The way I think about it: you have lots of problems in society which are prisoners dilemma in nature. The only way for the prisoners to escape their fate is to

The way I think about it: you have lots of problems in society which are prisoners dilemma in nature. The only way for the prisoners to escape their fate is to have some external authority fix the incentives and that's basically the law. Three ways to use the law: Regulation Sueing people for damages Complex contracts There are situations where some of these work better than others and we just need to pick. It's really hard to imagine sueing for damages working precisely for something like preventing air pollution, the chain of causation is too long. You have no choice other than regulation. There's this libertatian politics common on HN but I've never seen a convincing argument of how you solve air pollution using 2. or 3. Imo you will always need regulation.