I am new to libertarian philosophy and would like to ask the members of the mises.org forums how exactly would Austrians try to prevent environmental degradation? From the papers and blog entries I've read about the subject it seems that Austrians think that private owners of the environment would act to preserve it. However what if a situation arises where the private property owner gains personally from degrading the environment and externalizes the cost onto other people. The victims in this case may not know the origin of the pollutants. For instance a company may dump chemicals into a river. For victims downriver it may be impossible or extremely expensive to trace the source. Another example would be burying radioactive waste that eventually leaches into the groundwater. What's the Austrian solution to these problems?
Welcome to the Mises forum! Be sure to check out the newbie thread for forum tips and how-to's.
For some resources on your question:
"Environmental Preservation: A Matter of Property"
"Austrians on the Environment"
"An Austrian Theory of Environmental Economics"
"A Primer on Natural Resources and the Environment"
"Environmentalism Without Government"
"Privatizing Climate Policy"
"Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution"
Property rights and pollution.
Free market environmentalism in today's world
Playlist: The Environment and Natural Resources
degrading the environment and externalizes the cost onto other people.
In the real world, you will find that this situation invariably occurs when there is some kind of public resource which can be polluted either entirely without consequence or merely at the cost of filling out some paperwork or bribing a few of the right administrators.
The victims in this case may not know the origin of the pollutants. For instance a company may dump chemicals into a river.
The river's a fairly easy case, you just take samples up the river until you find the point where the chemical is no longer present. Every river has only two banks so there are only two possibilities for where the chemical is originating.
For victims downriver it may be impossible or extremely expensive to trace the source. Another example would be burying radioactive waste that eventually leaches into the groundwater. What's the Austrian solution to these problems?
Is there something magical about having a government that solves these problems? It seems to me you still have those same possibilities even if you have a government that is charged with the regulation of rivers and radioactive waste.
I think the primary tool to prevent these kind of wantonly reckless behaviors is unlimited liability. People think that the government primarily intensifies punishments for wrong-doing and, thereby, reduces the amount of wrong-doing in the world. But I think that careful study shows the exact opposite is really the case. The government reduces the liability (and, therefore, the punishments) of itself and its private-sector buddies from what would obtain otherwise. This reduced liability causes an increase in wrong-doing and is generally erosive of the social order.
Clayton -
Malachi:This is easy to refute empirically. Go for a walk or a drive. Count the pieces of trash you see on private property vs the pieces of trash you see on public property.
If I had a cake and ate it, it can be concluded that I do not have it anymore. HHH
ThatOldGuy:Haha. Never thought of it like this; thanks for the perspective, Malachi.
Yeah Stossel has touched on this a few different times. Here he talks about government (mis)management of public forest areas:
More recently, he did an entire episode on the "tragedy of the commons"...
(write up on the public park segment here.)
I will have to check out Stossel on these matters then! As it pertains to the OP, The Property and Environment Research Center is a pretty good resource for market solutions to environmental problems- a quick search on most topics will lead you to studies and papers regarding the matter.
However what if a situation arises where the private property owner gains personally from degrading the environment and externalizes the cost onto other people.
If this is the situation than the property owner will be "degrading" his own property, which is within his rights. Insofar as he externalizes the cost onto others (assuming that these are third-parties) then they are capable of bringing the indvidual responsible to court for any involuntary property damages they may have sustained on/against their private property.
Another example would be burying radioactive waste that eventually leaches into the groundwater. What's the Austrian solution to these problems? Those who have their property damaged by the actions of this company can take it to court (NB: most water sources -including rivers- are publicly owned). Rothbard talks about environmental protection in this book (esp. "Conservation, Ecology and Growth"):
Thanks for providing links guys. I'm slowly working my way through them. In the meantime I think I should clarify my questions. Firstly am I correct in assuming that Austrians would not want a government agency overseeing and regulating the distribution and handling of dangerous chemicals? (For instance polonium 209, cesium 137, plutonium, PCB's, dioxins, mercury, benzene, etc.) Secondly what if a situation occurs where: 1.) The cost of pollution is externalized onto very many people. (In this case let's say buried cesium-137 is leaching into the groundwater and poisoning the wells in the area). 2.) For every person there exists a threshold amount of damage where anything over that the person will turn to litigation to cover the cost. (So for instance a fender bender may not warrant suing the other party for most people because the cost is too low but someone totalling your car probably would). 3.) The cost of pollution borne by each individual person is below their individual threshold amount. 4.) The cost of finding the source of pollution is relatively high. (This seems reasonalbe in many circumstances. Taking water, soil and air samples requires expertise which can become pricey. Especially if one is unsure of the source and must take multiple samples in order to hone in on the source).
