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It's unfortunate that the EPA is under attack by conservatives who want limited government. If you start from first principles about what the min viable governm

by zhyder 9y ago

It's unfortunate that the EPA is under attack by conservatives who want limited government. If you start from first principles about what the min viable government should do, a big part of its charter would be to prevent major tragedies of the commons. And the environment is a textbook example of something that'd suffer the tragedy of the commons without government oversight. I prefer a bigger government with a bigger social safety net with universal basic healthcare, etc. But I can understand conservative opposition to that; at least those don't produce tragedies of the commons. (They arguably do to a lesser extent: if people's basic needs are met, they're less likely to resort to crime to fulfill them. And a greater rate of crime is a tragedy for all; ask anyone who's paid a premium to live in a "safe" neighborhood.)

audunw 9y ago
I think the answer to this paradox is that most conservatives aren't really all that into small/limited government. It's just a phrase they use to sell their policies to voters. What they're actually trying to implement is crony capitalism, which is a consequence of their dependence on money to get elected. Democrats have the same problem by the way, it just manifests in different paradoxes (or "lies" if you want to be more direct)
- Strang 9y ago
  Do I understand you correctly, that you believe that most voters in the US have been duped into their beliefs by bad-faith argument concealing the "true" agenda?
IAmEveryone 9y ago
Being conservative used to have some meaning. The EPA was established by Richard Nixon, of all people. If you care less about other people than Nixon, you should really ask yourself: “?How far have I strayed from the pack?”
- Anon1096 9y ago
  Nixon was barely a conservative. He gets a bad rap due to Watergate but really he was one of the most liberal Republicans elected to the presidency.
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    He really wasn't a liberal at all. Here, let smarter people than me explain: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/02/to-noam-chomsky-and-everyone-else-richard-nixon-was-not-a-liberal http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/02/to-noam-chomsky-... https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/revisionist-histories-richard-nixon/397319/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/revisio...
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  To be fair, the EPA was established by Nixon as an organization to manage a number of laws passed by the Democrat controlled Congress. Nixon even tried to veto the Clean Water Act.
moduspol 9y ago
This straw-mans common conservative views, though. It frames the argument as either "the EPA, as it exists today and has been running" or "no EPA at all." There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of a lot of the EPA's activities and very few of those activities directly prevent what's shown in the photos.
- Sangermaine 9y ago
  >This straw-mans common conservative views, though. Not at all, when conservatives who do come to power always immediately move to dismantle the EPA, as with the current administration. Not to mention that conservative politicians endlessly rail against the evils of the EPA in terms not even remotely nuanced. I know, I know, "they're not really conservatives!".
  - swebs 9y ago
    So we have the issue where the majority of conservative voters think the country must do whatever it takes to protect the environment [1], but elected conservative officials think otherwise. How do you think this should be handled? Option 1: Demonize all conservatives, turning the environment into a partisan agenda Option 2: Demonize elected officials that choose to side with lobbyists over their constituents Personally, I would chose option 2, but I guess option 1 is good too if your goal is to cause divisiveness or even to push conservatives away from agreeing with you [2] [1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/20/for-earth-day-heres-how-americans-view-environmental-issues/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/20/for-earth-da... [2] https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-05/conservatives-dont-hate-environment-new-research-suggests https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-05/conservatives-dont-ha...
    - mcphage 9y ago
      > Option 1: Demonize all conservatives, turning the environment into a partisan agenda > Option 2: Demonize elected officials that choose to side with lobbyists over their constituents Sorry, could you remind me again who's electing those "elected officials that choose to side with lobbyists over their constituents"?
swebs 9y ago
On the other hand, does the EPA really require 8 billion dollars per year when the protection laws have already been passed and improvements have already been made? In a software project, you allocate $x per month during development, and only $(x/10) for maintenance after it has shipped. Is there a point where the EPA can say "mission accomplished" and downsize to maintenance/enforcement mode, or is this just a typical government organization that will happily consume as many tax dollars as it can get as long as it can?
- Androider 9y ago
  EPA could do nothing but spend 100% of that 8 billion on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites for the next 20 years and it wouldn't be enough to cover it. That's just to cover previously made mistakes. Reducing enforcement is going to keep adding to that list, and reducing safety and quality of life for all Americans. The vast majority (60-80%, Robert L. Glass) of costs for software is also in maintenance, as any of the classic software project management books will tell you.
  - swebs 9y ago
