Jan. 12, 2024
To everyone involved in this proposal at the SEC: Think for a moment about decisions throughout history that seemed helpful at the time that have turned out (in hindsight) to be an invitation for exploitation and the genesis of new problems created by flawed solutions. Decide in haste, regret in leisure. Tree Loving Gone Crazy. The emphasis on maintaining any and all trees for the sake of the environment resulted in regulations prohibiting harvesting timber in a responsible manner, eliminating underbrush which competes for water, soil, and sunlight versus what occurs in a well-managed forest. Even controlled burns were part of forest management that were deemed unhealthy and anti-environment by those with a narrow short-term environmental focus. The result: the excessive biomass of brush, diseased and dying trees existing around healthy trees subjected millions of acres of forest to out-of-control forest fires. Trees died in waste rather than be managed for responsible succession. The Four Pests Campaign heralded by Mao Zedong as part of a cultural and social transformation rewarded the elimination of sparrows which were deemed to be a useless pest. However, the very insects and their eggs favored as food by sparrows over seed were unchecked by a declining sparrow population and the result of locust plagues decimated food crops and led to the starvation of reportedly 20 million Chinese. The One Child Policy. Another Chinese venture aimed at controlling the future has proven devastating for the Chinese people. It was introduced in 1979 and halted in 2005 with unintended consequences. Originally conceived as curbing population growth for social and economic reasons and to mitigate environmental problems, it was withdrawn, but not before the result of causing long-term unintended consequences for unbalanced gender ratios and insufficient reproduction as well as labor shortages for many generations. The Cobra Effect. The British governor of Delhi, India made a rash decision to deal with dangerous infestations of cobras by putting a significant bounty on the snakes. As numbers declined, the end result was a population began raising cobras as a source of income and they got more snakes rather than a decline in number. Macquarie Island's ecosystem was destroyed for centuries and is still in recovery mode after being overrun by rodents, cats, and rabbits, some of which were intentionally imported to deal with problems and one notably unintended introduction that others were introduced to solve. The result: an ecosystem in balance that was destroyed, millions of reclamation dollars have been spent to correct the issues, with some birds and other wildlife near extinction. History is rife with examples of good intentions that have gone astray, decisions that seemed wise at the time only to be the turning points of wars, triggers for economic collapse, or inventions/innovations that destroyed themselves and others in the process. I submit to you that the decision regarding NACs is one of those moments. For the sake of arguably noble concerns, bad decisions for which there are other, better alternatives seems to be America's regrettable future if NACs were to be ill-advisedly approved. History has led the United States to a happy place of abundance of resources and natural "assets", to which free exercise of private property rights can achieve some of those same noble results that proponents seek, but without the risk...and importantly without subsuming America's interests beneath the cover of corporatism which conveniently conceals who pulls strings of unelected power or agenda and decides the future of America's national interests. Therefore please do not allow NACs in the NYSE. America's historic natural resources and private property rights are a social good, and not a Pandora's Box to open with ample room for abuse, unintended consequences, and devastation for the future. When an individual errs, there are consequences, limited typically to those proximal to the individual. When a government entity errs, the consequences are significantly more far-reaching and may impact millions in life-altering ways as some of the examples above indicate. People who fail to learn the lessons of history are fools of the highest order. Please do not allow us to be fools. Instead, do NOT allow NAC's. Sincerely, Mrs. Barbara Shafer