10 ms·

Can you please explain how markets address overharvesting and pollution, and examples of that happening? If your point is that states can overharvest and pollut

by majika 12y ago

Can you please explain how markets address overharvesting and pollution, and examples of that happening? If your point is that states can overharvest and pollute too, sure - of course they can. They probably will if they're corrupt. My point was that only states can stop it: see the legislation on whaling, fishing, poaching, emissions regulations and taxation, ... On misinformation, you made the (unrelated) point that states are corruptible. Yes, they are; so are markets (e.g. LIBOR) and companies (i.e. employees acting contrary to the company's interest). Corruption occurs when the people involved are undesirable, and the reward outweighs the risk of being caught. In states where the electorate cares and is informed, undesirables are less likely to be elected, and there's a higher risk of being caught. Ideally, the bureaucrats involved in choosing who to give the contract to (the bureaucrats being directly affected by the decision, because the government is smaller) would tip off the local broadcaster that the decision was rigged, and they would investigate. I think it's more likely for corruption to be unveiled in states than there is in markets or companies. The larger the company, the smaller the chance - and free markets tend towards multinational monopolies anyway ("efficiency" and all that). My mention of misinformation was referring to things like: the media reporting on celebrities rather than legislation, or misleading advertising, or the media being paid to report a certain way or avoid a certain story. These actions have negative externalities, and the markets won't stop them. What the market wants (more celebrity stories, or fewer oil spill stories) isn't always what the market should get. It should be illegal to use antibiotics in agriculture, yet the markets love them. That was my point.

zanny 12y ago
> overharvesting If I own the land, and I mean own and am responsible for - no taxpayer subsidized safety net if I go too badshit crazy with the nutrient depletion or chemical baths - then it is in my best interests not to ruin the property so that it remains valuable if and or when I want to sell it. Either I intend to sell the land, thus making it worthwhile not to destroy it, or I intend to continue using the land for an extended period of time, and I wouldn't want to destroy it. I only really don't care if I have guaranteed payouts no matter what I do, and no responsibility or reason to care to take care of the land anyway. > pollution In the modern anarchist mindset, pollution is a violence against, depending on scope, either the local community that is negatively impacted by the polluter or the entire world in how that pollution negatively contributes to the environment. In either case, any sane libertarian or anarchist joint arbiter would in the commons consider major polluters as causing property damage, and thus any company that wants to pollute would need to seek permission from the entire area around where they want to set up shop. And when remote injunctions start coming in about how their pollution is damaging the planet as a whole, the reparations would need to be either removing an equal amount of pollution that they put in or contributing in some way to projects that do, else they are being violent upon pretty much everyone in a way that any sane society would see they only operate when everyone is consenting. > only states can stop it More like only states can enable it - because in modern states you never own your land, and never consent to your neighbors, and never have contracts with them about mutual conduct agreements and recourse for violation you depend on the state to provide some fictitious encompassing control effect on those that perform the kinds of violence I outlined earlier. Except the state is itself inherently violent and amoral, and is easily corrupted because of the centralization, so it is much easier for the coal company to bribe the local town council than the entire town. > so are markets and companies And all your interactions with markets and companies are voluntary. If they are not, you aren't really operating in a free market. If they are not inflicting violence upon you or others, you really have nothing to complain about, really. And if they are, it is your duty and the duty of your peers to cease dealings with the violent aggressor and either economically deprive them of resources until they recant or defend yourselves appropriately as a last resort. > corruption in states than there is in markets The problem is that corruption is inefficient. In the absence of states, nothing restricts you from directly competing with anyone over anything, so if they are acting in a corrupt way, then there would be avenues for capitalization by competitors to exploit it. It is the same reason why in the short term it makes no fiscal sense for a business to try to raise a private militia to take over the town - the militia is an immediate huge competitive disadvantage, and you would cripple your growth potential to whoever you could subjugate because no sane external market would interact with you, and would likely do anything they can to boycott you into failure. > What the market wants Modern mainstream media is anything but a competitive market. The major networks would always take advantage of their IP and state resources to