    >The vast majority (60-80%, Robert L. Glass) of costs for software is also in maintenance, as any of the classic software project management books will tell you. What's the purpose of stating total costs when discussing monthly costs? Of course maintenance will end up costing more in total if the maintenance period is much longer than the development period. The per month cost is still much lower.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Yes it does, due to the structure of the environmental laws. In a libertarian system, you’d simply ban pollution (I.e. ban the externalizations of environmental costs), and then let the market and the courts hash things out. If a company was found dumping pollutants into the water, people would sue them, and the costs of all of that would get properly priced into the company’s products. But the environmental laws are all about the various ways in which companies are allowed to pollute. Companies can dump poison into rivers, so long as they conform the EPA limits. Those limits are, by design, not set any “correct” level (as above, the “correct” level is zero—forcing the externality to be fully internalized; from an economic efficiency point of view, all environmental externalities must be borne by parties to the transaction, either the company or its customers). Instead, the limits are of a “best effort” nature, and a “how to get there from here” nature. For example, the law requires air polluters to install “the best available control technology” on smoke stacks. What does that mean? Well, that requires continual review and revision. The EPA doesn’t exist to enforce laws that prevent pollution. It exists to manage all the pollution that the law allows.
throwaway2016a 9y ago
It really is a shame that is considered a "conservative" view. I think a lot of Libertarians are coming around to have a view similar to your's. That the commons belongs to all of us and polluting and destroying it should be punished. Republican's on the other hand seem to thing liberty only applies to corporations. In fact if you delete the part about wanting big government, I could have almost mistaken you for a Libertarian. However, if you look at the Libertarian's who do support protecting the environment you will find there are ideas out there to address the issue without a huge centralized government organization like the EPA. Some might require changing our laws and our legal system so it is less of "whoever has the most money wins" but there are ways. Like all political parties Libertarians have their extremists too (anarchists) but by and large I think they are reasonable people. Edit: Those people in the Republican party that the media likes to call "Libertarians" are not. They cherry pick what liberties are important to them and what are not based on their moral code and special interests. Edit 2: My original post has the word "not" where it should't have been. See bellow.
- bobwaycott 9y ago
  > That the commons belongs to all of us and polluting and destroying it should not be punished. Did you really mean should not be punished here?
  - throwaway2016a 9y ago
    I fixed it before you posted that comment but didn't put an "edit" note because I thought I edited it quick enough for people not to notice. I was writing quickly and moved some words around that changed the meaning in a bad way :( Yes, of course. The "not" shouldn't have been in that sentence. Polluters should have consequences.
- wallace_f 9y ago
  The word has been hijacked. Libertarians want to maximize liberty, which since the Age of Reason has been interpreted in government to mean to restrict as few freedoms as necessary to protect the remainder. One example: don't let people commit murder. It is perfectly reasonable this kind of reasoning apply to other types of killing or unjust aggression, such as poisoning the environment. So we have the NAP. But the whole movement is being hijacked by people who either don't care about much else than not wanting to pay taxes, or people who are anarchists (which is decidedly not libertarian). Perhaps we need to run away and invent a new word. I think you'll find a lot of libertarians agree more often with Greenwald than the Koch bros.
ataturk 9y ago
Your preference for bigger government is so incredibly dangerous that you have no idea what kind of Pandora's Box you are jonesing so hard for. Strengthening property rights could accomplish most of the same objectives. Why is it that every time we have a problem people run to government which always and forever seeks to expand its powers and levels of control at the cost of the individual? Seems to me if a coal company was washing shit into my well and poisoning my water supply on my property I should have a strong case there. But no, instead of holding that company accountable to the damage done to my property, we have corrupt officials running interference for Joe's Coal Mining, Inc. because they are bought off. The EPA hasn't helped much, either, because they are bought off by lobbyists, too. Stronger property rights does away with EPA lackeys, the lobbyists, the corrupt politicians. But we never do that. Now ask yourself why is that? There could be much simpler legal remedies with TEETH if we wanted to have them, but we don't. The US needs to rein in its corruption and there is a lot of it. We should do it before we're a hopeless 3rd World nation, and we're heading there fast.
Strang 9y ago
Keep in mind that in the US, the Federal Government is not the only game in town. The EPA as currently constituted is not the only possible way for our society to protect our environment. It seems to me that conservatives often make the case that "The Federal Government should not do <foo>," but others instead hear, "we as a society don't need to do <foo>."
- bosie 9y ago
  what's the non-government solution for an implementation of the EPA?
  - Strang 9y ago
    I was mostly referring to state and local government as an alternative to the Federal Government.

