If we’re just making up fantasy countries, I say in Libertaria there’s strict anti-pollution laws.
After all, pollution’s an externality. In my version of Libertaria, externalities are the areas government DOES get involved in.
The interesting thing about that is that as far as I’ve heard the rating agencies didn’t take bribes or kickbacks from the companies whose instruments they were rating. The problem was a combination of them naturally wanting the company to come back with more business, and so the rating agencies didn’t want to piss them off, and them publishing their formulas, which allowed the investment houses to construct instruments that would get the desired rating. Both things are hard to pass laws against.
As far as the thread goes, the answer seems to be the government. One wonders then why libertarians are not pressuring lawmakers (on the right, those on the left don’t need it) to pass stronger laws. Al I hear is how much business will suffer from being forced to pay to not pollute.
Hold on-- isn’t “stronger laws” just another way of saying “more regulation”?
Libertarian ideals lead to indentured servitude!
I’m only kind of joking.
But how do you get around the political-cultural reluctance to spend the money? Law enforcement is never cheap. You can narrow its scope, but it still will always cost more than Libertarians will ever sincerely admit it is worth. And private donations will never cover it, so at some point you have to bring up the “T” word . . .
I actually read once, in a sidebar in an economics 101 textbook, that Libertarians believe in “voluntary slavery,” but I was never clear on what that means.
I think a lot of what people see as the politics of libertarians are the ideas put forth by the most extreme of the group. And, in a lot of ways, it can lend itself to extreme viewpoints. But I think that most people who would self-identify as libertarian, or libertarian leaning, don’t hold the more radical positions as espoused by those getting the air time. It’s really no different in this respect than other ideologies - those with those most extreme views tend to yell the loudest, and so are heard the most often. Libertarians are maybe worse off in this regard, since a) there are a lot of differing opinions in the group; b) many people are unfamiliar with the philosophy, or at least less familiar with it; and c) again, there are some extreme positions (that could be viewed as taking some of the ideals to their logical conclusions) that are vehemently espoused by some.
The thing is, it’s not just libertarians who are reluctant to spend money - most people don’t like to be taxed. Most everyone feels like the government spends money on stuff that they don’t want - whether it’s a war in the Middle East, or agricultural subsidies, or healthcare, or welfare, or wiretapping, or the war on drugs. For the most part, Libertarians agree with all of the things that other people think we should cut spending on - it’s just that we agree with everyone on all their issues, whereas other groups disagree with each other on what should be cut. OK, that’s said in jest, but there’s some truth to it.
And when it comes to law enforcement, I don’t think many would suggest private donations are even remotely the appropriate remedy. That just plain old wouldn’t work.
It seems to be that if you’re a Libertarian then the ability to duck and dive is a must.
We’re against all forms of government interference, oh except for the armed forces, because we’d very soon lose our libertarian status to those who didn’t hold our views.
Oh yes and of course we’d need taxation to pay for it, but apart from that we’re against taxation on principle, oh and money.
But we’ll make an exception on that one because we need some way to pay for the armed forces that will protect us.
Just this once we’ll have some sort of body to design, print and distribute this “money”.
And we’ll have no paper pushers earning their living at our expense, we can do our own paper pushing thankyou.
Well except for the people who have to administer the tax collection of the “money” needed to pay for our armed forces.
And of course some people to make sure that those who are reluctant to pay actually do so.
And so on.
And then again, oh we’re totally against anything more then the absaloute minimum of government legislation, but of course in Libertaria even we would try to stop people polluting/poisoning where we live and work.
And murdering people…
And commiting burgulary…
Or defaulting on their contracts…
Or telling everyone that we murder children…
Or “Oh I’m not THAT sort of Libertarian , I’m the sort that believes in laws, government constructed infra structure, air traffic control regulations ,manufacturing standards and advertising regulations,…oh wait !”.
Unlike the Mad Max movies Libertairianism doesn’t work.
Not even in the countries where its practiced, like for example the Horn of Africa.
