summarizes Dr. Ostrom’s research: “Her studies of well-managed, commonly-owned property show that well-defined boundaries, a strong community tradition, and absence of government interference can preserve resources.”
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