by zhyder 9y ago

audunw 9y ago

I think the answer to this paradox is that most conservatives aren't really all that into small/limited government. It's just a phrase they use to sell their policies to voters. What they're actually trying to implement is crony capitalism, which is a consequence of their dependence on money to get elected. Democrats have the same problem by the way, it just manifests in different paradoxes (or "lies" if you want to be more direct)

Strang 9y ago
Do I understand you correctly, that you believe that most voters in the US have been duped into their beliefs by bad-faith argument concealing the "true" agenda?

IAmEveryone 9y ago

Being conservative used to have some meaning. The EPA was established by Richard Nixon, of all people. If you care less about other people than Nixon, you should really ask yourself: “?How far have I strayed from the pack?”

Anon1096 9y ago
Nixon was barely a conservative. He gets a bad rap due to Watergate but really he was one of the most liberal Republicans elected to the presidency.
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  He really wasn't a liberal at all. Here, let smarter people than me explain: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/02/to-noam-chomsky-and-everyone-else-richard-nixon-was-not-a-liberal http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/02/to-noam-chomsky-... https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/revisionist-histories-richard-nixon/397319/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/revisio...
boomboomsubban 9y ago
To be fair, the EPA was established by Nixon as an organization to manage a number of laws passed by the Democrat controlled Congress. Nixon even tried to veto the Clean Water Act.

moduspol 9y ago

This straw-mans common conservative views, though. It frames the argument as either "the EPA, as it exists today and has been running" or "no EPA at all." There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of a lot of the EPA's activities and very few of those activities directly prevent what's shown in the photos.

Sangermaine 9y ago
>This straw-mans common conservative views, though. Not at all, when conservatives who do come to power always immediately move to dismantle the EPA, as with the current administration. Not to mention that conservative politicians endlessly rail against the evils of the EPA in terms not even remotely nuanced. I know, I know, "they're not really conservatives!".
- swebs 9y ago
  So we have the issue where the majority of conservative voters think the country must do whatever it takes to protect the environment [1], but elected conservative officials think otherwise. How do you think this should be handled? Option 1: Demonize all conservatives, turning the environment into a partisan agenda Option 2: Demonize elected officials that choose to side with lobbyists over their constituents Personally, I would chose option 2, but I guess option 1 is good too if your goal is to cause divisiveness or even to push conservatives away from agreeing with you [2] [1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/20/for-earth-day-heres-how-americans-view-environmental-issues/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/20/for-earth-da... [2] https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-05/conservatives-dont-hate-environment-new-research-suggests https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-05/conservatives-dont-ha...
  - mcphage 9y ago
    > Option 1: Demonize all conservatives, turning the environment into a partisan agenda > Option 2: Demonize elected officials that choose to side with lobbyists over their constituents Sorry, could you remind me again who's electing those "elected officials that choose to side with lobbyists over their constituents"?

swebs 9y ago

On the other hand, does the EPA really require 8 billion dollars per year when the protection laws have already been passed and improvements have already been made? In a software project, you allocate $x per month during development, and only $(x/10) for maintenance after it has shipped. Is there a point where the EPA can say "mission accomplished" and downsize to maintenance/enforcement mode, or is this just a typical government organization that will happily consume as many tax dollars as it can get as long as it can?

