Where I grew up government regulations prevented Sunday shopping, I assume to save lives and prevent arsenic poisoning.
The city became a stopping point for cruise ships which was a huge boom for the tourist industry along the water. Problem was that the cruise ships arrived on either Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
One of the shop keepers realized that he could make way more money if he stayed open on Sunday, and then paid the fine. Law abiding shop keepers missed out and suffered as a result.
While this was happening, a very popular produce store realized that there were a couple of loopholes in the regulations based on size. These loopholes were to allow farmer’s markets and flea markets to operate on Sunday. I guess those don’t poison people with arsenic. This shop realized that having the 5 cash registers all in one place (like a normal store) made them one store. But if they spread out the 5 registers, and called each section a different store, they could open on Sunday.
Yes, I know this, which is why I know regulations fail and arsenic can still end up in drinking water.
You seem to think of arsenic as bad, and the government as having the ability to regulate it. Do you know what else contains arsenic? Cigarettes.
Can you tell me why cigarettes are still legally sold and smoked? I’ve asked a few times now.
ETA “Also, the regulations don’t have to prove that the arsenic you put down the well is polluting someone else’s land. The regulations prevent you from putting the arsenic down your own well, full stop.”
And this is where the corruption and incompetence of a government comes into play. If the arsenic isn’t going any where, or hurting anyone, what’s the point of the rule? And if you can’t “prove it” as you said, right there, the regulations don’t have to prove anything, it’s pretty easy to go after small levels of arsenic that aren’t hurting anyone.
Your argument boils down to “regulations can’t stop anything so why have them.”
By this logic, we should also eliminate laws that say you can’t murder anyone. After all, these laws don’t stop murderers. Murders still happen all the time. So we might as well eliminate the laws, and just have the heirs of murdered people take the murderers to civil court.
I’m not sure if you’re aware or not, but the legal system in the US is based on “innocent until proven guilty.” We leave the burden of proof on the accuser, not the accused. It is up to the prosecutor to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed a crime.
In a court of law, there is a test performed to see if an innocent person is found innocent, and a guilty person found guilty.
Each of those test cases has an error associated with it: innocent person sent to jail, guilty person set free. To try and reduce the rate of one means increasing the rate of the other.
Libertarianism is based on the idea that regulations (and government interference) are bad unless proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they’ll do more good than harm.
The alternative is to assume that regulations are good, and those that fail can be fixed with more regulations.
This thread, Distilling For Personal Use is a very good example of a regulation that fails to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it’s delivering on its claim. Same goes for rules against Sunday shopping. But once of the books, once an innocent man is found guilty, it becomes increasingly difficult for him to then prove innocents. But for a guilty man to be free, there is plenty of opportunity for the prosecutor to continue building a case.
What’s funny about you guys bitching about environmental laws is that it took a huge push to get the government to do something, meanwhile coal fired plants continue to spew toxins into the air, but now below the government prescribed levels. Factory farms continue to allow run off into local rivers.
That same effort by those same people could also work without regulations. Right now in your grocery store you can choose between regular vs organic produce. There are those that believe regular is fine, and those that think it’s covered in poison. The result being that organic, local, sustainable has extremely profitable. The market has spoken.
Wearing sunscreen is a good way to avoid skin cancer. It’s the same safety concern as seat belts and helmets. But the government isn’t forcing people to wear it. Why is that? Skin cancer kills about 12,000 a year.
And here we see you don’t understand the difference between a law and a regulation.
You realize that having the law against murder doesn’t stop it, why not have more regulations? Can’t we regulate our way to have fewer murders?
Psychopaths will kill, and very little will stop them. So why treat us all has psychopaths and subject has all to an endless series of meaningless rules?
Look at the progression of regulations trying to stop drunk driving. If a car crash kills, why does it matter so much if the driver was drunk? But seems to matter less if the person was old, or incompetent, or just shitty at driving?
We as a society have started to recognize that drinking while drunk increases the chances that you’ll kill, so we’ve put in more and more regulations to try and prevent it. But each regulation moves further along the chain:
start: drunk driver that has killed someone (which is bad, so we want to stop it)
-> drunk driver that might kill someone
-> drunk that might drive
-> driver that might be drunk
-> person that might become drunk
When the initial regulation fails, the push is for more. So we ramp up the penalty, but that doesn’t work. So we move further down the chain, which means further from an actual criminal. We now stop people at random check points and demand they prove they aren’t drunk. Even on this message board there have been calls to make everyone have a starter interrupt device. And we still have the teetotalers that don’t want anyone to drink and use these deaths to further their cause. I’ve even seen calls for the police to be stationed outside of bars.
