It's easy to get outraged (as we should) when we hear about a developing country recklessly polluting the environment but it's important to remember that the West has been doing this on a very large scale for a very long time. Climbing onto this (somewhat) high horse hasn't been an overnight process.
L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now
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Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a great argument for an absurdly high estate tax. You can’t inherit ill-gotten gains if you don’t inherit anything at all!
So we should tax the crap out of everyone's estates on the premise that they probably wronged society and that society will need to pay to un-screw up whatever they did?!? Whatever happened to giving people the benefit of the doubt? Whatever happens to presumption of innocence? Firstly anyone with a brain is gonna conveniently go broke before they die if you try and pull something like that. Second I'm struggling to…
> So we should tax the crap out of everyone's estates
Just the wealthy. Estate taxes have (in the USA) applied only to large estates.
> on the premise that they probably wronged society
Some wealth is inherited now, but large gains (extracted from the market) are generally the result of exploitation.
> anyone with a brain is gonna conveniently go broke before they die
That's already happening, they call it The Giving Project.
Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
But if you grandfather lost all of $X, your father would not have any of $Y (based entirely on $X being an amount they got from business dealings and $Y being a smaller amount which came from $X).
That strikes me as non-sensical. My father had his own earning, creating, and saving abilities.
Subtract it from what he would have earned if he had dumped the cash into an index fund, and we may find that his earning, creating and saving abilities were negative. His only profitable skill may have been having a father who dealt in slaves.
Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
He didn’t, but suppose my grandfather legally (or even semi-legally) disposed of some DDT and left my father some money. My father later me some money. What’s the legal process to claw some of that money back to pay for the cleanup? Do you or the state have standing to sue me for something I never did, knew nothing about, and can’t reasonably answer to any specifics about?
Have you noticed how we generally do not bear any responsible for the wrongs of our parents? For instance, we are not forced to pay their debts, yet, we're somehow entitled to any riches they may have left behind? Seems asymmetrical to me. I'd say, yeah, I guess if you accepted the money, you should accept at least some of the responsibility for how they were amassed.
The estate can be sued for debts. There is a time limit on filing claims though and there might be some limits on what they can come after in the sense they might be considered jointly-owned like a house if you're still living there.
Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now
#75It's amazing how little some people have cared, this was not that they didn't know, they certainly knew, otherwise, it'd not have resorted to hiding the stuff by dumping it into the sea.. It'd not be unreasonable to hunt down those responsible, and make them pay for cleaning it up. Sure, they're probably dead by now, but they probably left a lot of money. I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at t…
> I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at the time" The idea that a government can make something illegal and retroactively punish previous offenders is so colossally bad that in the United States the Founding Fathers wrote a prohibition against it into the Constitution. It's not an amendment, such as the right to free speech. They wrote it into Article 1 . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_f…
It's nowhere near as clear cut as you make it out.
There are even plenty of examples in the page you link of justifiable ex post facto laws. For example war crimes.
To be honest, because of the devastating long term effects of environmental pollution, and the deaths it has caused, I would quite happily argue that laws applying to it could be ex post facto. Crimes against future generations.
I remember covering this in my philosophy degree and you can argue about it for hours. The example I remember was Nazi collaborators who reported on Jews or resistance fighters or even falsely accused neighbours.
They got people killed, often maliciously, but what they did was perfectly legal at the time. Should they have gotten away with their complicity or should they have ex post facto laws brought against them?
In the time of the US founders, the scale of damage a single human or company could conceivably do for profit was a lot less.
Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
He didn’t, but suppose my grandfather legally (or even semi-legally) disposed of some DDT and left my father some money. My father later me some money. What’s the legal process to claw some of that money back to pay for the cleanup? Do you or the state have standing to sue me for something I never did, knew nothing about, and can’t reasonably answer to any specifics about?
This is a great argument for an absurdly high estate tax. You can’t inherit ill-gotten gains if you don’t inherit anything at all!
