English rivers polluted by neonicotinoids, first tests reveal

> You need to read on industrial history if this is not obvious to you.

I'm asking questions to learn something from the discussion. Currently, my opinion is that regulations are necessary, but perhaps they aren't, and I would like to hear why.

> Think of it as an algorithmic problem - local optimization seldom leads to a global optimum. Hence, sometimes global tweaks can benefit an entire system.

To me, this sounds as if the power of the government needs to be huge and centralized? Because obviously local agents cannot come up with globally optimal solution (if the problem is not structured in a way they can).

For example, the huge use of insecticides and pesticides enables the industry of cheap meat and dairy. Regularizing insecticides and pesticides will most definitely increase the costs for the producers and the price of the product will increase. On the other hand, there are enormous subsidies in farming and will these subsidies now increase to keep the prices low?

These regulations, at least that's how it looks to me, are directly impacting the tax payer, not the industry players.

EDIT: I'm out of discussion. Getting to many downvotes for no particular reason.

> In 2012, the European Commission asked the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to study the safety of three neonicotinoids, in response to growing concerns about the impact of neonicotinoids on honey bees. The study was published in January 2013, stating that neonicotinoids pose an unacceptably high risk to bees...

> In response to the study, the European Commission recommended a restriction of their use across the European Union. On 29 April 2013, 15 of the 27 EU member states voted to restrict the use of three neonicotinoids for two years starting 1 December 2013.

> The UK, which voted against the bill, disagreed: "Having a healthy bee population is a top priority for us, but we did not support the proposal for a ban because our scientific evidence doesn’t support it."

> The decision was up for review in 2016. In March 2017, The Guardian printed an article which claimed that they had obtained information that indicated that the European commission wants a complete ban and cite "high acute risks to bees". A ban could be in place this year (2017) if the proposals are approved by a majority of EU member states

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid#Europe

Pollution generally involves a tragedy of the commons type situation. Ownership over air in the atmosphere and water in a river is fluid and diffuse, and benefits to polluting can acrue to specific persons while the costs of pollution are externalised and spread across everyone.

Sometimes I wonder if future generations will be sickened by the idea that individuals thought it was ok to drive cars that simply released poisonous gasses and particulates into the air rather than trapping and storing them for safe disposal. After all, we know it has already led to society wide increases in violence due to retarded brain development.

A libertarian/hardcore capitalist approach might be to try to actually codify ownership rights over these things and give them to persons who could exert them against polluters.

I and I suspect many others would find that pretty disturbing. I think the idea of being forced to pay rent for breathing someones air is shocking, but if nobody stands to benefit from providing good quality air, there is no clear capitalist incentive to spend effort creating and ensuring it. Without that we need some other mechanism to force polluters to pay for the costs of their behaviour instead of forcing them onto everyone else.

One idea would be that if there were enough detailed, trustworthy information that consumers might hold companies accountable for their abuse of community resources, and vote with their wallets but empirically speaking this kind of safeguard seems to work very patchily when it works at all.

Once those two possibilities are eliminated I'm struggling to think of anything that doesn't end up looking like regulation.

> Are they earning money because regulations need to be met?

Yes? If there aren't regulations, then waste will be disposed of by the cheapest method, which usually involves dumping it into the atmosphere and/or water. This is how it used to be until environmental campaigning in the 70s and 80s got the regulations introduced in the West, and far more recently in China.

Here's a great start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good

Take a look at the third paragraph talking about free rider and negative externalities. This is a strong intuitive explanation of the need for larger bodies to step in and regulate.