[Say a firm is paid to dispose of a dangerous radioactive substance like cesium 137. Cesium 137 is an alpha emitter making it hard to trace. Cesium 137 is also water soluble so it can enter the body easily. Here our firm is burying it in leaky containers. It is leaching into the groundwater. Our firm is a sole proprietorship and is completely amoral. The owner only cares about the environment is the sense that he doesn't want to get sued. Luckily cesium 137 is almost impossible to track so he has no fears. He does not personally live in the area so he is not affected by the cesium contaminated groundwater.]
Under this scenario that I constructed there would seem to be much more pollution under an Austrian government than under a statist government. Individual firms would in effect have a much lower cost of disposing of pollutants. Releasing pollutants into the environment can be done as long as no one finds out you're the ultimate source. The burden of proof is on the plaintiff and he would have to, without the aid of state subsidized environmental scientists, hire a team to construct a case. No easy feat by any means and probably beyond the financial means of most people.
I also take issue with the concept of "unlimited liability." Such a thing, IMHO, does not exist. Some wells just aren't deep enough to cover the cost. (See the failure of AIG's CDS's in 2008). Also who decides how much insurance is needed before a project goes through. Would it be a government environmental agency that decides this? What if a polluting firm is ultimately found culpable for damages and is sued into bankruptcy. The entire cost has not been covered and the victims are left holding the bag.
I am forced to conclude that an Austrian system would produce suboptimal environmental conditions when compared to a democratically elected statist system
Thanks for the replies in advance.
I would like to pose another scenario. How would an Austrian style government manage wild game populations? Would there be a fish and wildlife agency that sets bag limits and seasons and such? Would the free market eventually cause the game to be hunted and fished out within a few seasons?
jctruman:Releasing pollutants into the environment can be done as long as no one finds out you're the ultimate source. The burden of proof is on the plaintiff and he would have to, without the aid of state subsidized environmental scientists, hire a team to construct a case. No easy feat by any means and probably beyond the financial means of most people.
I'm still confused as to how you think such a thing is solved with a government. It's as if you're under the impression that the existense of a government all of a sudden creates more resources, or means more resources are available to accomplish more things. How exactly is it that within your proposed system of statism you'd all of a sudden be able to find the source of the pollution, whereas without having to pay for the enormous wasteful bureaucracies you wouldn't have the resources to do it?
jctruman:How would an Austrian style government
One thing you need to recognize is that Austro-libertarians tend to be "voluntarists", which is also sometimes characterized as "anarcho-capitalist". This means for most Austrians, there is no such thing as an "Austrian style government".
Would the free market eventually cause the game to be hunted and fished out within a few seasons?
Evidently not. It's actually the opposite. It's only when there is a free market and private property that resources tend to be preserved.
Here government would just make blanket regulations regarding the distrubution and handling of certain chemicals and pollutants. So, for instance, no one would have access to cesium 137 or benzene without extensive checks and paperwork. It would head it off at the pass before it starts to cause problems.
What about Dodo birds, Great Plains buffalo and the collapse of Atlantic cod fisheries. All, except perhaps the last example, existed under a more-or-less free market framework. All resulted in market failures.
There aren't necessarily more resources but more resources are more accessible to average citizens.
How do you designate otherwise public goods as private property? The ocean, the air, space?
And fish and game populations that move around an area. Can they ever be privately owned?
What if I "own" these animals and decide to exterminate them because I view them as pests. (Irrational yes but there are plenty of historical instances of individual people with resources acting irrationationally.) The inhabitants of this region all share the "cost" of not having deer or fish. Let's extend this past deer to pandas or California Condors. Say I own every single panda alive. My company does a cost benefit analysis and decide that it is more profitable to harvest each panda for the "ancient Chinese medicine" market which, in this hypotehtical situation, is blowing up. Knowing that they hold the supply in their hands and by exterminating the source the price of panda teeth or whatever will go through the roof. They benefit greatly at the expense of everyone else. Under a Austrian style government there is nothing stopping that firm from doing that aside from the profit motive. That's IMHO taking quite a gamble with resources that can be easily lost forever.
To add onto what John James is saying, here is a more recent Example. There was a recent case in Texas where The Friends of Animals foundation won a court case over-turning a law that permitted the hunting of 3 types of gazelle. In their home countries, these gazelle are now nearly extinct but back in 1979, ranchers saw how profitable it would be to hunt them in the states, so they brought them back and bred them. Here is part of the story and the numbers along with a source links,
"'Ranchers in this country are very private-property individuals,' said Charly Seale, the executive director of the Exotic Wildlife Association in Ingram, Texas, about a 90-minute drive west of San Antonio. 'We bought the animals with our own money and they're telling us what to do with them. They are not anybody's animals but ours.'
