Disclaimer from the editor: the following is an opinion piece written by a contributor, derekliu64. As such, it does not necessarily reflect my opinions. All credit goes to the author.
Disclaimer from the author: the following is a product of a figment of my imagination while I was dreaming. This does not represent my actually right wing views. Thanks.
Quotas are necessary to control the negative impacts that capitalism has on the environment. Without quotas on resources such as oil, companies will have no deterrence from drilling more and more oil due to corporate self-interest. While prices would drop because of a surplus, the damage is already done on the environment. The only way to save the environment is to restrict the amount of resources that are harvested at a given time.
In 2011, tar sands used roughly 370 million cubic meters of water to aid in the production of oil in Alberta. This number is staggering, especially when you consider the number of people around the world who lack the water to survive. If oil companies were to continue, more and more of Canada fresh water will be polluted to harvest oil, and oil companies are not obligated to clean the used water.
Green energy is the future, but it cannot compete with fossil fuels if oil companies produce so much that prices are low. Not only will oil companies naturally have to deal with lower oil prices, but the users of oil are encouraged to continue using oil. No one will use solar or wind energy if oil is so cheap. Quotas must be keep on resources like oil to ensure that alternative energy sources have a fighting chance.
If resource quotas are not in place, surpluses in certain resources could result in massive inflation.Precious metal specifically have historically been valuable, but a sudden abundant amount crashes markets and causes prices across the board to rise.
Back in the 1500’s, the Spanish imported huge amounts of silver from Latin America. The new world provided so much silver that it because almost worthless in the Spanish economy. Clearly silver quotas didn’t exist, and it led to the complete meltdown of Spain. It went from a prosperous empire to the bane of Europe. To this day, Spain has economic problems.
A very similar case to the example above could be diamonds. If companies extracted as many diamonds as possible, the value would decrease the the point where it doesn’t have much value. If everyone had an abundance of diamonds, prices could increase assuming that people would still trade with diamonds.
Common Sense 