Libertarianism and the Environment

[Berati]

Libertarianism will not properly address the issues involving pollution.
I’ll illustrate using the example of drunk driving.  (bear with me)

The libertarian approach is to rely on enforcement of property rights after the fact. As Jason put it,  it relies on restitution. (This is the libertarians own words)

So it’s perfectly legal to drive while drunk as there are no rules against it. If you make it home safe… no harm no foul.
If the drunk driver causes damage like killing someone… then you can sue him. If he speeds and weaves right by a police car or your children, he can’t be stopped until after he kills someone. The he can be sued. The theory is that others will see these lawsuits and therefore stop drinking and driving… problem solved!

However, in the real world…
Even today, with serious penalties and fines up front AS WELL AS LAWSUITS, people still drink and drive. People far too often think they can handle it and that they’re OK to drive. If we relied on a system of restitution only, and stopped removing drunk drivers from the road until after an accident, the number of drunken driving fatalities would skyrocket. That’s how the real world works.
This is a clear example of how libertarianism is rotten at the core. It runs counter to human nature.

The clear and obvious solution is to make drunk driving illegal, and pull offenders off the road as soon as they are discovered not sue them after the fact.



So now, apply this non proactive, restitution only system to pollution and it fails for exactly the same reason... among others. You could see someone dumping his old tires off a bridge and nothing can be done until the tires wash up on someone’s property. That aggrieved party would then have to try and find the identity the offender, bring them to court, and prove the damage to their property. If successful in all that then they recover the cost of those damages ONLY.

Anyone who would propose a restitution only system that relies on the courts has no real world experience with the courts and has probably never sued or been sued. It is a very slow, very expensive system. And you would recover what for tires that wash up on your property. A couple of hundred bucks?
To get around this problem libertarians propose an even dumber solution… privatize rivers, lakes, oceans and even the atmosphere.
NO, this is not a strawman, it comes directly from the Von Misses Institute. Unless of course, they are not “true libertarians” either.


The clear and obvious solution is to make dumping pollution illegal. If you’re spotted, you are fined immediately and ordered to remove the garbage. This is far from perfect but it is at least a workable plan... unlike libertarianism.

[Berati]

Libertarianism doesn't just fail on pollution, it fails in every aspect.
I would not normally waste my time on other people’s fairy tales, but because conservatives have swallowed much of this nonsense, they are doing real harm in implementing libertarian nonsense.

As atheists I’m sure most of you know that other peoples fantasies can and do cause real world harm and so it does with this fantasy. I've listed just some of these problems in a reply in this thread. http://atheistforums.com/index.php?topic=4957.15 (See reply #28)
All I’ve got back is the no true Scotsman fallacy.

This is a very good article exposing another failure of libertarianism. It’s a good read.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/29/1049619/-Why-Libertarianism-Doesn-t-Work

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Libertarianism will not properly address the issues involving pollution.
I’ll illustrate using the example of drunk driving.  (bear with me)

The libertarian approach is to rely on enforcement of property rights after the fact. As Jason put it,  it relies on restitution. (This is the libertarians own words)

So it’s perfectly legal to drive while drunk as there are no rules against it. If you make it home safe… no harm no foul.
If the drunk driver causes damage like killing someone… then you can sue him. If he speeds and weaves right by a police car or your children, he can’t be stopped until after he kills someone. The he can be sued. The theory is that others will see these lawsuits and therefore stop drinking and driving… problem solved!

A few questions about your "example":
Who owns the roads that this individual is driving on?
Does the owner get to set the rules for the usage of said roads?

What you have is government roads without the government creating those roads, and then people getting hurt because the government cannot set the rules for the government roads.  A very strange setup to use as an "example" of a failure of libertarianism.  Strange indeed.

One might guess that you actually don't know anything about the subject you are criticizing.

[Hakurei Reimu]

Berati's analogy is just that, an analogy. You are still faced with the problem that the libertarian approach to pollution gives you nothing over the traditional regulation approach.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Berati's analogy is just that, an analogy. You are still faced with the problem that the libertarian approach to pollution gives you nothing over the traditional regulation approach.

I don't see how I'm faced with that problem, but that is because the same people who believe that there will be mysteriously provided roads without the road owners building them also believe businesses are incapable of thinking ahead.

Berati, in his infinite wisdom, believes that recourse to the courts will only influence behavior after the fact, that the property rights approach will only work when someone sues about pollution that has already occurred.  That makes as much sense as saying that the regulatory approach of levying fines only works when a fine is levied about pollution that has already occurred.

Berati and his ilk are willing to say that the threat of a fine will influence the behavior of a business.  So would the threat of a lawsuit influence the behavior of a business?  In the same way these mysterious roads appear out of nowhere, apparently not.