Seale is so opposed to the permitting process that he's sold the 23 scimitar-horned oryx he was breeding.
To ranchers, the numbers of the Texas-raised antelope tell the story: Scimitar-horned oryx increased from 32 in 1979 to 11,032 in 2010, addax grew from two in 1979 to 5,112 in 2010 and the dama gazelle's population increased from nine in 1979 to 894 in 2010." (http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/01/2725827/new-rule-will-harm-endangered.html)
When The Friends of Animals spokesperson was confronted with these numbers he said, "They are right, but raising animals to shoot them is not conservation." To me, it seems if an animal is going extinct and the only way to save them is to make it profitable to raise them for purposes of game, then better for the gazelle. If they aren't hunted by people, some other animal is going to hunt them.
anyway, The Friends of Animals wants to ship all of them back to senegal in West Africa, where they are currently going extinct! We have thousands here in the Texas alone. They have a few hundred in the entire country.
"If men are not angels, then who shall run the state?"
jctruman:Here government would just make blanket regulations regarding the distrubution and handling of certain chemicals and pollutants. So, for instance, no one would have access to cesium 137 or benzene without extensive checks and paperwork. It would head it off at the pass before it starts to cause problems.
Oh I see. So you just make a law against something and it prevents the bad thing from happening. Kind of like how laws against child labor and prostitution in 3rd world countries prevent child labor and prostitution from occuring in 3rd world countries.
It makes you wonder why they haven't outlawed cancer and AIDS yet.
It would really be helpful if you would at least try to get through some of the resources I provide before continuing along with notions that are addressed (and debunked) in them. It would save a lot of time.
I'm not even saying "here's a bunch of books; read em." I mean the Stossel video I've posted twice in this thread now is only 15 minutes. If you would have watched it just 8 minutes and seven seconds in, you'd see the fish example addressed. 11minutes and sixteen seconds in, you'll see the buffalo example addressed.
I am trying to help you. You could at least try and help yourself. (Unless of course you're less interested in actually learning anything and more interested in just spouting your own fallacious notions and trying to convince yourself you're right.)
So lemme get this straight. The more money the government takes from average citizens, the more money the average citizens have access to? Yeah I suppose that makes sense.
Again, there are entire treatises written on this. I've given you plenty of links (to works of varying length and multiple formats)...from video of hour long lectures, to simple newspaper-length articles. If you're not going to bother to look at any of them, I don't see how I can help you.
One more example. From a previous thread.
Please look at these things.
:EDIT:
I forgot to add some more for you:
"The Feds versus the Indians":
"It was also official government policy to slaughter as many buffalo as possible as a means of eventually starving out the Indians. It was not just the "tragedy of the commons" that was responsible for the near extinction of the American buffalo; it was official U.S. government policy."
I guess there goes your notion of government protecting the wildlife
And here's an interesting look at the idea of land rights from the perspective of the natives:
"Libertarians and Indians: Proprietary Justice and Aboriginal Land Rights" [PDF]
Oh I see. So you just make a law against something and it prevents the bad thing from happening. Kind of like how laws against child labor and prostitution prevent child labor and prostitution from occuring in 3rd world countries.
jctruman:some public land is hard to privatize
Uh. Why?
It seems to ultimately hinge on the designation of otherwise public goods as private property.
"Public goods"
"A Few Notes on Public Goods"
"Pareto Optimality, External Benefits and Public Goods: A Subjectivist Approach" [PDF]
"A Theory of the Theory of Public Goods" [PDF]
"Wresting Land from the Sea: An Argument Against Public Goods Theory" [PDF]
"Of Private, Common, and Public Property and The Rationale for Total Privatization" [PDF]
"Fallacies of the Public Goods Theory and the Production of Security" [PDF] (yes the focus here is on security and defense, but you can relate the understanding of "public goods" is relevant.)
Yet how does it ultimately prevent the scenarios I posed?
How does simply instituting a law against something prevent it?
For the latter example how does one own a public resource like an aquifer?
How does one own anything?
Just because some laws may be ineffective does not mean all laws are ineffective.
Just because the Earth isn't Nirvana it doesn't mean more laws are needed...nor that having more laws will get us closer to that.
OECD countries manage to keep child labor and prostitution under control through laws.
I'm sure the child prostitutes would disagree with you.
