It might indeed be difficult to come up with a pre...

2005-04-25T14:18:00.000-07:00

It might indeed be difficult to come up with a precise dollar figure for the damage done for a given act of water or air pollution, but I don't think establishing the existence of pollution at the point of emission would be difficult at all. And I suspect local juries would err on the high side, if anything, in response to seeing their neighbors' or their own air and water befouled. Besides, they might just enjoin them from operating at all until they reduced emissions to a level the local community considered acceptable.

Ultimately, any private association (including a mutual defense association) has the same right of self-defense as an individual: if they see it as a genuine threat to their safety, they act (as does an individual) according to their own judgment and then suffer the consequences.

My point was that, assuming an outside-owned corporation engaged in such pollution, the pollutor would find it hard to stay in business without a higher state authority to impose a "reasonable" (i.e., corporate -defined) standard on local juries.

Of course, in an unsubsidized economy, it's more likely that most production would wind up under local ownership and control just as you describe. But the considerable overlap between the factory's worker-owners and the local community would be a first line of defense against pollution in the first place. Unlike the present situation, in which decision-making is divorced from suffering the consequences, the costs and benefits of pollution would be fully internalized in the same decision-makers.

While I heartily agree with restoring common law n...

2005-04-22T17:24:00.000-07:00

While I heartily agree with restoring common law nuisance and conversion as bases for enforcing many private property rights, those mechanisms don't work with problems like air and water quality. The air is owned by no one, and proving "harm" to the standards of the common law from one air pollutor is difficult, if not impossible. Worse yet, decentralised sources of pollution like household garbage and car exhaust present complex, probably unsolvably difficult, issues for a court to resolve.

Put another way, everyone in town works for the big factory, or has derivative businesses serving the factory's workers. The factory pollutes the air. Who sues whom? And how do they recover?

- Josh

Comments on Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism: RFK2 Redux

It might indeed be difficult to come up with a pre...

While I heartily agree with restoring common law n...