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> I'm curious as to why you think completely unregulated industry would result in the most reduction in pollution, when industries with no pollution regulations

> I'm curious as to why you think completely unregulated industry would result in the most reduction in pollution, when industries with no pollution regulations (but with other regulations) have repeatedly shown to pollute enormously at every opportunity. What mechanism would cause industry to suddenly care about their pollution in that scenario? How could those industries not pollute enormously, when they have to quickly adapt to any new government law or regulation (or they will die) in an unpredictable political and legislative scenario? Even if a company had plans to contain their pollution (and therefore funds allocated for this), they would quickly have to divert those funds as soon as a new regulation impeded on their business. When companies are run in unpredictable, ever-changing scenarios such as being regulated by a government, they can't look into the future with confidence to make financial decisions for it in the present (such is the nature of not being able to predict the next rule coming down the pike). As for your question, it's simple, really. The mechanism that would cause industry to suddenly care about their pollution is called private property - which, don't kid yourself, is not the "private property" extant in the U.S. where there are still taxes for land that is owned, there's eminent domain, there's civil forfeiture, etc. Which is crazy, considering the constitution really only allows the government to own 10 square miles of land, but that's besides the point. With private property, industries would be very careful not to pollute, say, a nearby river they don't own, because the owner might sue them for having damaged their property (just like you can sue for someone driving a wrecking ball through your house by accident or with intent to damage). If the company in question does own their nearby river, they will still have to make sure that they are only polluting the river they own, and not any downstream rivers that are not their property, or they might get sued by those downstream-river owners. The government's job, in this scenario, is to enforce contract law and property rights (via tort law) through its justice courts. Since the river owners and the polluting company (in our example) don't have a contract with each other, only tort law applies. Clearly the company damaged these owners' rivers downstream (let's suppose) so the courts will decide the company must either cease and desist (destroying the property of river owners) and compensate them for the damage caused, or offer to buy them out, or offer to draw a contract that the river owners would agree to instead of winning the lawsuit. If the company owns the nearby river and there are no downstream rivers, they can choose to pollute that river without consequences. If people aren't happy with that, they have many choices: they may bring awareness to the cause, stage a boycott, pool money to offer to buy the river (though the company isn't required to sell, its shareholders nevertheless like money and will be forced to weigh between 1. selling the river and finding some place else to store their waste and byproducts, and 2. continuing to pollute the river that causes them so much grief they have people offering them money to stop - the company will have to find a way to solve that impasse). Most probably this would be solved swiftly since the options outlined do not need the government. I'm sure this will probably raise more questions for you than answer them, but having gone through that same path I can tell you all those questions have satisfying answers scattered all across many books by Rothbard, Nozick et alii but most of them have been compiled nicely by a very smart and helpful lady called Mary J. Ruwart.

mikeash 11y ago
The lawsuit answer is the standard one I pretty much always get for this question. The problem I have is transaction costs. Your example is very good for the lawsuit approach, because there's one polluter and one pollutee and it's very clear with liability, cause and effect, etc. I accept that this solution works for cases like this. Indeed, it's why I mostly don't have to deal with people dumping trash on my front door and such. Property rights work fine for that sort of thing. The problem I have is when both pollution and harm is much more diffuse. You might have thousands or millions of polluters, and millions or billions of victims. For any given polluter-pollutee pairing, the harm is far below the cost of litigation. Yet the total harm can be enormous. For example, let's say there's a city with ten thousand factories and 20 million people. The factories are polluting the air like crazy which makes it unpleasant to be outside and causing all sorts of long-term health problems. (I just got back from Beijing so this is a particularly significant example for me.) Someone living in this city wants to sue the polluters for the massive amount of harm they're causing. How does this work? Here's how I see it not working. They can't sue every factory because they can't afford the legal fees for ten thousand lawsuits. They'll have to pick one, or maybe a few. Now they get to court and have to prove damages. Well, the defendant's pollution is causing about 0.01% of the total pollution affecting the plaintiff. It's negligible. Even if you say that the total harm to the plaintiff is, say, $10 million, the defendant's share of that liability is $1,000. Hardly worth the time to litigate. And will you even be able to prove to the court that that particular factory is responsible for any of the pollution harming that particular plaintiff? Particles don't have serial numbers, after all, and neither do cancer cells. Maybe you manage to put together a class action lawsuit so all 20 million citizens can band together. You still have the same problems of going after an individual factory. Maybe the legal system is structured such that all 20 million citizens can band together and sue all 10,000 factories simultaneously. Aggregate harm can be demonstrated and liability apportioned even though no individual factory can be blamed, and no individual plaintiff can conclusively trace any ailment to the pollution. This works, but all you've done is reinvent something identical to modern environmental regulations, only they're ad-hoc regulations dictated by courts rather than concrete regulations dictated by the legislature. And this is a relatively simple example. How would this deal with, for example, atmospheric mercury pollution that has already caused seafood to be dangerously toxic to children and pregnant women if eaten in large quantities? How would it deal with greenhouse gas pollution which won't cause any catastrophic effects for decades?

mikeash 11y ago

The lawsuit answer is the standard one I pretty much always get for this question. The problem I have is transaction costs. Your example is very good for the lawsuit approach, because there's one polluter and one pollutee and it's very clear with liability, cause and effect, etc. I accept that this solution works for cases like this. Indeed, it's why I mostly don't have to deal with people dumping trash on my front door and such. Property rights work fine for that sort of thing. The problem I have is when both pollution and harm is much more diffuse. You might have thousands or millions of polluters, and millions or billions of victims. For any given polluter-pollutee pairing, the harm is far below the cost of litigation. Yet the total harm can be enormous. For example, let's say there's a city with ten thousand factories and 20 million people. The factories are polluting the air like crazy which makes it unpleasant to be outside and causing all sorts of long-term health problems. (I just got back from Beijing so this is a particularly significant example for me.) Someone living in this city wants to sue the polluters for the massive amount of harm they're causing. How does this work? Here's how I see it not working. They can't sue every factory because they can't afford the legal fees for ten thousand lawsuits. They'll have to pick one, or maybe a few. Now they get to court and have to prove damages. Well, the defendant's pollution is causing about 0.01% of the total pollution affecting the plaintiff. It's negligible. Even if you say that the total harm to the plaintiff is, say, $10 million, the defendant's share of that liability is $1,000. Hardly worth the time to litigate. And will you even be able to prove to the court that that particular factory is responsible for any of the pollution harming that particular plaintiff? Particles don't have serial numbers, after all, and neither do cancer cells. Maybe you manage to put together a class action lawsuit so all 20 million citizens can band together. You still have the same problems of going after an individual factory. Maybe the legal system is structured such that all 20 million citizens can band together and sue all 10,000 factories simultaneously. Aggregate harm can be demonstrated and liability apportioned even though no individual factory can be blamed, and no individual plaintiff can conclusively trace any ailment to the pollution. This works, but all you've done is reinvent something identical to modern environmental regulations, only they're ad-hoc regulations dictated by courts rather than concrete regulations dictated by the legislature. And this is a relatively simple example. How would this deal with, for example, atmospheric mercury pollution that has already caused seafood to be dangerously toxic to children and pregnant women if eaten in large quantities? How would it deal with greenhouse gas pollution which won't cause any catastrophic effects for decades?