Only 0.002% of estates pay the tax every year. The best way to avoid paying the tax is to reduce the wealth of an estate by transferring it to insurance or separate entities like a foundation, limited liability company, family limited partnership, or charitable trust. Most wealthy people start estate planning long before retirement. The ones that end up paying are folks like Prince or the newly wealthy that die young.
Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
He didn’t, but suppose my grandfather legally (or even semi-legally) disposed of some DDT and left my father some money. My father later me some money. What’s the legal process to claw some of that money back to pay for the cleanup? Do you or the state have standing to sue me for something I never did, knew nothing about, and can’t reasonably answer to any specifics about?
Have you noticed how we generally do not bear any responsible for the wrongs of our parents? For instance, we are not forced to pay their debts, yet, we're somehow entitled to any riches they may have left behind? Seems asymmetrical to me. I'd say, yeah, I guess if you accepted the money, you should accept at least some of the responsibility for how they were amassed.
>yet, we're somehow entitled to any riches they may have left behind
The kids of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are getting a miniscule amount of their fathers' wealth - how is that possible if supposedly they have a right to it?
So you have it all backwards. The descendent are not entitled to the wealth of their parents or ancestors. The right to property (including disbursement through inheritance) is given to those that own it! The dollar I earn, I can do as a please with and has already been taxed.
Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now
#78Wikipedia has the half life of DDT in soil from 22 days to 30 years. In a marine environment it is estimated to be 150 years.
I didn't know Wikipedia had a half life..
Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now
#79It's amazing how little some people have cared, this was not that they didn't know, they certainly knew, otherwise, it'd not have resorted to hiding the stuff by dumping it into the sea.. It'd not be unreasonable to hunt down those responsible, and make them pay for cleaning it up. Sure, they're probably dead by now, but they probably left a lot of money. I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at t…
"I don't think it's even relevant that it was not legal at the time". Imagine setting the precedent that the government can unilaterally decide to steal your property based on something your great grandfather did which wasn't even a crime. Do you not see how such a power might be abused in future when you can retroactively punish people for laws where the ink has yet to dry and that they never even committed?
That's a good point.
Where's the line between knowingingly circumventing the spirit of the law by following the letter.
For example Teflon has been replaced with chemically similar compounds that just aren't Teflon. It'll take decades for the studies to come in, in the mean time every human is being exposed to these chemicals in significant amounts.
Then we have bpa, Neonicotinoids and other pesticides. We have cases where companies knowingly sell talc contaminated with asbestos for decades.
We know these products kill people, we now the companies that make thenknow they are killing people and yet we can't claw back decades of fraudulently acquired profits and revenues?
Imo, we should treat these behaviors like Nazis where everything they touched gets seized, even decades later. If that ruins some lives, well, whose worse off? The injured class or the child who inherited blood money?
Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> post-hoc punishment post-hoc punishment is the only reasonable punishment. The alternative it to punish people before they commit a crime, and that seems immoral at best. > push a policy My guess, it was already illegal to poison the environment. They just got caught now. > those responsible with something like reconciliation committees ... symbolic gestures are accepted in lieu of prison or capital punishment. Cor…
>post-hoc punishment is the only reasonable punishment. Maybe a little charitable interpretation is warranted? I clearly meant, post hoc rationalization for the punishment. Typically you punish when AN EXISTING law is broken. In this case, OP is arguing for new punishment based on new laws that were broken in the past. >My guess, it was already illegal to poison the environment No. The devil is in the definition of '…
> All the rights that corporations have stem from the rights of the owners. Corporations have rights, because the owners have rights.
This is simply not true. All of the rights that corporations have stem from a public-interest grant by the state. If the rights of corporations came from the owners, we 1) could jail stockholders for the crimes of the corporation, and 2) wouldn't need corporations, because all they are is liability shields.
Corporations aren't actual people, they're statutory people. Little branches of the government.