A person maintaining a healthy diet and exercise, but who still gets sicks from pollution in the environment has suffered from the externalities of other actors.
When someone shows up at the hospital with an illness, is it necessary to determine whether the illness is due to their own, or due to other’s actions before they should be treated?
Ultimately, the consumer pays any price that is imposed upon the producers, marketers, and vendors.
Granted, but it amounts to having less shit produced, the cost to the consumer can be a net positive. Like that USB cord I bought a few years back, that required a utility knife to open the package, and the packaging weighed more than the product. Yet, we continue to support the production of large volumes of useless garbage. What is the food waste in this country, 30%? 40%? Encouraging producers to flood us with excess ends up IMHO not being a net positive.
I am probably misunderstanding, but I’m not following what your point is or how it relates to what you’re responding to. If I answer, “no” what does that tell you?
The point is that people get sick due to a combination of factors that are both in their control, and out of their control. If we as a society are going to allow people to impose external costs upon others, are we going to expect that those people pay for those costs themselves, or is society supposed to cover those costs, and go after the ones who imposed those costs in the first place?
You said, “A person consuming a poor diet leading to poor and expensive health outcome creates an externality only because we have chosen this to be so in our shared health costs.” I think that that can be re-worded as, “We have chosen to not allow people to die in the street, therefore, consuming a poor diet can be part of what leads to expensive health outcome externalities.”
If someone goes to the hospital because they are sick, and part of why they are sick is because they have been exposed to the pollution that our society allows to enter out air supply, and part of the reason they are sick is because they have consumed food that society has allowed to enter our food supply, how do you calculate exactly how much of that is their fault?
You don’t would be my answer. Once the decision is made to cover society’s ills, then it’s done. Intervention may be appropriate in some cases at the source, the polluter, etc. but I would see the cost of those health outcomes the cost of doing business - not something to recoup. The solution for malum prohibitum types of externalities cost more than they gain in terms of value vs. intrusiveness.
I’m not so sure. Your drilling example makes it sound clear, but that may be because it is outrageous. And, the health care issue is complex, of course.
I would say ALL these limits on externalities are set by our society at levels that are below what would usually be considered mallum in se. That is, we don’t wait for the externality to become so bad that it needs to be outright prohibited before we take action. They tend to be a matter of degree, not a matter of being bad per se.
Pretty much all our limits could be exceeded by some reasonably small amount without doing noticeable damage. That is, there could be a small excess of lead in the water for a short period of time without detectable damage. It’s just that society/government has decided (hopefully informed by science) that exceeding those limits means we are unacceptably sustaining damage or unacceptably paying to resolve the problem (like more sophisticated water processing, providing more healthcare, etc.).
I think we select solutions (that is, taxes vs regulation vs informing the public vs law vs tort …) more because of practicality, effectiveness, what is least impactful on the perpetrator, what is easier to police, what is the least change required to be socially acceptable as a solution (keeping below the maximum noise level, maximum lead in water, etc.), etc.
In the case of cigarettes we use a combination of methods - taxes, informing the public, use and content regulation.
In the case of fast food we use (at least) informing the public (content labeling, etc.), deciding that we’ll accept the healthcare costs of those who choose to eat too much of it. We don’t add taxes to cover the costs and reduce usage like with cigarettes for various reasons.
In the case of neighbors making noise we use law and enforcement, because other methods (taxation? tort? …) have various problems.
Every action of mine - every single one of them - affects you.
Most of my actions, though, affect you so little that we can just be aware that they exist, and otherwise ignore them.
There are some actions I could take that would have a huge effect on you. If I continually do something that has a very bad effect on you, and if you complain about that, should I be able to simply say the magic word “Liberty” to force you to accept the disadvantage and stop complaining?
The problem here is not that your actions affect others so little, the problem is when you have millions of people doing the same thing, the externalized harm starts to add up, even if as individuals, they are minor.
True. And so being able (or not able) to always get oneself off the hook by merely invoking the magic word “Liberty” is an even bigger issue than I made it out to be.
I think Bone deserves props for offering a coherent intellectual position, while staying away from extremist laissez faire. If I understand it properly, it’s non-utilitarian: it puts an a priori constraint on the application of cost/benefit analysis. So Bone would oppose a tax on alcohol or legal marijuana, even if it could be shown that it is a cost-effective method of improving public health outcomes. It’s not unreasonable. I don’t find it compelling, but plenty do.
Regarding the OP, I favor regulating externalities within a cost/benefit framework. But for something like sugar, I’d want to see the study tracing the effects of any given policy, at least if it were done on a national level.
Incidentally, motor cycle helmet laws resemble sugar regulation in some ways. Both ground their justification in health outcomes borne by the taxpayer. The difference is that the effects of a helmet law are a lot easier to measure than the effects of sugar regulation on obesity and public spending.
You are assuming everyone has perfect information, that everyone knows the consequence of every action and that those consequences are known and always decided justly in courts. Why does your neighbor know that drilling for oil in your yard is the cause of some disruption in his property? What makes you think that anyone would be able to tell what they are eating or drinking negatively affects their health? The only reason we know these things today is because of government funded studies, but if you can imagine a world where that never happened because gov’t shouldn’t do those things, how do you know which situations to consider intervention?
On argument I have heard is that one of the most powerful regulatory entities is a private business. Manufacturers are hesitant to release a product if they cannot mark it as UL-approved. So, theoretically, we could replace the government with businesses like that. Though, for what the EPA does, it is difficult to imagine how that kind of regulation could work from the private sector.
Trump is trying to end the Energy Star program, which is essentially that.
Yes, we like liberty.
But, it is far from an absolute, as we’re a huge population living in close proximity, depending on the same resources, etc.
We have a lot of variety in our environment, too, since population density and other factors all vary.
Gun law is an example. The prey in Montana is not the same as the prey in downtown Chicago. Requiring the laws on guns to be the same is ridiculous.
I’m not making that assumption - not sure why you think that’s a necessary element to the argument.
And while I think a lot of useful knowledge has come from government funded studies, that doesn’t mean that without them there would be no privately funded studies. I’m not even clear how government funded studies is relevant.
Yes - I’m pretty firmly against utilitarian arguments. The greater good is great - if you are in the majority. It’s pretty terrible for the individual in the minority. Two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner is may be utilitarian but it’s not great for the sheep.
Of course, two sheep and a wolf voting on what’s for dinner isn’t great for the wolf, either :). I’m not sure this metaphor is great, since it supposes a situation in which one entity’s survival is predicated on the death of the other. Real-world scenarios are rarely this stark.
A sheep with a gun is still a sheep. And the wolf can get one too.
By way of clarification, that’s not really utilitarianism: utilitarianism doesn’t boil down to majority rule.
Benefits of killing sheep: Meal for 2 wolves.
Costs of killing sheep. One sheep dies.
A utilitarian framework doesn’t rely on majority rule. Costs to one party (the sheep) can easily outweigh benefits to two (the wolves).
Let’s present a contrast with utilitarianism as commonly practiced. Placing a tax on cigarettes will reduce smoking by X. That will save Y lives. That’s the benefit. The costs of such a plan are shown in changes in after-tax income inequality. The reduction in economic freedom might get a mention, but it doesn’t warrant inclusion in any serious way; readers are implicitly encouraged to set it aside.*
I’m not saying that’s a great argument. I’m saying that the framework is common and tends to favor sheep over wolves. For better or worse.
That said, cost benefit analysis is hardly the primary determinant of public policy. Not at all.