New Tax Scheme!!!!!! Write-up below
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One of the greatest challenges presented by the current plight of worldwide fisheries is that of preventing overfishing. This prevention, if successful, will be the single greatest improvement over the current situation. How is this to be achieved? As long as there is a demand for fish, there will be motivation to fish and a risk of overfishing. The best possible solution to the problem of overfishing will therefore be the one which has the most probability of limiting catches to the maximum sustainable yield level.
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Currently, data on fish populations is generally collected and reported every two years, meaning that this team of biologists and economists would reset the tax at least every two years to account for changing conditions, and perhaps more often based on preliminary data, estimates, or sizable environmental changes (such as natural disasters). Alterations to the taxes at intervals would be necessary to keep them relevant and useful, since a permanent and static tax would simply encourage individuals to fish in areas that are lightly taxed, leading to overfishing and populations crashes. After a time of altering the taxes to fit changing conditions, the fluctuation of populations will reach a minimum at which only small tweaking of the tax is required, contingent on catastrophic events such as natural disasters and famines.
A tax on fishermen will drive up the price of fish for consumers, which will in turn decrease demand for fish and incentive to fish. The fisherman still has freedom to fish wherever he wants (within other constraints), but the tax will encourage him to avoid fishing in areas that are in more danger of being overfished.
In the case of subsistence fishing, we feel that quotas are still a better tool for maintaining a ceiling on the amount of fish caught for this purpose. Oftentimes subsistence fishermen have almost no choice about the location in which they fish, and they should not be penalized for this. This should also not be a reason for taking an unreasonable amount of fish.
The tax would be administered internationally by the United Nations, provided for by the addition to the Law of the Sea Treaty that we propose. Only member countries would collect the tax, which eliminates the issue of taxation without representation. The revenue of the tax would then be redistributed internationally to these member countries to allow them to fund other aspects of our plan, like encouraging fishermen to switch to more environmentally sound methods of fishing. Countries who have signed the treaty are bound by it to fish sustainably in their own waters, and a tax is just another way for them to enforce this.
The results of the tax as we propose would significantly contribute to solving the overfishing problem. The tax is not only a revenue-generating device, but we can also consider the tax to be covering the ecological and societal cost of taking each fish out of the ocean.
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STATUS: we're not using a consumer tax. where's our new tax plan?
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