Well, I oppose disease. I sit here in my chair, separated from the real world by glass and three stories of masonry, and oppose disease. Hell, I’ll even oppose death. And age.
Would a Libertarian government regulate Industry’s environmental responisibilities, or would it just sit back, light up a cigar, and oppose it?
Again, if I understand things correctly, a “Libertarian government” would not attempt to regulate behavior (except in terms of contractual obligation), but would instead take action against coercive behavior.
Theoretically, your contract with a libertarian government might include wording to the effect that you must self-regulate your industry’s effluent in accordance with such-and-such document, etc. In that way, you start out with clear-cut contractual limitations, which is not coercion of you by the government, but is a binding agreement. (Lib? Comments?)
Xeno
Yes, you got it. What I respect about people like you is that you don’t pretend not to understand. You (and Kim and Spidey and others) are honest about your position: you like libertarianism conceptually, but are concerned about certain implications of its implementation. (Did I get that right?)
Lissener
It would use whatever force necessary to stop the pollution.
I’m not sure if this is the thread for the following question as per the OP, but as it seems to have become a general discussion of Libertarian philosophy, I’ll ask it here.
Suppose the masses of people agree that as a society we were better off if the government instituted a certain rule or law, but each individual was better off without it (or might be). Is there any way of dealing with this under your model?
I’m thinking specifically of energy conservation. From the perspective of an individual, it might be in their interest to by a cheaper car that guzzled more gas. But in the long run, the increased consumption of fuels caused by the aggregate consumption will damage everyone.
There are probably other issues of this sort as well.
The only thing I can think of is to consider each individual gas guzzler as causing damage (in a small way) to the larger society. But I think this kind of reasoning might affect other areas of Libertarian thinking as well.
. . . After the fact. And who exactly would stop the pollution: the individual called Libertarian? What force would you include as necessary: a letter writing campaign? Bombing?
Would there be legal repercussions for the polluter? Or would they simply have to say “Oops, my bad” and move the pipes to a darker spot?
In a real-world scenario, would the little-guy neighbor with the pollution-felled kids strewn about his back yard have any real redress?
As you have surmised, I’m pretty ignorant about Libertarianism. Please spin me a speculative scenario that treats this issue. How would you oppose it? Would it be possible to leave a lethally polluting company saying, under it’s breath as it were, “Wow, I better not do that again!”?
Absolutely. It’s the practical application of libertarianism that scares me, because my considered opinion (humble as it is) is that more coercion, suffering and abuse would be possible under such a system than under a more coercive system of government. (But peaceful, honest people would be eminently free.)
IzzyR
Libertarianism does not recognize any “rights” of society. Rights are defined (in the philosophy) as an attribute of property ownership; that is, you have the right, assuming you are peaceful and honest, to make decisions with respect to your property, but not mine. All rights issues in libertarianism are with respect to property.
You might be interested in researching Nobel laureate F. A. von Hayek’s Theory of Spontaneous Order to see how a noncoercive free-market addresses such issues as gas guzzling cars. Entrepreneurs, when free to act, have shown an uncanny ability to address such matters as gas guzzling cars.
(Warning: be careful not to mix the metaphors. Do not, for example, mistake robber baron capitalism for a noncoercive free market!)
Visit Free-Market and do a little browsing through the thousands of texts they have online.
Lissener
You want them punished for thinking about it?
When you said your were serious, what did you mean? Your question asked what a libertarian government would do.
That force which is the minimum required to stop the pollution is that force which is necessary. It’s your question, dude. If you want a specific answer, ask a specific question.
They waive their rights by usurping yours. They go to prison and they restore your property to its condition prior to their coercion.
What real-world scenario? You mean the hypothetical one that you just raised? His redress depends entirely on his contract with his government.
Actually, I think you should let libertarianism wait a bit, and start with general reasoning skills.
Nah. I think what I’m going to do after this is pretty much ignore you.
