ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that overexploitation, perhaps even to the point of actual extinction, is a definite possibility under private management of renewable resources. The problems of environmental pollution that loom so large, for example, often result from a process of overexploitation of the regenerative capacity of our atmospheric and water resources. Renewable resources possess self-regeneration capacities and can provide man with an essentially endless supply of goods and services. The concept of economic rent as discussed so far is time-independent. A more general understanding of the concept, as it applies to agricultural land economics, has been given by M. M. Gaffney, who identifies several categories of economic rent. The general economic analysis of a biological resource suggests that overexploitation in the physical sense of reduced productivity may result from not one, but two social conditions: common-property competitive exploitation, and private-property maximization of profits.