Third world countries are ineffective at enforcing some laws. Whether that's through a lack of resources, imcompetence or corruption. But I don't think we should use that as an excuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
So basically if something doesn't work, and in effect creates the exact opposite result of what it is intended to bring about, that's no reason to not just continue doing it.
Yes, individual citizens will have access to a greater amount of certain resources under a statist government. (Police protection, fire protection, environmental scientists checking drinking water, etc.) Not to mention pooling resources is oftentimes more efficient than buying or renting on an individual basis.
Please explain how taking things away from people means they have a greater amount and/or greater access to those things.
jctruman:Just because some laws may be ineffective does not mean all laws are ineffective.
This is poor argumentation because I will turn right around and say to you, "Just because some laws are effective, doesn't mean all laws are effective. And, compared to what are these laws effective, and what are these laws effective at doing? Effective is a very comparative term. I would say drunk driving laws are effective at keeping some drunk drivers off the road. I think a free-market would be much more effective. And, as to the "effective at doing what" question, you probably believe that drunk driving should be illegal. I do not. To me, these laws are effective at restricting my freedom to drink and drive. You may say they are effective at making a safer society. We disagree on the terms. Be more specific.
*Note: I do not endorse driving drunk. See my thread post here (http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/28776/463953.aspx#463953) for clarification.
jctruman:OECD countries manage to keep child labor and prostitution under control through laws.
I think what john is saying is that it is not the law that keeps the children out of labor or prostitution. It is the economic environment in which they live. If child is able to go to school instead of work in a sweat shop, it is because his or her parents live under circumstances where it may not be necessary for the child to do so. Child labor laws are harmful to a country, and especially the poor. If there is such a law, and the child may no longer be hired for labor, the family may not bring in enough money to eat that day. So children turn to even less desirable occupations such as crime, drug dealing, or prostitution where the employers will not likely be in compliance with the laws anyway, due to the nature of their business' being illegal. So, if these countries manage to have a low prostitution and child labor rate, it is not because of a law. It is because of the market allowing these characteristics to be possible.
By the way, I checked out some of the countries part of the OECD. Here is what i found just to name a few.
India: India's federal police say that around 1.2 million children are believed to be involved in prostitution. A CBI statement said that studies and surveys sponsored by the ministry of women and child development estimated that about 40% of all India's prostitutes are children.
Afghanistan: Bacha Bazi is a form of child prostitution employed by Afghan warlords where small boys are regularly bought and sold into sexual slavery.
Then you have Aruba, Algeria, Pakistan, Sudan, and Uganda; yeah, these places are well-known for their humane treatment of children.
Oh, and here we have Colombia: I have personal experience with this place (which I wont explain in great detail). Yeah, isn't this where 75% of all cocaine is produced and exported from? Here are a bunch of statistics with sources regarding Colombia's use of CHILD LABOR in the PRODUCTION OF COCAINE.
And look! Colombia has its very own wikipedia page detailing its child prostitution.
To be fair, there are hundreds of countries on there. Some (or in this case a lot) are going to be some bad eggs. But its not that the laws are bad or ineffective, right? Kidding, I would say its not just third world countries that are ineffective at administering the laws, but all governments.
jctruman:So lemme get this straight. The more money the government takes from average citizens, the more money the average citizens have access to? Yeah I suppose that makes sense.Yes, individual citizens will have access to a greater amount of certain resources under a statist government. (Police protection, fire protection, environmental scientists checking drinking water, etc.) Not to mention pooling resources is oftentimes more efficient than buying or renting on an individual basis.
No, they do not. Who do you think pays for these so-called "services"? We, the people, do. If they don't tax us, then they inflate us, or indebt us, or, hopefully and least likely, they cut spending somewhere else. A truer version of your statement would be "Some individual citizens will superficially appear to have access to a greater amount of certain resources, while certain other individual citizens will most certainly have less under a statist government (if we do not account for opportunity cost)."
and now you bring up pooling resources? Where was the acknowledgement of class action lawsuits to answer your initial point? Isn't that a pooling of resources that might solve your supposed problem? And you do not need a state to employ the benefits of pooled resources. What about a homeowners association that pools money to pay for their police rather than a coerced blanket tax? Have you considered the costs added to any service when it is controlled by a government bureaucracy? JJ's stossel post showed the department of the interior literally misplacing billions of dollars; they have no idea where it went! Can you imagine if a private firm simply misplaced $2.5 billion dollars? It's unthinkable, unless you have some shady money magic going on, then it isn't really lost, as much as fraudulently hidden. Private enterprises pool resources all the time, and much more effectively (better bang for the buck) than forced taxation ever could.