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You're assuming people have perfect foresight into their risks moving to such an area - they don't. Your also ignoring that sometimes the pollution moves to whe
by digikata 11y ago
You're assuming people have perfect foresight into their risks moving to such an area - they don't. Your also ignoring that sometimes the pollution moves to where people already live. The reasonable choice is to work towards advancing standards for everyone worldwide. Sometimes the advances will come organically delivered by free markets, and sometimes they'll have to be regulatory (closing down externalities ignored/un-priced by markets). The choice certainly isn't free trade or dire poverty in the long run.
- yummyfajitas 11y agoAnyone with eyes has a pretty good idea that they are walking into a toxic soup. I left Delhi on the 22nd - this picture is pretty accurate: http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2343988/images/o-DELHI-AIR-POLLUTION-facebook.jpg http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2343988/images/o-DELHI-AIR-POLLUTI... Or, back in July (before things got bad) I could do maybe 10 suicide sprints in NY. Then I flew into Delhi and was down to 4 - breathing was just that hard. I know there are lots of jokes about Biharis, but they aren't as stupid as you are making them out to be. They move to Delhi with good but imperfect information about both the pollution and the economic opportunity. I'm all in favor of pollution taxes and internalizing externalities. I'm just saying that even in spite of that, the economic gains seem to drastically outweigh the health penalties as evidenced by millions of people moving towards the pollution.