Hacker News Reader

Comment by user_7832 | Hacker News Reader

On a slightly meta note, things like this show how "letting the free market do its job" isn't really a great idea unless you explicitly also have a pollution (Pigovian) tax/Coase's property rights to handle such externalities.

View on HN

Externalities and market freedom are completely different concepts.

A free market does not allow you to dump your garbage on public property, and no economist has ever argued that.

And yet that is kind of what has happened for centuries. The most obvious example is the pollution of the rivers.

Incredibly non-capitalist systems also have people dumping garbage in public places and it’s against the law too.

How much does the free market charge companies that discharge CO2 into the atmosphere?

It differs from country to country. This is one system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_emission_trading

Oh, but it does as long as you can pay the fine. If a fine isn't significant enough or it is cheaper than getting rid of the waste, it simply becomes a cost of doing business. It doesn't matter that "no economist" has ever argued that.

Spend a few minutes on mises.org and you can probably find one.

Offtopic, but is mises.org considered a "smart" site, by libertarians? Like, I can tell that they think they're smart, or at least present themselves as if they think that, but is that considered true by lots of libertarians?

AFAIK, Mises.org is generally well regarded among libertarians.

Libertarians generally argue that externalities should either be illegal or taxed, when there are no other practical solutions. Here's a video of Milton Friedman on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YGfwSvLkC0

maybe, but at least one ecologist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Hardin pretty much argued that was the end result of public property.

on edit: huh, I didn't know about British economist William Forster Lloyd, mentioned in the article, so I guess at least one economist has argued that it will happen (not though, that it is 'allowed' by)

In a completely free market there would be no public property, by definition.

Are you confusing "free market" with "capitalism"? The former just means the government isn't meddling in the market by doing stuff by setting prices or quotas. It's "capitalism" that deals with ownership, but even that doesn't exclude public ownership because it only talks about private ownership of production.

Very true, I think that since Industry/Free-market enterprises don't tend to specialize into certain domains, from a profiteering stand-point, the efficiencies do not take into account other external factors, unless they impact the enterprise itself. Therefore, that is out of scope for that particular "Free market".

We complain about Government inefficiencies, and that is certainly an area that can be enhanced, however since the Government's enterprise is the entire Nation-state itself, they are better situated to determine the solution. In order to solve these macro issues, I believe we need a better resourced, accountable, efficient and competent government. At this point that would require a fundamental change at all levels though.

Governments have been pretty good about regulating local pollution. If you try to dump cyanide into a river, the government will come stop you pretty quick.

However, no government really cares about global pollution. Ie. greenhouse gasses... Or mercury in the ocean. The benefits of the polluting activity are local while the downsides are global.

For that you really need some global government which is going to take a worldwide view when deciding what is illegal/taxed. Unfortunately there are big downsides to worldwide governance too.

There is no “free market” unless you have no rules at all. Markets and capitalism can only work properly if they are regulated.

Generally a free market is one where the rules are arranged voluntarily by participants. Not sure what you mean by “work properly,” but there are plenty of examples of people successfully producing goods and trading them free of coercion.

I’d argue working properly includes appropriate consequences for negative externalities which by definition is impossible in an unregulated market. If you make it free to pollute you get a lot of pollution and that’s much worse for people than a $1/unit increase in the cost of some things.

That's just because the market is not encompassing everything. A free market is inconsistent with a government and publicly owned resources. Governments don't care if rich companies bribe them and will happily let them pollute until people are pissed enough.

Look at plastic and that recycling government propaganda bullshit.

They sold us to the oil companies and now we literally eat and breath microplastic.

If a polluter is polluting on your share of the shared sky you'll sue them into oblivion.

>If a polluter is polluting on your share of the shared sky you'll sue them into oblivion.

In what court?

If you actually implement being able to sue polluters into oblivion for polluting you don’t get checks and balances on pollution leading to less pollution you get Rothbard-style deindustrialization libertarianism. You reduce things to the point where people can’t drive a car or produce electricity without being sued to oblivion.

Isn’t that the libertarian dream? You can whatever you want if somebody doesn’t like it they can sue you. We also need way more judges and courts in a libertarian society. After a while they will realize that all the suing is not efficient and invent the EPA to set some global rules

Participants include in this case those that breathe in the polluted air. When it comes to the environment everyone in it participates.

Indeed, and millions of people face the choice between working in a polluted city or being unemployed in the countryside.

Far from being "free of coercion".

I never agreed with my neighbor that I can’t live in his house or eat his food. I am being coerced into not using his car.

Incorrect. A baseless conjecture.

If there was only free market, no government and public property was private and owned by everyone living in a radius - then people would just bring a lawsuit in an independent court to the polluters and either veto (pollution slowly killing you) or get financial compensation (think for things like a noisy airport next to your house).

As it is the polluters just need to bribe the correct government official and it's all kosher.

> As it is the polluters just need to bribe the correct government official and it's all kosher.

Citation?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com