I want to bring a little clarity on emission offsets to this conversation. They’re administered by the states or air districts, so the exact rules vary from location to location, but they’re all set up to comply with the Clean Air Act, which forms the spine of the mechanism.
ERCs are sold from one facility to another facility. Big NOx, Inc. upgrades its NOx reduction technology and reduces it’s emissions, then applies for the ERCs with the Air District. Smog Inc. wants to expand, so they look to buy the offsets from Big NOx. The amount of offsets Smog Inc. has to purchase is slightly greater than the increase of NOx it will emit, so the overall amount of emissions in the District decreases slightly. The District gets some money during the permit applications and possibly when the offsets are transferred. The reduction is one time and reductions are permanent. The purchase is one time and the ERCs are good until they’re sold.
Overall, it’s a fairly good system and air quality has increased in most Districts. There are a few areas where the market is essentially frozen due to the cost of offsets (South Coast AQMD, which includes Los Angeles), but those are the exception. In those cases, there is probably some leakage, where industry moves to the next District over where the offsets are cheaper. This isn’t a huge problem because the offsets are cheaper because the District has better air and adding a little pollution isn’t as much of an issue.
Carbon offsets are a little different. They are only good for one year rather than in perpetuity like ERCs. If you have more than you need in a given year, you can sell them, but that doesn’t lower your limit for next year. Lowering emissions each year is done by reducing the overall number of credits available over time. Another issue is leakage. The problem with greenhouse gas is that it’s a global issue rather than a local one. You can move one District (State, Country) over, and the emissions have an equal impact on the climate.
Finally, no regulation (in Social-La) or threat of lawsuit (in Libertopia) will ever prevent an environmental release. They are only ways of dealing with the impacts. I lean toward the regulatory mechanism because it reduces frivolous cases by establishing “safe harbor” levels while trying to make potential polluters prevent release. Without safe harbor levels or ambient air quality standards, you would end up with everybody filing suit like in California after Proposition 65 was passed but before it was reformed with the safe harbor limits. Without some kind of restriction, somebody would get the idea of filing suit against every car that drove by his house and every burger joint upwind of him.
A few points on some of the above comments, in no particular order:
On Limited Liability: who do you sue? The CEO? The guy who actually turned the valve, on orders from somebody higher up the chain? Without the various government agencies companies have to report to, how do you even find out who the CEO is? And what prevents him from having J Worthington Foulfellow, CEO and Chairman of the Board scraped off his door and replaced by Jimmy Foulfellow, Second Assistant Sanitary Engineer Who Isn´t Responsible for Anything? And what happens when the people running the local company are just taking orders from a B of D in Saudi or somewhere else unavailable for suing?
On Slavery: there used to be a (once eponymous) Libertarian fanatic on the board who said in specific answer to my question that slavery for debt was a basic element of Libertopia, and that you could do anything you want to your slaves, including killing them if they didn’t work to your satisfaction, except you couldn’t rape them. He didn’t explain how you got your money back from a slave by shooting him or her.
Anyway, how, without the EPA, which has the power to inspect your factory, do you determine even what company to sue? If there’s an industrial park upstream, with a couple hundred factories, and your kids fall in the river and come out looking like Gollum, do you sue everybody within range? I would imagine things would be something like they are here in Mexico, where trespassing on Alcoa’s (for instance) Private Property looking for pollution will get you arrested and beat up if you’re a Mexican, or arrested and thrown out of the country if you aren’t.
And what do you do about non pointsource pollution, like leaded gasoline? You can’t file ten thousand lawsuits, against everybody driving a high compression car, for one tenthousandth of the value of your braincells even if you could find out who they were, which you can’t.
Maybe I’ll think of some more stuff later.
All of these conversations, where everyone disagrees about what exactly Libertaria would look like, serve to support my conclusion that Libertaria is just not stable. Everyone seems to agree that there are SOME laws (Libertaria is not Anarchia), which means that there is a legislature, which means that within a generation or so Libertaria will have limited liability companies, bankruptcy law, the SEC, FDIC, FDA, and so on, for exactly the same reasons that the US now has them–enough people want them.