crush any upstarts who tried to provide real journalism and news anymore. And they would certainly get the full support of the US government in doing so. In a real information market, people would seek what they are actually interested in. A lot of anarchist arguments about the collective psyche of most modern western democracies relates the whole distraction circus back to the implicit discontinuity in the brain about the organization of society in the first place and the amorality of it all. It also probably has a lot to do with how most people were abused as children - your brain will develop differently and you will always seek escapism. Confronting the reality of your circumstance is hard, and it requires enlightened rational individuals to do so. That is mainly why, while I morally agree completely with anarchist mindsets, I don't really advocate it in the modern world. It really wouldn't work with the current crop of humanity - it would require enough transitional generations to get to the point where we stop predominantly abusing our children, either through neglect or violence.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >If I own the land, and I mean own and am responsible for - no taxpayer subsidized safety net if I go too badshit crazy with the nutrient depletion or chemical baths - then it is in my best interests not to ruin the property so that it remains valuable if and or when I want to sell it. No, it's in your interest to fool some sucker into buying it on false pretenses. Don't pretend to moralities you don't actually hold, capitalist.
  - jjoonathan 12y ago
    To whoever downvoted this: I challenge you to explain why he's wrong.
    - throwerawayer 12y ago
      I downvoted the comment, but not because of the viewpoint. I only downvote when I believe that a comment is detracting from the discussion. eli_gottlieb said: "Don't pretend to moralities you don't actually hold, capitalist". eli was implying that zanny was immoral (or at least amoral), which is something that cannot be deduced from one or two comments; moreover, pointless ad hominem attacks do not advance the discussion. I regularly downvote comments which espouse views that I agree or disagree with, when they resort to irrelevancies and personal attacks, as was the case here. edit: quote from HN's comment guide "What we especially discourage are comments that are empty and negative—comments that are mere name-calling. Which brings us to the most important principle on HN: civility. Since long before the web, the anonymity of online conversation has lured people into being much ruder than they'd dare to be in person. So the principle here is: don't say anything you wouldn't say face to face. This doesn't mean you can't disagree. But disagree without calling the other person names. If you're right, your argument will be more convincing without them. "
      - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
        >eli_gottlieb said: "Don't pretend to moralities you don't actually hold, capitalist". eli was implying that zanny was immoral (or at least amoral), which is something that cannot be deduced from one or two comments; moreover, pointless ad hominem attacks do not advance the discussion. Immoral by my definition, sure. But his espoused morality is "whatever the market will bear". All I'm demanding is that he doesn't pretend "whatever the market will bear", which is what he's explicitly proposing and endorsing, in any way matches what the rest of us think of as desirable. If he wants to be an ideologue, he needs to come out and say it: "Yes, privatizing all the commons will result in sales that approach as close to fraud as the law allows, rather than actual environmental protection, but that's a good thing!"
alexeisadeski3 12y ago
Pollution: Expand private property rights (air, ocean, etc).
- colanderman 12y ago
  Here's how this goes: 1. Person X buys land because they need to live. 2. X asks real estate broker, "Don't I need air rights too?" Broker says "nah, the air's clean around here". (It is.) 3. Industry Y decides to move into town. Buys up all the unsold air rights from the broker (maybe with a little kickback). (Industry Y sells widgets, of which everyone needs an endless supply.) 4. Industry Y does what industries do and pollutes the air. Person X is out of luck, gets cancer and dies. (Person Z, who was smart and kept his air rights, is out of luck too, because everyone else sold out and it turns out particulate matter doesn't respect property law.) Don't believe me? This is exactly what's happened with fracking. Affected homeowners are told they can't sue because they don't own the water/mineral rights around their land. Anyway the end of this story in anarcho-capitalist-libertarian land is: 5. Person X gangs up with other townsfolk to pay their private police force to strongarm industry Y into selling their air rights to a collective trust. 6. Townsfolk look at their combined police-and-regulatory trust, see that it is good, and decide to name it "government".
  - alexeisadeski3 12y ago
    1. Air rights needn't be tied to land. A proportional share could be automatically inherited by each citizen upon birth. 2. Existing water rights in the US have as much to do with free markets as they did in the USSR.
    - infinite8s 12y ago
      How do you enforce these air rights when they've been violated by a polluter?
      - alexeisadeski3 12y ago
        Exactly the same way that you enforce all property rights when they've been violated: You sue them.

