EDWARD S. MASON 177 



the problem of external economies and diseconomies. Some sort of an 

 organizational balance has to be struck with due consideration, on the 

 one hand, of the magnitude of the external economies and disecono- 

 mies involved and, on the other, of the administrative — and perhaps 

 political — disadvantages of concentration. It has been suggested that 

 serious unrealized external economies and avoidable external disecon- 

 omies are particularly prevalent in the natural resource area. If this is 

 so, analysis of these characteristics, and of possible types of remedial 

 intervention, constitutes an important sector of the political economy 

 of natural resource use. 



Conservation 



As pointed out earlier in this essay, I propose to limit the meaning 

 of conservation to the elimination or lessening of a particular kind of 

 economic waste : the waste involved in a faulty time distribution of the 

 rate of use of a natural resource. So defined, it is obvious that many 

 issues of traditional interest to conservationists are excluded. But 

 many of these issues — e.g., the wastes in oil production incident to 

 unregulated multiple ownership of a pool — are better discussed under 

 different headings. And other issues — such as the preservation of wild- 

 life sanctuaries or national parks for public use — invoke considera- 

 tions to which economics has not much to contribute. 



If we use the term "conservation" in this admittedly narrow sense, 

 have we defined away all questions of importance in the natural re- 

 source field? Are there situations in which the competitive exploita- 

 tion of natural resources tends to lead to demonstrable wastes in the 

 form of a sacrifice of future public interests to present consumption? 

 If so, are these wastes of sufficient magnitude to establish a prima 

 facie case for public intervention? 



Despite periodic public alarm at the prospective weakening of the 

 nation's natural resource position (particularly at the time of the Con- 

 servation Congress in 1908 and after World Wars I and II), remark- 

 ably little public action has been undertaken for the specific purpose 

 of reorienting in time the rate of resource use. Our federal forest land 

 policy and state regulations of cutting and seeding practices probably 