Rereading my last post I apologize for coming off as so confrontational. But it’s been my impression, perhaps unfairly, that Libertarianism is rarely discussed on any plane other than the drily philosophical, and this thread discussing its real-world viability has still not really addressed many of the possible downsides of a Liberatarian society. It’s my impression that many Libertarians seem to be very glib in their rose-colored rationalizations for such a system and are rarely willing to lay their blueprint over a real world scenario.
I was sincere in asking someone to address from a Libertarian, but nonetheless concrete, perspective, the issues I raised.
Xeno
Though I disagree, how can I help but respect your honest views? 
Always remember, though, that what is practical depends entirely on what you are practicing. If a people are practicing the engineering of a society, then libertarian principles are highly impractical. If they are practicing voluntary human relations in a context of nonaggression, then libertarian principles are the only practical ones there are.
God go with you, my liberal cousin.
Click this link. If you truly seek answers, then we shall see.
oops.
Phil
[… the very rare five laugh award! …]
No; I just want them reasonably sure what the consequences are if they get caught.
Sorry, my fault: I read your It as I.
Confrontational tone aside, I thought I was being specific. I honestly want to know what “force” would be appropriate in such a scenario.
Seriously, how would the victim effect this? If I understand aright, there’s no government agency with an 800 number they can call. Would there be laws specifically rendering such actions illegal?
Please don’t let’s go down this road. You know perfectly well what I mean by a real-world scenario. “Real-world” and “hypothetical” are not mutually exclusive. You can disingenuously divert the argument long enough for me to tell you what you already know, that “real-world scenario” can be paraphrased “hypothetical situation subject to the practical limitations of the real world.”
I honestly don’t know what this means. A literal contract? To be individually negotiated, or the same for everyone?
Cheap shot rendered justifiable from my confrontational tone, but there’s nothing wrong with my reasoning skills. Our vocabulary overlap, perhaps, or my accumulation of the same database you have, but not my reasoning.
That’s probably safest.
I want this understood in precisely the context in which Libertarian feels that Liberals are guilty of legalized theft:
Thank our loving God that such a merciless tyranny exists only in theoretical form!
Waaaay cute, but the reddest of herrings. My wanting to know how Libertarianism addresses such issues in no way suggests that all other systems have them licked. It’s my understanding that a Libertarian system would offer even fewer obstacles to such occurrences, which insofar as my understanding is valid renders it an issue worthy of examination; you seem to be suggesting that the topic can’t be raised by someone who supports a system that, though it addresses and attempts to have an effect on the issue, has yet to eliminate it from the face of the earth.
I support a system that addresses the issue, and was questioning a system that, as far as I understand, does not.
I am thankful that our Loving God is a Libertarian, that He recognizes the sanctity of our consent, and that He does not seize our property for His own purposes.
I know, I know, and it was a gratuitous jab. It’s just funny, you know–whenever someone like you, or Gadarene, or RTFirefly, et al., asks how a government operating under a libertarian context would address X, Y and Z like ours does, and someone points out that, hey, the system you support doesn’t adequately address X, Y or Z, you fall all over yourselves to respond that, well, of course there’s waste here, or bloat there, or inadequacy there! But, dammit, if we just give it more money and authority, everything will be perfect!
Well, libertarianism isn’t a system; it’s an ethic. Any government can operate using that ethic, or whatever other ethic they choose. The ethic under which the United States government operates is political expediency.
That said, a government operating under a libertarian context would offer no more nor no fewer obstacles to pollution than the capitalist United States or the socialist Soviet Union. What it would do is not allow polluters, as they do now, to externalize the cost. The cost of pollution is borne by the polluters, not by the taxpayers or the consumers.
[… sigh …]
One of the fifteen articles, dealing specifically with pollution, that you could have found at the link provided to you above:
[/quote]
The Pollution Solution
by Dr. Mary Ruwart
We all want a safe, pollution-free environment – and with hope in our hearts many of us have turned to government rules and regulations to protect ourselves and our loved ones from the horrors of a ravaged world. Yet pollution of our air and water still threatens. In South America the rainforests are cleared so rapidly that some of us may live to see them vanish from the earth. In Africa, big game animals are hunted to extinction. Where has our environmental strategy failed? What can we do to make things right again?