Notice still the arbitrary use of the 0.08 blood alcohol limit. Which doesn’t seem to work so people want to push it lower and lower. Some areas have a 0.05 limit where they stop you from driving. Most graduated systems say no alcohol at all.
But in spite of all of this, there has been a gradual shift in society away from driving drunk, just as more and more people wear their seat belts and put on sunscreen. Meanwhile, those intent on driving drunk tend to be way over the limit, and caught after the accident.
And more to the point, insurance companies have their own rules, and have recognized the cost to them if drivers are drunk.
Your points about laws vs. regulations really make little sense, and are merely an exercise in moving definitions around the chess board. Your attempt at painting a slippery slope example with drunk driving does not really work either.
Call them laws, rules, regulations, whatever. The point is that societies by and large have decided that the require these in order to give the citizens a sense of what is allowed and what is not allowed. There is no society that I’m aware of that does not codify a set of rules (call them what you will).
What you are really missing here is that we live in a complex, interconnected natural world. Let’s call it an “ecosystem”. This means that your actions do not stop at your property boundries. The things that you do have an impact on others that may live next door, or indeed may live hundreds of miles away.
That is why we have decided that you cannot do whatever the fuck you please on your land and then maybe suffer some consequences later if and when someone is able to prove a direct causal relationship to the harm they have suffered.
This was true many years ago; Even the Romans had laws about where you could toss your sewage. It is even more true today, when the pollutants that modern industry creates are able to cause impacts thousands of miles away.
Your land is not an isolated box. Do you get this?
When we know that Chemical “A” causes harm, and that Chemical “A” can travel many miles away from its origin on your land, then as a society we have decided to codify a set of rules (regulations, laws, take your pick) that identifies that you cannot spew Chemical “A” on your land. This has the effect, for the most part (except for rule breakers) of preventing people or companies from spewing Chemical A on their land. Of course there are exceptions, but now those who do it KNOW they are breaking a law, rule, regulation and can face a known punishment.
We don’t have to prove the ecosystem was harmed - we know it was, because Chemical A was put into the ecosystem. Your land is also part of the ecosystem. This is the part you don’t get or don’t care about. It’s a CONNECTED, COMPLEX SYSTEM.
Here’s an example of how environmental regulations (laws, rules, guidelines, whatever) work - one I have personal knowledge of.
There’s a forestry regulation that says you cannot harvest trees on a slope that exceeds a certain percentage on the west coast where in rains a lot. This is based on hydrological and forestry studies, as well as previous experience. This regulation is true even for privately owned land.
A particular large landowner and corporation figured “Fuck it, these regulations are bogus. We’re in the boondocks and nobody will care what we do. We’re going to cut these valuable trees down on the land we own.”
A small company downslope owned the rights to seed and harvest clams on the sandy foreshore. Great clam habitat - fairly rare beach for this particular area. They made about 100k a year off this beach. They noticed the logging going on uphill and thought “What in holy hell are they doing?” They reported the company to the officials responsible for enforcing the rule/regulation/law/request. The company was contacted and told to cease and desist immediately or face a large fine. In the face of this regulation and the certain financial hit, and the knowledge they were being watched - they stopped work.
Later that year when the rains hit, the logged slope collapsed, sending tons of rock, trees and rubble down onto the beach below, rendering about 10% of it useless for clam production for the forseeable future (probably several decades minimum until the beach can build up again). Remediation of the beach was logistically and financially impossible due to the remote nature of the location,and the fact that environmental damage is near impossible to fix.
The small clam company did manage after many, many years in the courts to get some compensation out of the large forestry company for the 10% of the beach that was ruined. Luckily though, they were able to remain in business because 90% of the beach was OK. This was because the large forestry company was stopped by the bureaucrats and their regulations.
Under emacknights system, the large company would be free to do whatever they pleased, even if it was stupid in terms of good environmental forestry practice. They would have ruined 100% of the other guys beach, and made a tidy profit. The whole beach would have been damaged for decades rather than a portion. The small company would have gone out of business. Lawsuit? Perhaps. Years later they might have gotten some money. But the beach would be gone, the damage done.
