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 difficu

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.