The Greatest Threat Of All
TOXIC WASTE: Ironically, the greatest toxic polluter of our nation’s environment is the very government we’ve turned to for protection. The greatest polluter is the U.S. military. Pentagon spokesperson Kevin Doxey told the National Aca-demy of Sciences in 1991 that, ‘‘We have found some 17,400 contaminated sites at 1,850 installations, not including formerly used sites.’’ The ‘‘contamina-tion’’ consists of toxic solvents used to de-ice military planes, byproducts of the manufacture of nerve gas and mustard gas, and radioactive debris. In 1988, the Department of Energy estimated that it would take 50 years and $100 billion to clean up a mere 17 of these sites. How can we expect the greatest polluter of all time to effectively halt pollution by business and industry?
RADIOACTIVE WASTE: Even when the courts recognize that our government is guilty of killing people with pollution, victims have had no recourse. In 1984, a Utah court ruled that 10 out of 24 cases of cancer brought to its attention were due to negligence of the U.S. military in association with nuclear weapons testing. The Court of Appeals ruled that even though the U.S. government was responsible, it would not have to compensate its victims. The government enjoys ‘‘sovereign immunity’’ – it does not have to right its wrongs. How can a ‘‘polluter pays’’ policy work if the greatest polluter of all cannot be held liable?
NUCLEAR POWER ACCIDENTS: Liability is the key to protecting the environment. When those who pollute our air, land, and water are held accountable for the damage they do, would-be polluters are likely to be far more cautious. For example, in the late 1950s, private insurance companies refused to insure nuclear power plants, because the enormous risks associated with a possible accident were unacceptably high. Consequently, power companies refused to consider nuclear power. Congress, however, passed a law (the Price Anderson Act) to limit the amount victims of a nuclear power plant disaster could claim to a maximum of $560 million. Of this amount, over 80% would come from taxes. Once the power companies were able to enjoy limited liability for any damage they might cause, nuclear power plants proliferated. Instead of protecting the public, our government passed laws to protect special-interest profits.
RAINFORESTS: Unfortunately, the above story is not an isolated incident. Governments of all countries have shown a strong tendency to sell out their nation’s environmental bounty to special interest groups. Third World dictators have routinely driven natives from their rainforest homes so that those favored by the regime could clear the mighty forests. The cost of such callousness was vividly portrayed in the movie MEDICINE MAN, in which Sean Connery played a scientist who found a cure for cancer in the rainforest. He watched helplessly as the natives who befriended him were driven from their forest home. The rainforest, along with the cancer cure, were both destroyed. The U.S. government frequently directs ‘‘foreign aid’’ to Third World power-brokers to pay for rainforest devastation. U.S. taxpayer dollars are literally fuelling the fire of the slash-and-burn attacks on the tropical woodlands.
IT’S ONLY NATURAL: Betrayals such as those described above hardly seem possible at first, but further reflection illustrates that they are only the natural outcome of political management. Special interests reap great profits from building nuclear power plants while facing little liability, dumping toxic waste without having to clean it up, using radioactive materials without being responsible for the consequences, or harvesting forests for which they didn’t have to pay. When they offer government officials part of this profit to betray the public interest, the temptation is often too overwhelming to resist. If an elected official refuses to be bought, special interests simply fund his or her opponent in the next election. Few honest politicians can survive against such odds. Consequently, the special interests win virtually every time. Indeed, it’s a wonder that our environment has not been totally devastated long before now!
The Easy Way Out
The answer to environmental protection may be gleaned by observing special interest behavior. Let’s take the example of the paper companies who log America’s national forests. The U.S. Forest Service, with our tax dollars, builds three to four times as many logging roads as hiking trails, so that vast sweeps of our precious forests can be felled by paper companies with little cost and only token replanting.
