In January the Securities and Exchange Commission withdrew a proposal to list and regulate “natural asset companies,” which would have allowed such companies to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, allowing them to raise investment capital through the stock market. 

The Cornwall Alliance applauds that decision but also expects that those who supported the proposal will be back again in the future, promoting something different in name but largely the same in substance. Consequently, we’re glad to offer our readers this analysis, by attorney George S. Whitten, of why natural asset companies should not be approved of as investment opportunities. 

He submitted it as a formal comment to the SEC shortly before the SEC announced withdrawal of its proposal. Mr. Whitten practices law in Mississippi.  An interest in economics germinated when his father designed his high school studies at home to include the writings of Frederic Bastiat, Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, and Leonard Read.—ECB  

The following is a guest article by George Whitten.

To the Commissioners: 1/16/24 

By submitting a comment, I do not condone administrative rule-making as a way to make new law, innovate new forms of commerce, and recognize new rules of accounting.  Promul-gating the proposed rule would be invalid because it lacks authorization by the legislative branch and exceeds the authority of an executive agency.  For instance, the Commission’s proposal to recognize a novel category of business entities called ‘natural asset companies’ exceeds the agency’s powers delegated to it by Congress. 

A.  The SEC should remain true to its name. 

¶ The nature of the proposed “business” entity is anti-productive.  Rather than put capital to work, a natural asset company exists to remove assets from being productive.  It exists to prevent harvesting, mining, drilling, and hunting, and to exclude sight-seers.  It exists to preclude humans from building dwellings and work-shops on those lands.  It exists to ensure that land either sits idle or cannot be cultivated by any profitable method.   

¶ Only “sustainable” methods of cultivation might be permitted.  Methods approved as environmentally sustainable are not financially sustainable – unless the farming operation is subsidized, either by private “investors” or by public tax credits /exemptions, or both.  If subsidized by investors, then investors lose money rather than gain any.  If subsidized by tax credits or tax exemptions, then we taxpayers lose money.  Either way, a natural asset company is inherently insecure.  Shares in ownership will not deserve to be called securities, and acquiring a share in such a company does not deserve to be called an investment.  

¶ Valuation of assets held by natural asset companies depends on myths.  As long as a high number of people are deluded by climate-change myths, valuations of permanently-idled assets may be high. But valuations will decline as growing numbers of people learn that myths about greenhouse gases, carbon footprints, and carbon dioxide have been debunked.  For this second reason, natural asset companies are inherently insecure as a form of investment. 

¶ Therefore, the Securities and Exchange Commission would betray its name and undermine its reason for existence if it were to recognize stock or bonds issued by natural asset companies as securities. 

B.  Public Lands 

¶ National parks, national forests, wildlife refuges, and various special management areas already lie idle.  Apart from traffic by sight-seeing tourists and grazing cattle, the vast majority of federal lands are preserved in their natural state; wildlife are roaming, air is being cleaned through vegetation, and water is being purified through wetlands and filtration through sediment – without the first natural asset company exerting any control.  What new public benefit, then, will accrue to the climate and environment from transferring control of public lands to natural asset companies? 

¶ Granted, radical environmentalists would count it as a new benefit when control by a natural asset company precludes public lands from being leased out for on-shore and off-shore drilling for oil and gas and for mining of minerals.  But the federal government would lose revenue from excise taxes and royalties. 

¶ The U. S. Government has accumulated $34 trillion in public debt.  The best, albeit partial, solution anyone has come up with is for the federal government to sell substantial tracts of public land and use the proceeds to pay down approximately a third of the debt. That solution requires selling federal lands at market rate – for fair market value.  However, when the plan is for the transferred land to sit idle, a natural asset company will neither offer nor be expected to pay the fair market rate for the land.  Therefore, the proposed rule is plainly not intended to help pay down the national debt.  Instead, the proposal would place federal lands out of reach for such a purpose. 

C.  Privately-owned Lands 

¶ Since most land owned by the state and federal governments already lies idle, the chief aim of natural asset companies must be to acquire control over lands currently generating wealth under the ownership of private persons and businesses. 

¶ If natural asset companies acquire control of land from private owners, they will follow and exacerbate two trends that hurt municipal and county governments.  The first trend is above-board:  When a state or federal agency expands onto new lands, property taxes on that land cease being paid to the municipality or county that has jurisdiction.  The second trend is dis-honest: Names of shell churches are slapped on the outside of formerly commercial buildings so the owners can escape paying property taxes on them; but no congregations meet inside.  The proposed rule is more akin to the second trend – if natural asset companies will be exempt from paying property taxes on their idle asset. 

¶ As revenue from local property taxes dwindles, local government officials become more desperate to obtain grants from federal agencies and more dependent upon Congressional appropriations and the U.S. Treasury’s un-capped power to borrow. 

¶ Yet, the proposed rule would reduce federal revenues from income taxes.  Natural asset companies will exercise control over land that private owners used to make productive, and will take the land out of production so their investors or share-holders can realize losses that can be set-off against profits (from other, profitable ventures).  Writing off losses reduces investors’ income tax liabilities.  Alternatively, if natural asset companies do not generate losses for investors to write off, it will be because the federal government confers direct benefits in the form of favorable tax treatment (credits, exemptions) subsidized by the rest of us taxpayers, and because the state government exempts such companies from paying property taxes to local government. 

D.  Natural Asset Companies are Unnatural 

¶ The proposal to recognize ownership interests in natural asset companies as “investments” runs counter to the Creator’s declared purpose for creating the Earth and mankind.  He assigned to Adam the work of tending the Garden of Eden to keep it fruitful.  After Adam sinned against God and was banished from God’s Garden, God still assigned to him and Eve and their offspring the work of gardening, farming, subduing the jungle, shepherding, exercising dominion over the animals, multiplying and filling the earth, and feeding and teaching their children and grandchildren.  Profits are built into a seed’s power to multiply itself – if planted.  Profit is built into the capability of just two animals, a male and a female, to multiply into a herd. 

¶ Natural asset companies are designed to counter the productivity God designed into seeds, soil, animals, and humans.  Such companies also intend to keep buried the minerals, gases, petroleum, and gems that God vested beneath the surface of various lands. 

E.  Natural Asset Companies are Inhumane 

¶ The proposed rule will reduce the overall supply of food, minerals, timber, and fiber that can be produced from the earth, and will leave more humans to suffer hunger and exposure to the elements. 

F.  New rules of Accounting would defeat the purpose of natural asset companies. 

¶ The proposed rule would endorse a new set of rules of accounting to quantify and report the nebulous value of wildlife roaming, water being purified, and air being refreshed by oxygen that emanates from plant leaves.  We know those natural processes and activities are ongoing without trying to comprehensively measure them.  Moreover, attempts to measure, monitor, and report these processes and the presence of birds, insects, and other fauna and flora require repeated intrusions by humans carrying equipment to draw samples, bore for core samples, conduct counts, and so forth.  Increases in the presence of flora and fauna and decreases in pollutants can’t be measured without defiling the holy environment with the presence of unclean humans.  New rules of accounting would incentivize more humans to intrude more regularly into natural habitats to measure, monitor, count, and sample. 

George Whitten Jr. practices law in Mississippi.  An interest in economics germinated when his father designed his high school studies at home to include the writings of Frederic Bastiat, Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, and Leonard Read.