61–68 of 68 posts
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The joys of the free market.
The Brits thought the world would line up to trade with a free UK based on the fact that they were…the UK???
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non-profit is still a private entity, just one that doesn't make profits for shareholders. The problem is with the government anyway, not with any other party. Private companies are amoral, they'll do what they do and take their profit. A govt owned service will have internal incentives, as does the non-profit. The government can fix the problem by laying out regulations, i.e. you have to provide this service and thi…
We already have an example of the model you proposed, in the rail network. In practice, it's another way for losses to be socialised and profits to be privatised. I don't think there is a way to reconcile the fundamental unprofitability of long-term maintentance of national infrastructure with private operation. Fundamentally, the government's job is to do what we cannot.
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You were "curious" and not blaming but quick to downvote. Good way of showing curiosity. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that the state allowed the pollution of a public owned area, and now you want a libertarian working solution after the fact. How does that make sense? The libertarian solution is, as I said, make the waters private. The owner will immediately sue the pollutant, to at least stop dumpin…
> You were "curious" and not blaming but quick to downvote. Good way of showing curiosity. I can’t downvote your direct replies to me, just as you can’t downvote mine. Anyway, since the government screwed up on this one they can be replaced on the next election. What would be the libertarian solution to shitty beaches? Move somewhere where the private owners offer clean beaches? What if they have clean beaches but no…
Dump on their beaches, offer cleanup services?
What is the libertarian solution for situations like this?
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The Brits thought the world would line up to trade with a free UK based on the fact that they were…the UK???
I think the line was trade will be fine because we'll be like Singapore. Hasn't really played out very well so far.
Imagine a world where ‘no legal duty’ was the default mindset for everyone.
And imagine if every nation pumped their shit straight into the ocean? Poor old UK bosses would have no clean beaches to fly to.
Around 2 billion metric tons of them.
By contrast, there are only about 60 million tons of human beings.
Handwaving any differences in metabolic rates, the ocean animals are outshitting us by a factor of roughly 30, or, to put it another way, if every human turd in the world went straight into the ocean it would only increase the amount of shit in the ocean by around 3%.
Of course, the overwhelming majority of human waste does not get dumped directly into the oceans, so it's far less than that.
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Individuals and corporations quit caring about the environment; Which, is why there is sewage and microplastics in the sea and ocean.
There’s been sewage in the seas and oceans for as long as there’s been sewage in proximity to those places. Long before caring for the environment as it’s now understood was even a concept. I’d hazard a guess that on a population density normalized comparison for developed countries there has never been a better time for responsible sewage handling. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of problems like this art…
Oh, far, far longer than that. Everyone is ignoring the fact that fish and other sea creatures also shit in the ocean, and were doing so for billions of years before humans even existed.
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non-profit is still a private entity, just one that doesn't make profits for shareholders. The problem is with the government anyway, not with any other party. Private companies are amoral, they'll do what they do and take their profit. A govt owned service will have internal incentives, as does the non-profit. The government can fix the problem by laying out regulations, i.e. you have to provide this service and thi…
Sure, but in this case, it's a non-profit bound by a series of regulations related to water supply. We already have an example of the model you proposed, in the rail network. In practice, it's another way for losses to be socialised and profits to be privatised. I don't think there is a way to reconcile the fundamental unprofitability of long-term maintentance of national infrastructure with private operation. Fundam…
I can see why you thought that but that's not what I meant. I should get my water from the local council, it should be branded as Sussex water or whatever. They can use private companies to do the work required to deliver and bill, or they can do it in-house, I don't care. Same as how the govt uses private contractors for doing road building and maintenance. It being a public service does not mean there's no place for private companies in there.