5 ms·

I'm not at all familiar with the law in this area, but what stands in the way of doing that right now?

• mediaman 10y ago
  Frictional costs of reclaiming those costs: lawsuits are expensive, and when a large number of people are impacted a small to moderate amount, it's very difficult for diffused harm (those breathing polluted air) to reclaim damages against concentrated gain (polluting industry). This would be the argument for creating more of a structured market approach to assigning the costs of these externalities: courts are inefficient and plagued with problems when there's a power difference between the parties, so creating a market structure allows those externalities to be compensated in a more efficient way, while still allowing market pricing to incentivize industry to resolve the externality in the most efficient way available. The libertarian's argument against this (I imagine) is that any government market scheme will screw it up more, though I don't know why so much faith is placed in the court system as a magically efficient system that resolves property disputes fairly and cost effectively in cases like diffused externalities.
• tzs 10y ago
  One big problem is proof. In a civil suit plaintiff has to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that defendant was responsible for the harm. Our water systems and our atmosphere are large, very effective mixers, and pollution injected at one point can travel hundreds or even thousands of kilometers before ending up on someone's land and causing damages. An emission of pollution from one polluter and another of the same kind and amount emitted at the same time from a second polluter a few kilometers away could end up taking very different paths and end up causing harm to people thousands of kilometers apart.