[aitm]

*Mod* My apologies, I don't often follow these and i stupidly responded to a post a page back, so I will do so now. Berati, if you can't discuss this civilly then go to the fucking outhouse and shit there- aitm

[Hakurei Reimu]

I don't see how I'm faced with that problem, but that is because the same people who believe that there will be mysteriously provided roads without the road owners building them also believe businesses are incapable of thinking ahead.

And, pray tell, where were these business owners when all that pollution was put out into the air, water and land? You know, those ones who are capable of thinking ahead?

Berati, in his infinite wisdom, believes that recourse to the courts will only influence behavior after the fact, that the property rights approach will only work when someone sues about pollution that has already occurred.  That makes as much sense as saying that the regulatory approach of levying fines only works when a fine is levied about pollution that has already occurred.

I'm still not hearing how being sued is superior to ordinary regulation.

Berati and his ilk are willing to say that the threat of a fine will influence the behavior of a business.  So would the threat of a lawsuit influence the behavior of a business?  In the same way these mysterious roads appear out of nowhere, apparently not.

You do know that a mere levy is not the only action a government can take against an offending company, right? It can actually forbid operations from taking place. It can go in and say, "Sorry, chums, you have to shut that factory down since you've failed to comply with environmental regulations." That can be done without putting the company out of business entirely, which you would have to do to accomplish the same goals with fines.

Levies are effective because they can serve as a warning for more drastic measures, making it hurt, while sending the message that worse can happen than just a mere fine.

[Jmpty]

I can only surmise that in the libertarian utopia, there are no public roads or lands, or am I missing something?

[Jmpty]

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Hey, get rid of those silly regulations prohibiting murder. If someone kills you you just take them to court and sue to come back to life.

[Hijiri Byakuren]

Some would argue that the TNG Federation is communist, not socialist.
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Trek-Marxism.html

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Some would argue that the TNG Federation is communist, not socialist.
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Trek-Marxism.html

It's making a broad assumption Star Trek's creators advocated communism because there was never enough to go on. In the show they didn't deal a lot in economics other than indicate they figured out how to make their system work and there were very few episodes of life outside of the military.  You can guess how it worked and project modern economics into the future, but the show was several centuries into the future. The author assumes that everything is just like now except discounts possible advances in nearly all aspects of life in the future.
Example: If technology advances to the point where hunger no longer exist and most health issues gone and everyone provided a wonderful job, wonderful home, near perfect health (except galactic war) the need to play the dog eat dog might actually vanish as a thing of the past.. Hey, it's science fiction. A bunch of stuff from the show is now commonplace, but hardly all of it. We've gone way beyond the communicator with cell phones and computers are in every city of any size.. On the flip side we still can't access massive databases like they could by merely talking and can't just conjure up a ham sandwich or go to the holideck.. 

[Jmpty]

Some would argue that the TNG Federation is communist, not socialist.
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Trek-Marxism.html

Even better ;)

[Jason Harvestdancer]

You do know that a mere levy is not the only action a government can take against an offending company, right? It can actually forbid operations from taking place. It can go in and say, "Sorry, chums, you have to shut that factory down since you've failed to comply with environmental regulations." That can be done without putting the company out of business entirely, which you would have to do to accomplish the same goals with fines.

Levies are effective because they can serve as a warning for more drastic measures, making it hurt, while sending the message that worse can happen than just a mere fine.

And when a business goes ahead and does something that is prohibited then a fine is levied against the business.  Yes, prohibited is a really nice and scary word, and it really is something that will make people sit up and take notice.

So far all I've done is establish equality between the two systems.  On the one hand, if pollution occurs a fine is paid.  On the other hand, if pollution occurs restitution is paid.  On the one hand the threat of paying a fine is enough to change behavior.  On the other hand the threat of paying restitution is enough to change behavior.  Unless you're Berati and think that businesses will shrink in horror from fines and not care about court settlements at all, which makes no sense, I've pretty much laid out an equivalency.

Now here's where restitution works better.  Fines are paid to the government, which may or may not clean up the mess.  Restitution is paid to the people whose property is damaged.  The former enriches the government.  The latter makes amends to the people.

So now it comes down to a very simple choice - which is more important, the people or the government?  Who deserves the money more, the people or the government?  Who was actually hurt, the people or the government?  Berati would have us remember to tithe to the holy government, but I believe in the people.

[Bibliofagus]

The Atol of Kiribati has got 103.000 people. Their islands are disappearing because of global warming.

Do I understand correctly that under this system at least 103.000 x 6 billion (global population, corporate and other legal entities not counted) lawsuits would have to be filed?