As technology improves in an advanced free economy, men and women tend to develop methods of achieving their productive ends more efficiently, with less expenditure of their natural resources. In the relatively free United States, for example, forest acreage has increased since 1920 despite population growth, primarily because of advances in agricultural efficiency. This beneficial trend should be contrasted with deforestation in more statist Third-World countries such as Brazil.

Setting aside the aforementioned hyperventilations of the more misanthropic environmental radicals, we can sum up our observations: if there is a true "environmental crisis," then it is but one part of the larger crisis of statism, and it can be solved only by implementing a system of consistently recognized property rights.

How would patents and copyrights be handled?

When an item of property is traded (or given away) in the free market, the transfer of ownership may not be unconditional. As a part of the contractual exchange, the original owner may reserve certain rights or may impose certain restrictions on the use of the property. For instance, the builder of a subdivision may impose restrictive covenants on home buyers. These covenants, often governing such matters as lawn maintenance or pet ownership, are included in the contract by which the home is purchased. The concept of intellectual property rights, we shall see in a moment, derives from the same principle.

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