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I used to be a libertarian. I used to think that private ownership of property, coupled with a free market (and something vague about an informed citizenship an
by titzer 5y ago
I used to be a libertarian. I used to think that private ownership of property, coupled with a free market (and something vague about an informed citizenship and consumers voting with their dollars) was the solution to most of modern society's ills.
It's articles like this that absolutely refute the idea that private ownership of property leads to good environmental outcomes (it doesn't; it leads to exploitative, destructive extraction of value from land, leaving behind carnage whose damage was estimated at below the bottom line, leaving a comfortable margin for profit) and that citizens would be proactive and well-informed (they aren't; they are constantly stonewalled, lied to, and officials stupid or paid off).
Now, ironically, in this advanced state of tech today, we have finally got the tools that citizens can be informed about the environmental impacts...of decades dead corporations and gluttonous barons that have long since moved on from the smoking, toxic craters they knowingly created. What an exciting future we have now, mining the graveyard of a century of bad policy, dealing with the lies and denial of others, and a complete lack of accountability. Meanwhile, these toxins, here a trace, there a torrent, sit as mute reminder of the horrible cost we've exacted on this planet (so far).
- vkou 5y agoFortunately, Snowcrash's libertarian utopia has a solution to this exact problem, in the form of a little placard. SACRIFICE ZONE WARNING The National Parks Service has declared this area to be a National Sacrifice Zone. The Sacrifice Zone Program was developed to manage parcels of land whose clean-up cost exceeds their total future economic value.
- hammock 5y agoSounds like all the Superfund sites across the country, for most of which remediation is on hold due to cost, etc. Except there are no placards. It's not altogether unlikely you have one in your backyard.
- pirate787 5y agoThere are superfund sites near me where some idiot had a home business making lead ammunition, and another something involving mercury.
- mistrial9 5y agoBART West Oakland station, last stop just before the tunnel to San Francisco. Look to your left, just outside the parking lot. Years ago it was a ship rope warehouse, before that? listed as a superfund site, it might be some community organizing house now. Burning Man central warehouse is on the other side of the parking lot, which IMO is completely compatible.
- hammock 5y agoThe entire South Bay may as well be considered a Superfund site (Silicon Valley used and dumped a lot of solvents in chipmaking). Ever wonder how Google got all that Mountain View real estate for cheap? Don't go swimming in those pretty canals.
- comrh 5y agoIt's not even fiction https://www.propublica.org/series/sacrifice-zones https://www.propublica.org/series/sacrifice-zones
- pirate787 5y agoIn real life this is SuperFund, and much of the state of West Virginia.
- aksss 5y agoLibertarian != anarchy. What people mean by libertarian in relation to regulation varies considerably. The main thrusts of it are the non-aggression principle and the belief that there is no instantiation of government that is not systemically corrupt and self-interested (all because of the conflicts inherent in power over people). This doesn't require you to call for the abolition of government, but would not make additional bureaucracy your first solution to a given problem, either. If you tell me you're libertarian, I would assume nothing about where you stand on the EPA, but I would make assumptions about your instinctual reaction to foreign wars, trade policy, civil rights, and your default skepticism of a government's ability to carry out any given task effectively.
- MichaelZuo 5y agoSeems like managing every decommissioned factory or industrial plot of land will require an enormous bureaucracy? Perhaps even larger than present day if we really want to clean them up properly and enforce it? Sure it could be outsourced in part but that’s just moving around the goalposts because there would, and could only be, one customer.
- intrasight 5y agoThey aren't that far apart - little government vs no self-government
- aksss 5y agoZero is not just a really small number. “Little” or “less” are relative to current size at time of critique and stand in opposition to “large” and “more”. I’m simply saying that libertarian thought should not be straw-manned as anarchy, nor would it be accurate to treat libertarian-leaning people as a monolith with a dialed in prescription. Government, and governing, are highly complex particularly at the federal level. You could spend a lifetime just trying to fix the government’s relationship to the finance sector alone with libertarian principles which would still allow room for regulation, attempt to house expertise and manage corruption and count yourself lucky if you made any sort of improvement/dent. Giving catch-all advice about what should be done across the entire spectrum of government in a sound bite is foolish no matter what your political principles are. It’s never as simple as “go back to the gold standard and eliminate all regulation”, but sadly it’s easy to caricature the libertarian critique as this because there literally are nincompoops who spout this drivel. Judging any worldview by its worst examples is not intellectually honest, though.
- chordalkeyboard 5y agoweirdly enough we didn't even need a libertarian social order to result in rich people separating profits from liability.
- coryrc 5y agoIn a libertarian view, you aren't allowed to use anyone else's property, including to dump toxic chemicals. With strong property rights, they would be forced by the courts to completely make people whole. In our system, the EPA allows companies to pollute your land, water, and air... so long as they don't do it too much or they bribe the officials enough.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago"In a libertarian view, you aren't allowed to use anyone else's property, including to dump toxic chemicals. With strong property rights, they would be forced by the courts to completely make people whole." Having to go to the courts for everything will always favor people and institutions with money. The little guy simply can't afford lawyers, expert witnesses and so on to challenge players with deep pockets. We need institutions like the EPA who enforce the rules and we need them to actually do that and not be captured by industry or underfunded by politics.
- cinntaile 5y agoIt feels like people in the US have a strong distrust towards state/federal institutions. As long as that doesn't improve it seems unlikely that those institutions will be properly funded. Without trust it's better to keep those dollars to yourself.
- cogman10 5y ago> With strong property rights, they would be forced by the courts to completely make people whole. We HAVE strong property rights in the US. If you can prove harm from a company you can make a lot of money from them. The issue is that proving harm is a very costly and time consuming endeavor. How do you make everyone whole when the damage done by a company exceeds it's ability to repair? What about the irreparable like toxic waste in a water supply? Even if we granted the premise that this is a better system, how is what we have today made better by installing cronies into the EPA which systematically gum up and deregulate as much as possible before having stronger property rights in place?