Not to derail the thread, but some of your examples beg for rebuttal. In the matter of coal fired power plants, the fact that emissions are below prescribed levels is a definite improvement over the status quo of 20 - 30 years ago. This is almost entirely due to environmental regulations that have been put in place over the years. Demand for electric power is mostly inelastic, which means the market can have very little direct effect in controlling the utilitie’s emissions. It takes public (i.e. government) action to accomplish this. The Clean Air Act, which libertarians decried as government overreach and utilities said would bankrupt them, has actually been quite successful. The charts and graphs on this page detail air quality improvements over the last 30 years, although they do not directly detail the effects of coal-burning. Note, none of this is to say there are not further improvements to be made.
Regarding your statement:
This is something I’ve had quite a bit of personal experience with. I served for ten years as chairman of a local irrigation district, with responsibility for return (drainage) water quality. As such, I was representative to a larger working group which dealt with Clean Water Act implementation in the middle Snake River Basin or Oregon & Idaho. We had regarded the act with some trepedition, thinking it burdensome on individual farmers, but this turned out not to be the case. The EPA had set the basic maximum allowable toxin levels (known as TMDL’s) for the river and its tributaries, but left the process up to state and local agencies, with grants-in-aid available and a generous time frame to come into compliance. Ours was one of the last regions in the country to have the CWA implemented and we had ample experience from other regions to draw from. The point is, factory farms and CAFO’s are not allowed to continue polluting; the problem is being addressed, and the results are becoming apparant. The process is ongoing, the situation is not perfect, but it took government action, the regulatory action that you despise to bring it about.
I would also take issue (briefly) with your statement:
Organically-grown food is strictly a niche market. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere on this forum, it is not especially profitable to the producer, it requires high inputs and is expensive to produce. Likewise, it is not very profitable to the retailer, since first cost is higher, requiring a lower markup in order to be competative, and because of its greater cost is not readily available to everyone, especially those with a limited food budget.
It’s been shown, in this thread that libertarianism is probably not workable on a microcosmic scale such as “libertarian islands”. Even on a macro scale, it is not really practical, except perhaps under primitive conditions. And no matter how much we may like to romanticize a simpler more primitive world, very few people would care to return to living that way. This, I think, is the primary argument against the libertarian ideal. Libertarians wish to turn back the social order to a more primitive world, that may only exist in their imaginations; a world that few really desire and which would not function well at any rate.
SS
Do you seriously think you’ve been arguing in good faith, throughout any of these threads?
If you can’t tell me what lives are saved by banning Sunday shopping, or why the government allows toxic cigarettes to be sold, why should anyone listen to the rest of your little quips about regulations?
In terms of the free market moving faster than the EPA, consider the chemical BPA found the coating used in water bottles. While the EPA is still deliberating manufacturers have started offering BPA-free bottles. By the time the EPA comes out with a ruling it’s unlikely the substance will even be available.
This does nothing to show you know what the fuck you’re talking about.
Notice that the government would have done nothing, at all, even after the guys logged the shit out of it. The government failed to regulate. And even with the regulations a huge section of the beach area was ruined.
Stop attacking “emacknights system” when you can’t even address your own god damn world you currently live in and claim to have personal knowledge of.
In your current situation, that you described, and claimed to have personal knowledge of, what happens if the company had logged the shit out of that slope? Notice that the regulation did nothing to stop them.
So the company makes a bunch of quick money, pays their execs, then the slope gives way and destroyed the beach and kills a bunch of orphans.
Great, so the government fights them in courts for several years, maybe decades, before the company declares bankruptcy letting the execs walk away to start a new logging company.
Meanwhile, the beach is still ruined, and the fisherman is broker. Your regulations did nothing except make it more expensive for good loggers.
And as you’ve been told, repeatedly, but chosen to ignore, the fisherman would be entitled to seek damages. Just like in the current system, which he’ll probably have to do anyways.
You are so completely blind to your partisan ideology that no regulation can fail, government can’t do wrong. The clammer still had to seek an injunction to get it stopped. Which is how an libertarian system would work. You are not allowed to harm other people, what about that don’t you get? The current system let’s people hide behind corporate legalities. The regulator system let’s the process get dragged out. And in the end the beach was still destroyed.
Bullshit, that you don’t know the difference isn’t my problem.
No, words have meanings. If you want to blur it all together as “rules” the discussion is meaningless. Libertarians aren’t against laws, or rules, or order, or even some regulations for that matter. You’ve been told this countless times yet you continue to push forward beating a dead straw man.
Yup, wanna pick a few as examples? How about societies that don’t let women show their faces? That’s a pretty common one. How about eating pork? Or meat on Fridays? Or buy alcohol on Sundays? Or use an oven on a Saturday?
