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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

#131

Post by boomboomsubban »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #88
zhyder wrote: post #68

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 bigge…

Being conservative used to have some meaning. The EPA was established by Richard Nixon, of all people. If you care less about other people than Nixon, you should really ask yourself: “?How far have I strayed from the pack?”

To be fair, the EPA was established by Nixon as an organization to manage a number of laws passed by the Democrat controlled Congress. Nixon even tried to veto the Clean Water Act.

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

#132

Post by zimpenfish »

Anon1096 wrote: post #129
IAmEveryone wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being conservative used to have some meaning. The EPA was established by Richard Nixon, of all people. If you care less about other people than Nixon, you should really ask yourself: “?How far have I strayed from the pack?”

Nixon was barely a conservative. He gets a bad rap due to Watergate but really he was one of the most liberal Republicans elected to the presidency.

He really wasn't a liberal at all. Here, let smarter people than me explain:

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/02/to-noam-chomsky-...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/revisio...

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

#133

Post by davvolun »

swebs wrote: post #93
zhyder wrote: post #68

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 bigge…

On the other hand, does the EPA really require 8 billion dollars per year when the protection laws have already been passed and improvements have already been made? In a software project, you allocate $x per month during development, and only $(x/10) for maintenance after it has shipped. Is there a point where the EPA can say "mission accomplished" and downsize to maintenance/enforcement mode, or is this just a typic…

I don't know that I'd turn to the software industry for insight on development and maintenance. Things have changed, but AFAIK we still don't have that silver bullet.

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

#134

Post by e40 »

awful wrote: post #90

I lived then and these pictures are very shallow and only show a little of what things were like. They should show things like Fishkill, NY, and how we would dump trash out in the sea, how every area had an impromptu dump down by the river where old mattresses and wash machines ended up and took decades to clean up, where people thought it was OK to dump their auto oil directly onto the ground, massive exposed unline…

I was so disappointed to see all the words spent on the EPA above this comment.

This is the most important comment. This is what humans do when they are unfettered from regulation and enforcement. Yes, the EPA does enforcement. A long-time friend works there in that division. The work is endless.

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

#135

Post by RamshackleJ »

pavlov wrote: post #3

Americans love their freedom. Which is more important: the freedom of corporations to innovate in extracting natural resources, or the freedom of citizens to pursue happiness without being poisoned by drinking water? The last photo on that page shows Mary Workman holding a glass of well water that the Hanna Coal Company rendered undrinkable. Something to remember for those who pine for the days of "great coal jobs" a…

I know its tempting to chest-beat for the EPA as the protector of citizens but they have a track record of staying silent or even covering up. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/01/12/e...

And most of the money for cleanup comes from taxes. Its a nice roundabout/inefficient way to make citizens pay for the pollution of large interests.

In my opinion its more plausible that pollution has decreased due to citizen awareness and organization rather than the EPA.

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

#136

Post by enraged_camel »

moduspol wrote: post #120
Sangermaine wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This straw-mans common conservative views, though. Not at all, when conservatives who do come to power always immediately move to dismantle the EPA, as with the current administration. Not to mention that conservative politicians endlessly rail against the evils of the EPA in terms not even remotely nuanced. I know, I know, "they're not really conservatives!".

But the EPA hasn't been dismantled, and we've had many Republican presidents. Regulations and budgets have been cut, but that's consistent with the belief that the EPA is too big and bureaucratic. It's just so needlessly pointless to frame things this way. It'd be like posting pictures of people in bread lines in the USSR and saying, "this is what a country looks like with left-wing politicians in charge." I mean, ye…

>>But the EPA hasn't been dismantled, and we've had many Republican presidents. Regulations and budgets have been cut...

That’s exactly how you dismantle a large government agency. You cut budgets until the organization is so crippled it can’t do its job, then you point at how ineffective it is and use that to drum up enough political will to abolish it.

“My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” - Grover Norquist

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

#137

Post by rayiner »

celeritascelery wrote: post #107
rayiner wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does, due to the structure of the environmental laws. In a libertarian system, you’d simply ban pollution (I.e. ban the externalizations of environmental costs), and then let the market and the courts hash things out. If a company was found dumping pollutants into the water, people would sue them, and the costs of all of that would get properly priced into the company’s products. But the environmental laws are…

“Banning” pollution is not realistic. Any economy of this scale is going to produce pollution. And while some technologies like fossil fuels are worse then others, there is no pollution solution. So the best the EPA can do it manange the pollution we do create to mitigate the harms.

That's the point. In an idealized economic abstraction, banning pollution (more accurately, creating a cause of action for damages in connection with any level of pollution) would force the cost to be internalized. You can let phosphorous from your farm leach into the river, but any downstream property owners can sue you for reducing their property values by causing algal blooms. If the value created by your farm exceeds the externalized cost of pollution, you keep your farm, pay off the property owners, and pass the costs of that into people who buy your meat and vegetables. When the costs of pollution are priced into those products, the market will properly balance the benefits of farm products against the harms of farm pollution.

But that's wildly impractical. Hence the existence of the EPA, which is tasked with managing pollution, and using central planning to balance the benefits of productive activity against the harms of pollution.

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

#138

Post by zeveb »

anentropic wrote: post #97
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #27

It's important to tell a balanced story. Parts of America was like this. Most of it was not. Civil suits failed to curb industrial emissions in built-up areas, which then spilled over everywhere else. The EPA was a godsend. I didn't understand the problem until the first time I visited L.A. Wow, what a mess. The air was so thick. It was disgusting. It's amazing the progress we have made. But the EPA, like so many oth…

yes, how awful it would be if you ended up with too much environmental protection

Environmental protection isn't free, but comes at an economic cost. Too much for the benefits and you will have a net loss.

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

#139

Post by moduspol »

enraged_camel wrote: post #136
moduspol wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the EPA hasn't been dismantled, and we've had many Republican presidents. Regulations and budgets have been cut, but that's consistent with the belief that the EPA is too big and bureaucratic. It's just so needlessly pointless to frame things this way. It'd be like posting pictures of people in bread lines in the USSR and saying, "this is what a country looks like with left-wing politicians in charge." I mean, ye…

>>But the EPA hasn't been dismantled, and we've had many Republican presidents. Regulations and budgets have been cut... That’s exactly how you dismantle a large government agency. You cut budgets until the organization is so crippled it can’t do its job, then you point at how ineffective it is and use that to drum up enough political will to abolish it. “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to…

In your view, is there any way to curtail a bloated bureaucracy without being accused of trying to destroy it completely?

Can a bureaucracy ever get too big, or to the point that its negative effects outweigh its positives?

> “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” - Grover Norquist

This quote doesn't imply desire to destroy it, but capability. The desire of people being more powerful than their government is not a radical idea.

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

#140

Post by crimsonalucard »

iainmerrick wrote: post #121
crimsonalucard wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your article says Hardins theory only works if their is no such thing as ownership. A commons is a piece of land supposedly used commonly and not owned by anyone. So Hardins theory is addressing tthings like the ocean and the air. This article might as well be rebutting the theory of gravity because it only applies to objects with mass.

So Hardins theory is addressing tthings like the ocean and the air. No, Hardin himself intended his theory to address land usage; it's this article that argues the theory doesn't actually work properly in that context.

iainmerrick. You are completely and utterly incorrect. Read hardins original article. Hardin is addressing Everything that is "common."

I can prove it to you. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full

This is the original article by Hardin. Ctrl-F oceans. Then Ctrl-F pollution. You will see that Hardin directly references pollution and oceans as commons.

If you read the entire article you will see that he talks about population control more than he talks about land.

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