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differentiation, he highlights problems of political economy through- 

 out his paper when he repeatedly raises a question in connection with 

 current "extensive" government intervention in natural resource use. 

 That question is: "Whether intervention has been, or is, justified in 

 the public interest, or whether it represents merely the pressure of 

 special interests." I suspect he is right in most of the places where he 

 more than gently hints that activities carried on in the name of "con- 

 servation" may be serving a special interest more liberally than the 

 public interest. But how are we to deal with this problem? This type 

 of problem is, as he clearly implies, a problem in political economy — 

 not pure economics. 



Obviously, no one essay can cover all the implications of this ques- 

 tion as they relate to even a few of the situations pointed out by Pro- 

 fessor Mason — to say nothing of providing the answers. By way of 

 supplementing his paper, let me direct attention to the problem area 

 he defines as conservation. He says that "if conservation is defined as 

 the avoidance of waste in natural resource use," a discussion of all 

 four of his categories of problems of political economy is relevant to 

 a discussion of conservation. But he prefers to restrict the meaning 

 of conservation to "the avoidance of wastes associated with a faulty 

 time distribution of the use of resources." 



I see no reason why he should not use his own definition, except 

 perhaps to point out that a Gifford Pinchot, a Theodore Roosevelt, or 

 a Hugh Bennett wouldn't recognize an external economy or disecon- 

 omy if he met one coming down the road in broad daylight. 



If I interpret his paper correctly, he believes that the unfettered 

 price system has not served well the conservation of our soil, water, 

 and forest resources — and that some government intervention is de- 

 sirable. This is true especially in the case of soil, where he says "the 

 long view" is necessary — and that "in this area the appropriate inter- 

 est rate may well be close to zero." I agree. But having arrived at this 

 judgment (and I suspect not by way of economic analysis but by ob- 

 servation and experience), he has just begun to discuss the political 

 economy problems of land use in the interest of conservation. He has 

 said that they lie outside of pure economics. But what kinds of gov- 

 ernment intervention are desirable and workable? 



Consider, for example, the Dust Bowl. Everybody agrees that much 



