27th May 2009, 10:57 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by Oxbeast
"Even the very terms of this debate are open to question. Who's the polluter here? The developer? The new building itself? Or the people of the past, whose material trace requires cleaning and processing by specialist environmental risk managers? "
Pollution is what economists refer to as a negative externality; that is a bad thing which is external to the transaction between the buyer and seller, and therefore is not built into the price mechanism.
The 'pollution' is the destruction of the cultural deposits and the loss of information about the past for future generations. This is information which does not necessarily have a price, though it can have a value. The negative externality is brought within the mechanism of demand and supply by means of regulation; the planning system.
"...is particularly vulnerable to extreme market swings, and this is a direct consequence of the capitalist model."
Yes, absolutely. I just can't imagine a model which is not based on a market giving anything like a satisfactory result.
Which depends of course on how you define 'satisfactory result'.
Take the economics of
externality for instance (and thanks for bringing this one to the table!). New developments may have many attractive qualities for the buyers, but have negative effects (or positive effects) for third parties, hence the planning regime and the consideration of archaeology as a material condition. A positive externality may be improvement of the built environment and quality of life; a negative could be a destructive impact on archaeological sediments, or blocking the lovely view the neighbours used to enjoy of the river bank.
This is a good explanation of the circumstances that make an archaeological market possible. But it's also a useful model for understanding the archaeological market itself. There are also externalities in the archaeological market, both positive and neagative. The buyer (developer) is purchasing a service from the vendor (the archaeologist) that enables them to get planning permission. A positive externality of this is that we discover a range of different sites we didn?t know we didn?t know about. A negative externality is that the archaeological deposits are destroyed for ever, albeit in the presence of an expert witness. The problem comes in trying put a monetry value against these externalities ? because ultimatly this cost has to be borne by our clients.
Is a 'satisfactory result' the presrvation by record of the archaeological deposits, or is it this new term ? 'understanding by record' (whatever that's meant to mean? Kenny? Anyone?). With no way to monetise this elusive quality of understanding in a meaninful way, another method is needed to impose solutions and balance the private costs against the public benefit.
What's everyone's beef with a developer tax?
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