4 ms·
A good example of government regulation improving quality of life!
by crc32 8y ago
A good example of government regulation improving quality of life!
- blockedTwitter 8y agoWell, it would have happened sooner and more efficiently if the invisible hand of the market were only permitted to operate freely.
- mcguire 8y agoSee! It is possible to identify sarcasm in pure text.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- falsedan 8y agoThis is just cleaning the facades! Edinburgh prohibits this kind of cosmetic work in ordr to keep the historical character of buildings (tho sandstone doesn't go as black as limestone).
- arethuza 8y agoAre you sure - most buildings in central Edinburgh seem to have been cleaned in the last couple of decades?
- stevekemp 8y agoI remember the cleaning of the Scott Monument was a very contentious issue - which was eventually abandoned. Nowadays you can see the contrast between the old/dirty stone and the new pieces used for restoration.
- arethuza 8y agoI'm actually sitting in an office in George Street looking out of my window at a stone wall where I can see that the entire one building has been cleaned and the next door one hasn't! :-) The National Galleries near the Mound was cleaned entirely a few years back - it's actually starting to collect dark marks on it again.
- handelaar 8y agoWhen I was small most of Edinburgh looked exactly like these photos, and they didn't start washing it until the late 80s. (edit: come to think of it, entire central Edinburgh area still smelled of coal smoke in the mornings until about then, too, though Musselburgh even more so)
- qlm 8y agoCan one of the HN free-marketeers explain how this sort of thing would arise "naturally" through market forces, without regulatory intervention?
- pmorici 8y agoIf you were allowed to sue polluters for damages to your property is a common example I've seen. So for example you notice your building is being blackened and sue the coal fired plant down the street for the cleaning fees to restore it's facade. Sounds good but it is totally impractical if you've had any experience with the legal system.
- qlm 8y agoWhat if there are many factories owned by different businesses producing the pollution? Do you sue all of them? What if the cost of cleaning is smaller than the cost of changing business practices to protect health and the environment?
- pmorici 8y agoYes, one of the many reasons it is totally impractical.
- pokemongoaway 8y agoThere should be some company that makes money by detecting pollution, determining its source(s), and potentially providing insurance - or litigation. This would give incentive to find previously unknown pollutants that maybe even the factory and environmentalists were unaware of. The government has been very ineffective at this: see Flint Michigan.
- gnud 8y agoGreat, if I'm dying of poisoning I can sue, at least. Helpful.
- village-idiot 8y agoIt's not possible, because pollution is an externality[0], something that's well known to destabilize free markets. Without regulation, purely profit driven actors have no incentive to reduce pollution one bit, since doing so gives them an economic disadvantage against their polluting peers. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality