4 ms·

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 m

by 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.
- celeritascelery 9y ago
  “Banning” pollution is not realistic. Any economy of this scale is going to produce pollution. And while some technologies like fossil fuels are worse then others, there is no pollution solution. So the best the EPA can do it manange the pollution we do create to mitigate the harms.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    That's the point. In an idealized economic abstraction, banning pollution (more accurately, creating a cause of action for damages in connection with any level of pollution) would force the cost to be internalized. You can let phosphorous from your farm leach into the river, but any downstream property owners can sue you for reducing their property values by causing algal blooms. If the value created by your farm exceeds the externalized cost of pollution, you keep your farm, pay off the property owners, and pass the costs of that into people who buy your meat and vegetables. When the costs of pollution are priced into those products, the market will properly balance the benefits of farm products against the harms of farm pollution. But that's wildly impractical. Hence the existence of the EPA, which is tasked with managing pollution, and using central planning to balance the benefits of productive activity against the harms of pollution.
- 13years 9y ago
  Due to property rights, all pollution was illegal prior to the EPA. The EPA's purpose is to determine how much pollution is allowed. During the immediate period prior to the EPA, it wasn't so much it was legal, but the courts began to ignore property rights due to the pressures of what was believed to be common good to let industries thrive. In some cases property rights are much stricter and can be better enforced, in other cases they are more difficult in areas such as air pollution.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    > During the immediate period prior to the EPA, By "immediate period" you mean a couple of hundred years before 1970. English courts started ignoring property rights (e.g. the right of downstream riparian users to undiminished water quality from upstream activities) in the 1700s or so during the first industrial revolution.
notahacker 9y ago
Regulations aren't much good if you don't have personnel with the technical expertise to monitor compliance, enforce them and arrange for damage limitation or mitigation. A lot of environmental protection activity has a positive return on investment for tax dollars because cleanup and health hazard mitigation is really, really expensive. $8bn per annum is a tiny sum of money to spend on environmental protection for a developed country the size of the United States.
davvolun 9y ago
I don't know that I'd turn to the software industry for insight on development and maintenance. Things have changed, but AFAIK we still don't have that silver bullet.
mnm1 9y ago
You think laws enforce themselves?

by swebs 9y ago

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.

celeritascelery 9y ago
“Banning” pollution is not realistic. Any economy of this scale is going to produce pollution. And while some technologies like fossil fuels are worse then others, there is no pollution solution. So the best the EPA can do it manange the pollution we do create to mitigate the harms.
- rayiner 9y ago
  That's the point. In an idealized economic abstraction, banning pollution (more accurately, creating a cause of action for damages in connection with any level of pollution) would force the cost to be internalized. You can let phosphorous from your farm leach into the river, but any downstream property owners can sue you for reducing their property values by causing algal blooms. If the value created by your farm exceeds the externalized cost of pollution, you keep your farm, pay off the property owners, and pass the costs of that into people who buy your meat and vegetables. When the costs of pollution are priced into those products, the market will properly balance the benefits of farm products against the harms of farm pollution. But that's wildly impractical. Hence the existence of the EPA, which is tasked with managing pollution, and using central planning to balance the benefits of productive activity against the harms of pollution.
13years 9y ago
Due to property rights, all pollution was illegal prior to the EPA. The EPA's purpose is to determine how much pollution is allowed. During the immediate period prior to the EPA, it wasn't so much it was legal, but the courts began to ignore property rights due to the pressures of what was believed to be common good to let industries thrive. In some cases property rights are much stricter and can be better enforced, in other cases they are more difficult in areas such as air pollution.
- rayiner 9y ago
  > During the immediate period prior to the EPA, By "immediate period" you mean a couple of hundred years before 1970. English courts started ignoring property rights (e.g. the right of downstream riparian users to undiminished water quality from upstream activities) in the 1700s or so during the first industrial revolution.

notahacker 9y ago

Regulations aren't much good if you don't have personnel with the technical expertise to monitor compliance, enforce them and arrange for damage limitation or mitigation. A lot of environmental protection activity has a positive return on investment for tax dollars because cleanup and health hazard mitigation is really, really expensive. $8bn per annum is a tiny sum of money to spend on environmental protection for a developed country the size of the United States.

davvolun 9y ago

I don't know that I'd turn to the software industry for insight on development and maintenance. Things have changed, but AFAIK we still don't have that silver bullet.

mnm1 9y ago

You think laws enforce themselves?