by majika 12y ago

zanny 12y ago

> overharvesting If I own the land, and I mean own and am responsible for - no taxpayer subsidized safety net if I go too badshit crazy with the nutrient depletion or chemical baths - then it is in my best interests not to ruin the property so that it remains valuable if and or when I want to sell it. Either I intend to sell the land, thus making it worthwhile not to destroy it, or I intend to continue using the land for an extended period of time, and I wouldn't want to destroy it. I only really don't care if I have guaranteed payouts no matter what I do, and no responsibility or reason to care to take care of the land anyway. > pollution In the modern anarchist mindset, pollution is a violence against, depending on scope, either the local community that is negatively impacted by the polluter or the entire world in how that pollution negatively contributes to the environment. In either case, any sane libertarian or anarchist joint arbiter would in the commons consider major polluters as causing property damage, and thus any company that wants to pollute would need to seek permission from the entire area around where they want to set up shop. And when remote injunctions start coming in about how their pollution is damaging the planet as a whole, the reparations would need to be either removing an equal amount of pollution that they put in or contributing in some way to projects that do, else they are being violent upon pretty much everyone in a way that any sane society would see they only operate when everyone is consenting. > only states can stop it More like only states can enable it - because in modern states you never own your land, and never consent to your neighbors, and never have contracts with them about mutual conduct agreements and recourse for violation you depend on the state to provide some fictitious encompassing control effect on those that perform the kinds of violence I outlined earlier. Except the state is itself inherently violent and amoral, and is easily corrupted because of the centralization, so it is much easier for the coal company to bribe the local town council than the entire town. > so are markets and companies And all your interactions with markets and companies are voluntary. If they are not, you aren't really operating in a free market. If they are not inflicting violence upon you or others, you really have nothing to complain about, really. And if they are, it is your duty and the duty of your peers to cease dealings with the violent aggressor and either economically deprive them of resources until they recant or defend yourselves appropriately as a last resort. > corruption in states than there is in markets The problem is that corruption is inefficient. In the absence of states, nothing restricts you from directly competing with anyone over anything, so if they are acting in a corrupt way, then there would be avenues for capitalization by competitors to exploit it. It is the same reason why in the short term it makes no fiscal sense for a business to try to raise a private militia to take over the town - the militia is an immediate huge competitive disadvantage, and you would cripple your growth potential to whoever you could subjugate because no sane external market would interact with you, and would likely do anything they can to boycott you into failure. > What the market wants Modern mainstream media is anything but a competitive market. The major networks would always take advantage of their IP and state resources to crush any upstarts who tried to provide real journalism and news anymore. And they would certainly get the full support of the US government in doing so. In a real information market, people would seek what they are actually interested in. A lot of anarchist arguments about the collective psyche of most modern western democracies relates the whole distraction circus back to the implicit discontinuity in the brain about the organization of society in the first place and the amorality of it all. It also probably has a lot to do with how most people were abused as children - your brain will develop differently and you will always seek escapism. Confronting the reality of your circumstance is hard, and it requires enlightened rational individuals to do so. That is mainly why, while I morally agree completely with anarchist mindsets, I don't really advocate it in the modern world. It really wouldn't work with the current crop of humanity - it would require enough transitional generations to get to the point where we stop predominantly abusing our children, either through neglect or violence.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>If I own the land, and I mean own and am responsible for - no taxpayer subsidized safety net if I go too badshit crazy with the nutrient depletion or chemical baths - then it is in my best interests not to ruin the property so that it remains valuable if and or when I want to sell it. No, it's in your interest to fool some sucker into buying it on false pretenses. Don't pretend to moralities you don't actually hold, capitalist.
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  To whoever downvoted this: I challenge you to explain why he's wrong.
  - throwerawayer 12y ago
    I downvoted the comment, but not because of the viewpoint. I only downvote when I believe that a comment is detracting from the discussion. eli_gottlieb said: "Don't pretend to moralities you don't actually hold, capitalist". eli was implying that zanny was immoral (or at least amoral), which is something that cannot be deduced from one or two comments; moreover, pointless ad hominem attacks do not advance the discussion. I regularly downvote comments which espouse views that I agree or disagree with, when they resort to irrelevancies and personal attacks, as was the case here. edit: quote from HN's comment guide "What we especially discourage are comments that are empty and negative—comments that are mere name-calling. Which brings us to the most important principle on HN: civility. Since long before the web, the anonymity of online conversation has lured people into being much ruder than they'd dare to be in person. So the principle here is: don't say anything you wouldn't say face to face. This doesn't mean you can't disagree. But disagree without calling the other person names. If you're right, your argument will be more convincing without them. "
    - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
      >eli_gottlieb said: "Don't pretend to moralities you don't actually hold, capitalist". eli was implying that zanny was immoral (or at least amoral), which is something that cannot be deduced from one or two comments; moreover, pointless ad hominem attacks do not advance the discussion. Immoral by my definition, sure. But his espoused morality is "whatever the market will bear". All I'm demanding is that he doesn't pretend "whatever the market will bear", which is what he's explicitly proposing and endorsing, in any way matches what the rest of us think of as desirable. If he wants to be an ideologue, he needs to come out and say it: "Yes, privatizing all the commons will result in sales that approach as close to fraud as the law allows, rather than actual environmental protection, but that's a good thing!"

alexeisadeski3 12y ago

Pollution: Expand private property rights (air, ocean, etc).

colanderman 12y ago
Here's how this goes: 1. Person X buys land because they need to live. 2. X asks real estate broker, "Don't I need air rights too?" Broker says "nah, the air's clean around here". (It is.) 3. Industry Y decides to move into town. Buys up all the unsold air rights from the broker (maybe with a little kickback). (Industry Y sells widgets, of which everyone needs an endless supply.) 4. Industry Y does what industries do and pollutes the air. Person X is out of luck, gets cancer and dies. (Person Z, who was smart and kept his air rights, is out of luck too, because everyone else sold out and it turns out particulate matter doesn't respect property law.) Don't believe me? This is exactly what's happened with fracking. Affected homeowners are told they can't sue because they don't own the water/mineral rights around their land. Anyway the end of this story in anarcho-capitalist-libertarian land is: 5. Person X gangs up with other townsfolk to pay their private police force to strongarm industry Y into selling their air rights to a collective trust. 6. Townsfolk look at their combined police-and-regulatory trust, see that it is good, and decide to name it "government".
- alexeisadeski3 12y ago
  1. Air rights needn't be tied to land. A proportional share could be automatically inherited by each citizen upon birth. 2. Existing water rights in the US have as much to do with free markets as they did in the USSR.
  - infinite8s 12y ago
    How do you enforce these air rights when they've been violated by a polluter?
    - alexeisadeski3 12y ago
      Exactly the same way that you enforce all property rights when they've been violated: You sue them.