Androider 9y ago
EPA could do nothing but spend 100% of that 8 billion on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites for the next 20 years and it wouldn't be enough to cover it. That's just to cover previously made mistakes. Reducing enforcement is going to keep adding to that list, and reducing safety and quality of life for all Americans. The vast majority (60-80%, Robert L. Glass) of costs for software is also in maintenance, as any of the classic software project management books will tell you.
- swebs 9y ago
  >The vast majority (60-80%, Robert L. Glass) of costs for software is also in maintenance, as any of the classic software project management books will tell you. What's the purpose of stating total costs when discussing monthly costs? Of course maintenance will end up costing more in total if the maintenance period is much longer than the development period. The per month cost is still much lower.
rayiner 9y ago
Yes it does, due to the structure of the environmental laws. In a libertarian system, you’d simply ban pollution (I.e. ban the externalizations of environmental costs), and then let the market and the courts hash things out. If a company was found dumping pollutants into the water, people would sue them, and the costs of all of that would get properly priced into the company’s products. But the environmental laws are all about the various ways in which companies are allowed to pollute. Companies can dump poison into rivers, so long as they conform the EPA limits. Those limits are, by design, not set any “correct” level (as above, the “correct” level is zero—forcing the externality to be fully internalized; from an economic efficiency point of view, all environmental externalities must be borne by parties to the transaction, either the company or its customers). Instead, the limits are of a “best effort” nature, and a “how to get there from here” nature. For example, the law requires air polluters to install “the best available control technology” on smoke stacks. What does that mean? Well, that requires continual review and revision. The EPA doesn’t exist to enforce laws that prevent pollution. It exists to manage all the pollution that the law allows.

throwaway2016a 9y ago

It really is a shame that is considered a "conservative" view. I think a lot of Libertarians are coming around to have a view similar to your's. That the commons belongs to all of us and polluting and destroying it should be punished. Republican's on the other hand seem to thing liberty only applies to corporations. In fact if you delete the part about wanting big government, I could have almost mistaken you for a Libertarian. However, if you look at the Libertarian's who do support protecting the environment you will find there are ideas out there to address the issue without a huge centralized government organization like the EPA. Some might require changing our laws and our legal system so it is less of "whoever has the most money wins" but there are ways. Like all political parties Libertarians have their extremists too (anarchists) but by and large I think they are reasonable people. Edit: Those people in the Republican party that the media likes to call "Libertarians" are not. They cherry pick what liberties are important to them and what are not based on their moral code and special interests. Edit 2: My original post has the word "not" where it should't have been. See bellow.

bobwaycott 9y ago
> That the commons belongs to all of us and polluting and destroying it should not be punished. Did you really mean should not be punished here?
- throwaway2016a 9y ago
  I fixed it before you posted that comment but didn't put an "edit" note because I thought I edited it quick enough for people not to notice. I was writing quickly and moved some words around that changed the meaning in a bad way :( Yes, of course. The "not" shouldn't have been in that sentence. Polluters should have consequences.
wallace_f 9y ago
The word has been hijacked. Libertarians want to maximize liberty, which since the Age of Reason has been interpreted in government to mean to restrict as few freedoms as necessary to protect the remainder. One example: don't let people commit murder. It is perfectly reasonable this kind of reasoning apply to other types of killing or unjust aggression, such as poisoning the environment. So we have the NAP. But the whole movement is being hijacked by people who either don't care about much else than not wanting to pay taxes, or people who are anarchists (which is decidedly not libertarian). Perhaps we need to run away and invent a new word. I think you'll find a lot of libertarians agree more often with Greenwald than the Koch bros.

ataturk 9y ago

Your preference for bigger government is so incredibly dangerous that you have no idea what kind of Pandora's Box you are jonesing so hard for. Strengthening property rights could accomplish most of the same objectives. Why is it that every time we have a problem people run to government which always and forever seeks to expand its powers and levels of control at the cost of the individual? Seems to me if a coal company was washing shit into my well and poisoning my water supply on my property I should have a strong case there. But no, instead of holding that company accountable to the damage done to my property, we have corrupt officials running interference for Joe's Coal Mining, Inc. because they are bought off. The EPA hasn't helped much, either, because they are bought off by lobbyists, too. Stronger property rights does away with EPA lackeys, the lobbyists, the corrupt politicians. But we never do that. Now ask yourself why is that? There could be much simpler legal remedies with TEETH if we wanted to have them, but we don't. The US needs to rein in its corruption and there is a lot of it. We should do it before we're a hopeless 3rd World nation, and we're heading there fast.

Strang 9y ago

Keep in mind that in the US, the Federal Government is not the only game in town. The EPA as currently constituted is not the only possible way for our society to protect our environment. It seems to me that conservatives often make the case that "The Federal Government should not do <foo>," but others instead hear, "we as a society don't need to do <foo>."

bosie 9y ago
what's the non-government solution for an implementation of the EPA?
- Strang 9y ago
  I was mostly referring to state and local government as an alternative to the Federal Government.