For all the rules that worked, how many have to be horrible failures that persist for decades after?
No, that is the problem. The world is complex. Creating a rule to solve one problem usually leads to causing another, some call this the law of unintended consequences, but you can call it a rule if that helps you.
Even that example about logging brings up the same issue. What is the correct angle? Are their other factors? If the angle is set at X, the issue is complex, meaning that there will be areas <X that cause landslides, and areas that are >X that could be logged.
Just as there are people intoxicated at 0.07 and fine at 0.09. The world is complex.
No one is denying that fact. And it’s even been told to you a few times now that when the problem gets wide spread enough there is a need for government involvement.
That’s right, Libertarianism includes government involvement, laws, rules, regulations. You know this, because you’ve been told this. Yet you love your little straw man so much you can’t let it go.
Is it too much that you bother to prove a direct causal relationship? What is the direct causal relationship that hurts people when two dudes get married? Or even, gasp, someone buys alcohol on a Sunday? See, those are regulations too.
Yet, as you say this raw sewage flows from Canada into the US, and smog flows from the US into Canada. Where is the political will to correct that? I’d love to see the reaction if the EPA said it was going to shut down a factory because it was causing pollution in Canada.
Everyone gets this.
Libertarianism is not anarchy, do you get that yet?
Bullshit. Again look at the issue of BPA. Look at cigarettes. Look how long it takes the government to act. It was the US government that happily set of a series of atomic weapons, not evil faceless corporations.
And we’re back to the punishment issue. In China the punishment for breaking an government regulation can be death. In the US it might be a fine. So what happens if the company sees it as more profitable to pay the fine than change their dumping practices?
And what’s to say the government will get the regulation right? What happens when there is a conflict of interest?
Should we spray for mosquitoes or let people die from West Nile or Malaria? Should we allow pesticide use or accept widespread crop failure? Should we allow a river to be diverted for irrigation, or let crops die so that fish down stream aren’t impacted.
Most of the examples you use speak more to an issue of information, that is to say, it takes time before people realize chemical A causes effect B. Most of the time people respond positively to the information by altering their behaviour. Fewer women smoke or drink during pregnancy. More people buckle their seat belts.
Even the regulation concerning logging is often met positively from companies that don’t want to destroy the land, and simply needed the information made available.
Essentially, give people good information, and let them make their own decisions, and let them face the consequences of those actions. Instead, the situation you so badly want is to have the government play the role of mom in our society. Thank you, but I know to tie my shoe laces and where a hat when it’s cold.
Yes, most people know this because it was already pointed out to you. Libertarianism is not anarchy, it is not absent rules, laws, or regulations. It recognizes the world is complex, and acknowledges that often the world is so complex that the government trying to meddle makes things worse.
Did you even read what I wrote? Go back and read it again, you didn’t seem to comprehend.
The government did put in logging regulations. The company attempted to flout them. They were caught after they had only logged 10% of the area. They were told that they were on notice as being in non-compliance and continued logging would net them huge fines, in excess of the profits they stood to make. They stopped. 90% of the beach was saved. This is factual, it happened, and is an example of what properly enforced regulations do all the time.
In your system, a bankrupt clam farm would have been required to sue a multinational corporation that had just caused irreparable damage to the environment. Ya, I’m sure that would have turned out just great. And the other 90% of the beach would have been destroyed.
Regulations can fail, and do so all the time. In this case, however, the clam farm did not have to go to court to seek an injunction. They reported to the regulatory body, who then contacted the forestry firm and told them they were in non compliance. You can read, can’t you?
In the end, the beach was not destroyed. Please read before responding.
If the regulation actually works, that’s great. But like you said, “Regulations can fail, and do so all the time.” And what’s the solution? More regulation. When those fail? More regulation.
The case in Texas shows how simple and effective a regulation can be, without the need for a massive Glass Steagall type act, or the Dodd one that followed.
But in the end, it all could have been avoided if people took it upon themselves to put equity into their houses.
Regulations only work if the people writing and enforcing them are capable of doing so.
No, the solution is to fix the regulation so that it works, not to put more ineffective regulations in place.
This is probably where we differ. You see the majority of regulations as being stupid and useless and written by idiots, with some being OK and in need of keeping.
I see the majority as being useful and workable, and written by people who know what they’re doing (eg civil servants with expertise, not career politicians), with some being stupid and in need of re-writing or tossing.