However, on lands which they own privately, the paper companies suddenly become staunch environ-mentalists! They replant so that their own forest acreage increases each year – while the national ones dwindle. In the South, International Paper makes as much as 30% of its profits from recreational uses of its forests.
Why is there so much difference between how paper companies treat their own land and the way they treat public property? When a paper company is allowed to log a national forest, it has little incentive to harvest in a responsible and sustainable manner. After all, the paper company has no guarantees that it will be allowed access to the same forest again. Without ownership, long-term planning and care of forests just doesn’t make economic sense.
Owners, on the other hand, profit from long-range planning because they will eventually reap the fruits of their conservation efforts. Even if they don’t wish to keep a property, selling it becomes more profitable when it is well cared for, and this includes forest property.
With this in mind, we can propose a two-part strategy for environmental protection which can turn each person’s greed into a desire to nurture Mother Nature: 1) individual ownership of the environment and 2) personal liability for damage caused to the property of others.
OWNING A PIECE OF THE EARTH: The British long ago learned how to stop pollution of their rivers. Fishing rights in British streams and rivers are a private good that can be bought and sold. For the last century, polluters have been routinely dragged into the courts by angry owners and forced to rectify any damage they may have caused. Every owner on these rivers has in fact become an environmental protector – because each stands to profit from nurturing the environment.
In the Gulf of Mexico, shrimp fishermen once claimed parts of the ocean as their property in the time-honored practice of homesteading. They formed a voluntary association to keep the waters productive and to avoid overfishing – until the U.S. government took over as caretaker in the early 1900s.
Just as the U.S. government took over the fisheries, so too have Third World governments taken over the rainforests and handed them over to special interests. An important element in protecting the rainforests is to respect the homesteading rights of the native peoples who have consistently exhibited a history of sustainable use. Conservation publications, such as Cultural Survival, recognize that upholding the property rights of native peoples is absolutely crucial to saving the rainforests.
Private ownership encourages preservation of endangered species as well. For example, Zimba-bwe respects the homesteading claims of natives to the elephants on their land. Like other private property, elephants and their products can be legally sold. As a result, the natives jealously protect their valuable elephants from poachers. The natives have every incentive to raise as many elephants as possible so they can sponsor safaris and sell elephant ivory, hide, and meat. As a result, the elephant population has increased from 30,000 to 43,000 over the past ten years. People will protect the environment when they own it and can profit from it.
On the other hand, when governments try to shepherd wild animal herds, disaster is the predict-able result. For example, the Kenyan government claims ownership of all elephants, and hunting has been banned in Kenya. While Zimbabwe’s herds thrived, elephants in Kenya have declined 67% over the last decade.
Environment that is “unowned,’” suffers a condition described by Dr. Garrett Hardin in a 1968 paper as “the tragedy of the commons.” He revealed that property that belongs to “everyone” is the responsibility of no one. Ocean fish, for example, are considered to belong to anyone who catches them; consequently, everyone tries to catch as many as they can today, before a competitor gets them tomorrow. If the ocean could be homesteaded, as with the shrimp fisheries described above, owners would have an incentive to make sure the fish population was maintained and even expanded.
MAKING POLLUTERS PAY: If someone pol-lutes or destroys that piece of the earth owned by another, he or she should be required to restore it. In practice, this could be so expensive, that a polluter could be bankrupted by his or her own carelessness. If corporate officers were made personally responsible for deliberate acts of pollution, they would have little incentive to poison the air, land or water. Making polluters, not taxpayers, responsible for the damage they do takes the profit out of pollution.
The Bottom Line
Privatizing the environment gives owners the incentive to protect it. Making sure that polluters – not taxpayers – compensate their victims is the best deterrent. We can save the earth by making greed work for, instead of against us. What could be more natural?
Sorry, Libertarian, but I’m not gonna read the whole dictionary when all I want to know is if “pipe dream” is one word or two.
(Not to say I won’t read the article you posted; but your link went to the first page of an entire Libertarian organ, not to any specific cite.)