Fishery disaster declared in New England-Industry is devastated by federal regulations

WPRI.com ^ | 9/13/12 | Non-attributed AP

[j_tull]

BOSTON (AP) - Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee is applauding the U.S. Commerce Department's decision to declare a national fishery disaster in New England. The move opens the door for tens of millions of dollars in relief funds for fishermen.

U.S. Sen. John Kerry said he's secured a commitment from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to include $100 million for fishermen and fishing communities in emergency assistance legislation. He said the job after Thursday's declaration is to fight for the money in a potentially reluctant Congress.

[BfloGuy]

I heard Rand Paul talk about the loss of freedom in the States as a result of bureaucratic interventions and laws. I will follow him closely, for this is how our freedoms are being usurped.

Yeah, I think the younger Paul is worth watching.

And Chaffee doesn't care so much about the loss of industry as he does about being able to tell the unemployed fishermen that he got them some "free" money.

[j_tull]

Sadly, I don’t see anything different. Maybe not New Hampshire, but my fellow Massholes, are Dem to the core.

[j_tull]

Yeah, I think the younger Paul is worth watching.

Agreed, but man, is he a terrible orator.

[j_tull]

Pls see post 23, I replied to the wrong one.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Industry is devastated by federal regulations

They say that like it's an accident.

[Gay State Conservative]

Linc Chaffee and his bosom buddy,Osama Obama,have been doing a bang up job for Rhode Island....10.8% unemployment,second only to California's 12% as the highest in the nation.

[1010RD]

Excellent and clearly reasoned post. Central planning never works, yet people always say, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail” not realizing that the “you” is an individual, not a committee or a bureaucracy.

Fishing stocks will come back if the government let some fishermen go out of business. Instead you let them keep their livelihood by taxing mine.

[Strategerist]

Lower catches result in both higher prices and fewer fishing businesses able to sustain themselves. And if they fish most of the fish gone, then most of the businesses will go out of business.

Demand remains the same, and higher prices for the catch motivate fishermen to continue to overfish a declining resource.

Unregulated commercial fisheries have repeatedly destroyed stocks of numerous fish species around the world. It's a "Tragedy of the Commons."

This is NOT a case where a free market takes care of itself.

So explain to me why I've never caught a Sturgeon in Chesapeake or Delaware Bay, despite fishing in both bodies of water all of my life?

[JerseyanExile]

On the other hand, there are quite a few species that have been hunted to extinction or irrelevance in modern times for commercial purposes, by industries that weren’t subsidized. The Passenger Pigeon was wiped out in the late 1800s due to the demand for the meat. Many commercial fish species in the Baltic Sea were overfished to the point where they effectively disappeared. The Baltic Sturgeon’s population imploded around 1900, and commercial scale harvests of that species halted - despite that, the species still hasn’t made a come-back, and the governments around the Baltic didn’t subsidize their fisherman to a large degree for the first half of the century.

Subsidies certainly don’t help, but thinking that, if left completely alone, overharvesting of fishing grounds wouldn’t occur, strikes me as optimistic. It’s the nature of the tragedy of the commons.

[xzins]

Demand remains the same, and higher prices for the catch

You don't charge more AND have demand stay the same. Demand will go down with higher prices.

I don't know enough about sturgeon to even comment on sturgeon and anyplace.

[xzins]

Would you say there are fewer Baltic sturgeon fishing businesses today?