Sunday, November 03, 2013
Mining in Maine
In his, Logic of Collective Action, Olson argues that an agent will pursue collective action until the marginal benefit of their share of the collective benefit is greater than their personal cost incurred in obtaining the benefit. When the group size is incredibly small, the cost of coordinating efforts is low and the greater the expected payoff, the greater the incentive becomes to contribute towards the acquisition. A fantastic example of this is the newest piece of mining regulation set to pass the Maine State Legislature. As this article outlines, one single private actor, J.D. Irving Ltd., has essentially dictated the State's environmental policy in this area. At issue in this case is the loosening of regulations concerning metallic mining practices that environmentalist claim protect the community from pollution and contamination. Irving is the owner of Bald Mountain, and after presumably discovering it's money making potential, Irving has, "begun considering the possibility of mining on the land and pushed to write new regulations more favorable to the industry." Legislators have been extremely responsive to Irving's 'request', justified as an attempt to create '700 jobs', and the regulation weakening bill is set to pass the house in January. The incredible responsiveness of Maine's Department of Environmental Protection to Irving's request demonstrates the power of Olson's theory, that an extremely small group with an incredible amount to gain will be highly efficient in it's lobbying efforts.
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Great post Wendy! The inability of larger environmental activist groups such as the Natural Resources Council of Maine to lobby successfully against just J.D. Irving Ltd. is also worthy of note. Though the latent pool of resources available for investment in lobbying is likely to be larger amongst the group of individuals who are environmentally minded and anti-mining, the benefits derived from a clean environment in Aroostook County are disperse. The benefits of successful anti-mining lobbying would constitute a public good for the members of the environmentally minded group, and thus members of this group would have a tendency to free ride, a problem exacerbated by the group’s size. According to Olson’s theory, the great irony of the Maine situation is that the more people there are who care about the environment and the more people for whom the private benefit of a clean environment would exceed the private benefits of mining operations, the less likely it is that the group will producing the optimal amount of lobbying contributions (the collective good). This is especially true, as the large group does not have a benefactor who can be exploited to make large contributions. Conversely,
J.D. Irving Ltd. has been so successful at lobbying for pro-mining laws in Maine because there are very concentrated benefits to be gained. In fact, the pro-mining policies also favor other smaller mining companies in Maine, making J.D. Irving Ltd. a benefactor, which contributes to the public good because, as you stated, the “marginal benefit of [its] share of the collective benefit is greater than their personal cost incurred in obtaining the benefit.”
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