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What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

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Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#61

Post by circlefavshape »

zaarn wrote: post #46
_red wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>because I would call property rights a legal fiction Nearly every culture that has ever existed has recognized that someone taking something from you by force is crime. Its a normative expectation for nearly 100% of all humans. People like yourself, who don't see a value in others property (ie. think you are free to take it), are generally seen as very dangerous and inconsiderate people.

Property Rights aren't an inherent part of nature just because humans like to be greedy. Property Rights exist, at best, as part of a human narrative that we have some interest in designating a legal owner for a piece of dirt. Without humans, the dirt is not owned. With humans, we say we own the dirt (but there is no actual, objective ownership). >People like yourself, who don't see a value in others property I don't…

Animals have territories too (some collective, some individual), and defend them. I expect our notions of 'property rights' evolved from that

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#62

Post by zaarn »

circlefavshape wrote: post #61
zaarn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property Rights aren't an inherent part of nature just because humans like to be greedy. Property Rights exist, at best, as part of a human narrative that we have some interest in designating a legal owner for a piece of dirt. Without humans, the dirt is not owned. With humans, we say we own the dirt (but there is no actual, objective ownership). >People like yourself, who don't see a value in others property I don't…

Animals have territories too (some collective, some individual), and defend them. I expect our notions of 'property rights' evolved from that

Maybe, yes, but it doesn't make property right an inherent part of nature, merely a rather popular tactic for higher-evolved animes (I don't see mold taking territories, it grows where it grows and doesn't have any intelligence to defend it or see it as it's own).

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#63

Post by tpush »

golergka wrote: post #53
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this truly private system, who owns the river that runs through the parcel of land? Who owns the fish that swim upstream from the ocean to spawn every year? Who owns the air? What organisation decides who wins when the factory in one parcel of land upstream pumps poison into the water and the air. Who judges exactly how much monetary damages are due from destroying an ecosystem? None of this libertarian fantasy is…

No fantasy that takes an ideology and tries to implement it without any nuance and compromise with reality is feasible, period. Libertarianism and anti-statism are usually quite more nuanced than their typical strawmen, and many libertarians are OK with small state which would be in charge of law enforcement. However, such small state still has no reason to own any land (except for government buildings) or designate…

> However, such small state still has no reason to own any land (except for government buildings) or designate any land as "public"

You didn't address ZeroGravitas' first paragraph; how would you solve these issues?

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#64

Post by arxpoetica »

Living in Vietnam like my family does, I think about this frequently. Asian countries suffer from some of these same industrial problems that the West suffered from a generation ago. It isn't clear to me if these are problems that we've collectively just offshored to more developing nations, but there does seem to be a pattern as (Tiger in the modern case) economies industrialize and reach a certain hard-working xenith.

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#65

Post by ianai »

hliyan wrote: post #2

When I was younger, I honestly believed in the explanation that left to their own devices, free enterprise will work to protect the environment, as anything that hurts the market will hurt profits. What I didn't take into account was that this argument doesn't work for enterprises run by beings with limited lifespans. All except the most empathic humans will not incur any cost to avoid consequences that are beyond th…

Adam Smith also said the wealth of nations depended on the economic empowerment of its populace. Policies and regulations meant to better the citizens and not the corporations add the most to the wealth of the nation.

Quote:”What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.”

And:“[The rich] consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity…they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species.”

https://www.adamsmith.org/adam-smith-quotes/

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#66

Post by vidarh »

_red wrote: post #22
filleokus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself a really pro market guy, but I can't agree with the statement: > free enterprise will work to protect the environment, as anything that hurts the market will hurt profits I mean, isn't the environment the prime example of a situation where externalities and the tragedy of the commons describe the problems for the free market to solve the problems at hand? Further, free enterprises exist to maximise…

Imbued in your statement is an even more difficult knot to undo. "Tragedy of the Commons" is caused by the very existence of the modern state. Common land = public land. In a truly private system, one in which all land was owned, every parcel of land would have some advocate who cared very deeply about the environmental quality of their land. You producing pollution on your land that negatively affected mine would re…

> every parcel of land would have some advocate who cared very deeply about the environmental quality of their land.

Commodore Business Machines for several decades had their plant in Westchester, PA, leak assorted chemical related to their chip manufacturing. When this was identified, they started some improvement work, but didn't fix the problem. The site was eventually sold to a company that bought it knowing it was contaminated, who continued to operate a chip manufacturing business there, until the demanded improvements made it impossible for them to operate.

Despite corporate ownership for years, nobody advocated or cared very deeply about the environmental quality of this land until they were forced to by the EPA, because it did not affect their business. Other people nearby would largely have remained unaffected for many years too, until chemicals started seeping out, at which point Commodore was in decline and eventually went bankrupt.

Here's one of the documents regarding this site: https://semspub.epa.gov/work/03/50245.pdf

I'm sure there are cases where the issue is that nobody has any direct legal interest in a piece of land, but a lot of serious environmental issues have explicitly happened or escalated because the owner did not care or could not afford to remedy the problems.

The bigger fiction is to think that the owner will always "care very deeply" about the environmental quality of their land.

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#67

Post by scotty79 »

hliyan wrote: post #2

When I was younger, I honestly believed in the explanation that left to their own devices, free enterprise will work to protect the environment, as anything that hurts the market will hurt profits. What I didn't take into account was that this argument doesn't work for enterprises run by beings with limited lifespans. All except the most empathic humans will not incur any cost to avoid consequences that are beyond th…

> as anything that hurts the market will hurt profits

That's the core mistake. It's often very profitable to damage the market.

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#68

Post by zhyder »

It's unfortunate that the EPA is under attack by conservatives who want limited government. If you start from first principles about what the min viable government should do, a big part of its charter would be to prevent major tragedies of the commons. And the environment is a textbook example of something that'd suffer the tragedy of the commons without government oversight.

I prefer a bigger government with a bigger social safety net with universal basic healthcare, etc. But I can understand conservative opposition to that; at least those don't produce tragedies of the commons. (They arguably do to a lesser extent: if people's basic needs are met, they're less likely to resort to crime to fulfill them. And a greater rate of crime is a tragedy for all; ask anyone who's paid a premium to live in a "safe" neighborhood.)

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#70

Post by RobertoG »

_red wrote: post #22
filleokus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself a really pro market guy, but I can't agree with the statement: > free enterprise will work to protect the environment, as anything that hurts the market will hurt profits I mean, isn't the environment the prime example of a situation where externalities and the tragedy of the commons describe the problems for the free market to solve the problems at hand? Further, free enterprises exist to maximise…

Imbued in your statement is an even more difficult knot to undo. "Tragedy of the Commons" is caused by the very existence of the modern state. Common land = public land. In a truly private system, one in which all land was owned, every parcel of land would have some advocate who cared very deeply about the environmental quality of their land. You producing pollution on your land that negatively affected mine would re…

>>'It is really the very existence of the legal-fiction of "public land"'

I don't understand. How is the legal fiction of 'public land' more fictitious that the concept of 'private land'?

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