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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

#161

Post by Strang »

audunw wrote: post #75
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…

I think the answer to this paradox is that most conservatives aren't really all that into small/limited government. It's just a phrase they use to sell their policies to voters. What they're actually trying to implement is crony capitalism, which is a consequence of their dependence on money to get elected. Democrats have the same problem by the way, it just manifests in different paradoxes (or "lies" if you want to…

Do I understand you correctly, that you believe that most voters in the US have been duped into their beliefs by bad-faith argument concealing the "true" agenda?

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

#162

Post by da_chicken »

ianai wrote: post #115
da_chicken wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That second one is a bit... unclear. I think it's the 18th century grammar and its propensity for a dozen clauses. However, it seems to contradict the generally held belief that the poor have a much higher marginal propensity to consume than the rich do.

No, he’s saying exactly that they (the non-rich) have both a higher marginal propensity to consume and thus the wealth of a nation grows much faster with their income growth. But undoubtedly, he nestled it in crazy grammar.

I'll take your word for it. I keep getting turned around in the middle!

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

#163

Post by ianai »

da_chicken wrote: post #162
ianai wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he’s saying exactly that they (the non-rich) have both a higher marginal propensity to consume and thus the wealth of a nation grows much faster with their income growth. But undoubtedly, he nestled it in crazy grammar.

I'll take your word for it. I keep getting turned around in the middle!

He’s using the word “they” confusingly there. It’s clear from the rest of the book that he means the wealth of nations follows the wealth of the non-rich.

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

#164

Post by Someone »

ABCLAW wrote: post #142
roenxi wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also on the meta front, I don't actually see any discussion of the pictures themselves. For example, I can't figure out what the problem with the Atlas Chemical Company is by inspection - that looks a lot like industrial levels of water vapour. Only in the mine water example do I see what the issue is clearly. The discussion seems to have gone straight to related political issues and the broader environment. Interest…

Those stacks aren't popping out water vapour. Check the size of the stacks and the factory - there's no scrubbers or fractionation columns preprocessing the waste gasses. Paper mills are very polluting enterprises - the water you're seeing is a thin sheet with a mostly laminar flow. It is opaque. This is not normal. The level of waste solutes in the raw ejecta is absurdly high, and is comprised of decomposed organic…

”I think the burning barge is pretty self explanatory.”

Is it? The photo doesn’t tell whether that was something that happened regularly, and stuff like that happens today, too.

https://www.fleetmon.com/maritime-news/?category=incidents taught me that the Maersk Honam (built in 2017; can hold over 15,000 TEU) caught fire on March 6 and was evacuated. Worse, that doesn’t seem to be that exceptionally. http://www.seatrade-maritime.com/news/europe/maersk-honam-jo... lists about one every year.

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

#165

Post by da_chicken »

ianai wrote: post #163
da_chicken wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take your word for it. I keep getting turned around in the middle!

He’s using the word “they” confusingly there. It’s clear from the rest of the book that he means the wealth of nations follows the wealth of the non-rich.

Right, that's why I was so confused. I know the jist of Smith's work and this kept tripping me up.

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

#166

Post by ekianjo »

zaarn wrote: post #48
ekianjo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary. Give property rights to everything and individuals and corporations will have every incentive to protect what they own, be it environmental resources or anything else.

Corporations have incentives to maximize short-term profits at the sacrifice of environmental resources and common decency (dump the chemical waste in the river and pay your employees the lowest possible wage). This obviously means the company will quickly run out of resources and employees but depending on the severity of the deployed sacrifice, this can take decades, a time span that corporations have shown on seve…

My point was, make the river a private resource worth money to some organization or someone, and they will fight that corporation where it matters. Counter-balancing incentives work best, and we have already seen this kind of system work better than regulations.

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

#167

Post by ekianjo »

hliyan wrote: post #76
ekianjo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary. Give property rights to everything and individuals and corporations will have every incentive to protect what they own, be it environmental resources or anything else.

Unfortunately, assigning property rights to breathable air is going to be problematic.

For air you can tax the emission of toxic fumes or particles, in order to incentivize the usage of filters and the like. Unfortunately, states in many countries are actively promoting industries like coal power generation and therefore cannot at the same time pretend they care about air quality.

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

#168

Post by ekianjo »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #81
ekianjo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary. Give property rights to everything and individuals and corporations will have every incentive to protect what they own, be it environmental resources or anything else.

Protect them with what authority and with what resources? Everyone raises their own militia against bad actors? What if the bad actor owns half the land in the region and all the guns?

There is something called Rule of Law. That is where the government intervenes if someone or some organization fails to follow the Law.

> What if the bad actor owns half the land in the region and all the guns?

As far as I know the government has the biggest guns.

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

#169

Post by burfog »

awful wrote: post #158
LyndsySimon wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can I dump toxic waste on my own land? Sure, it's your land. > What happens when 10 years later it starts leaching into the soil and poisoning nearby streams and farms? Those impacted landowners now have a tort claim against you, which they should pursue. > What about the animals who eat on my land and then run back into the forest where they get shot for someone else's dinner, and that someone else ends up consumi…

We already tried this (ex. gasoline stations) and it doesn't work: there is no way someone who pollutes an entire aquifer with barrels of toxin can be made to financially or mechanically remediate it. It always falls upon the government to do so.

Requiring payment in advance solves most of that. The rest isn't solved by any current or proposed idea; some people will just be sneaky.

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

#170

Post by bosie »

Strang wrote: post #160
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…

Keep in mind that in the US, the Federal Government is not the only game in town. The EPA as currently constituted is not the only possible way for our society to protect our environment. It seems to me that conservatives often make the case that "The Federal Government should not do ," but others instead hear, "we as a society don't need to do ."

what's the non-government solution for an implementation of the EPA?
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