Nobody has any right to pollute anybody else’s property. But you do have a right to pollute yours. If Union Carbide pollutes your property and you get cancer you have all right to press charges against the criminals.
This makes sense to me, I just havent seen anything (yet) in my readings about health, safety and enviromental issues, nor did a few anti-objectivists I talked to so i’m wondering if it’s said, if it’s implied, or if it’s not discussed at all. It seems that everything is implied that it should be totally free market, because if the government regulates what is legal or not in health or safety, isn’t that just “having to get permission from those who produce nothing” (health inspectors) and who can further be bribed to selectively enforce or not certain regulations via political pull.
Part of my argument is against what i’d call hit and run capitalism. You start a company, pollute without others knowing, reap the profits, and run before the damage is really known. The right of corporatism is perhaps a separate issue (hiding behind the corporate veil so once the money is passed to you, nobody can seize it not even those youve legitimately destroyed the lives of) but another case of trying to prevent looting, because 40 years after a business otherwise someone could claim they were harmed irrepairably by working at your factory and now you owe them medical bills. The US legal system lets anyone sue anyone else for any alleged infraction and a ‘good’ lawyer can convict a ham sandwich so it encourages legalized looting.
“contamination” is a loaded word here. You could say that planting anything anywhere will “contaminate” the surroundings with pollen. Of course if anybody really releases toxins into the environment they are criminals who need to be brought to justice. Genetically modified plants are no special case.
I think they are, they are the only contamination which can self propagate. I can dump lead and mercury into my own well, and if I own the entire water table, it wont contaminate your water table. GMO crops WILL contaminate the neighbors field if they have the same species of crop, and those offspring will further contaminate the next farm over. Employees of Monsanto have even been caught driving in the country, throwing handfulls of GMO seeds into the fields of farmers who DIDNT buy their crop, and then being hit with lawsuits saying that the farmer was wrongfully using Monsanto’s patented GMO property and now owes them alot of money, after their organic or other field was actually contaminated and rendered unsellable. This is one of my examples of a danger of “unregulated” capitalism. Perhaps just declaring GMO to be a crime is the solution, I dont know, thats part of what i’m opening the debate floor up to.
What I dont like is the implication that then the government should decide what can be sold regardless of the dangers, because it seems to be a slippery slope then to controlling all aspects of life. Should I have the right to buy a nuclear bomb at the corner market if i’m not a felon? If not under what basis would you prevent such free contract from taking place?
To “fail” means to fail at something. It implies a purpose that hadn’t been fulfilled. So what is your conceived purpose of the market that you think it wouldn’t fulfill?
The concept of market failure is where free and open competition in an open market does not achieve the best solution to the problem (ie - a Paretto efficiency) but where a government theoretically can enforce such an efficiency by reorganizing things. (even if that is a violation of individual rights) By efficiency I don’t mean lower prices for consumers at the expense of producers, I mean everything worse for everybody.
From wikipedia, “the actions of agents can have externalities, which are innate to the methods of production, or other conditions important to the market. For example, when a firm is producing steel, it absorbs labor, capital and other inputs, it must pay for these in the appropriate markets, and these costs will be reflected in the market price for steel. If the firm also pollutes the atmosphere when it makes steel, however, and if it is not forced to pay for the use of this resource, then this cost will be borne not by the firm but by society. Hence, the market price for steel will fail to incorporate the full opportunity cost to society of producing. In this case, the market equilibrium in the steel industry will not be optimal. More steel will be produced than would occur were the firm to have to pay for all of its costs of production.”
How does one account for externalities, and what i’ve elsewhere referred to as the third party problem. (where a third party, other than producer and consumer, is affected by the actions and free contract of the first two) Can a government morally or legally levy taxes taking that into account, redistributing part of the profit because the profit doesn’t take into account the full costs of production? If Union Carbide is dumping pollutants into the river, and somebody else has to be hired to pay for the cleanup costs, so the government taxes Union Carbide for those costs, is that an abusive government overstepping it’s bounds or is that still kosher in an Objectivist society and the role the government is expected to play, that of insuring economic justice? There is a moral case that the producers of wealth get paid and have the right to spend it how they choose. It is wrong to take production for granted or treat the mind as something that will produce, or the men of the mind as a class that can be parasited off and fed off without limit.
The Tragedy in the Commons is when wealth is looted from the commons though because there isn’t a law yet preventing or taxing it, such as Coca Cola in india drawing down so much water from their bottling plant that now the farmers have to dig wells over 2 miles deep to even reach water in some place. The cost of those wells isn’t being paid by Coca Cola. The danger is that the endless growth of laws like this seems to end up in the same cesspit of having to ask government permission to produce and facing increasing risks of arbitrary decisions by someone who produces nothing. The alleged role of government is to prevent it’s citizens from being harmed by predators, whether outside (invasion) or inside (criminals). The best case that Rand makes is that regulation has no place in free economic activity and the exchange of the products of mind as something which should be subjected to the scrutiny of some arbiter deciding harm is caused to another’s employment, business or the endless needs of the bottom rung of nonproducers when economics is the only issue.
What if the pollutant Union Carbide was dumping wasnt recognized as a dangerous pollutant at first, so there’s no law on the books saying it’s illegal, then it’s found to be horrificially damaging but only ten years after exposure? I’m not arguing for retroactive law, i’m trying to explain risks i’m observing in laissez faire.
It is the purpose of government to ensure a free market by enforcing property rights and judical procedures. If you call that “regulation” than yes, all else follows naturally from that and requires no special treatment.
Yes I call it regulation because it’s about the application of force, if you dont have the right to pollute your neighbor’s property that is coercive regulation. Perhaps reasonable coercion that’s necessary but coercion nonetheless. It’s the argument about what exactly should the state do. Objectivism says get the government the hell out of economic enterprise, which I agree, but to me it begs the question of how else do you restructure government to best allow personal freedom and free contract? The argument is not so much against or about Objectivism as much as what is the proper role of government and how to best do it’s job when things allowed or enabled by a totally free society seem to stand in the way. (case in point - an escaped rapist says he’s going to kill the lady who prosecuted him, he buys a gun because there is no prohibition for him to do so, and kills the woman. So the response is you have a law preventing a felon from buying a gun, but how do you determine who is a felon since they wont tell you? Do you ask the government permission every time for who can have guns?)
If you know that the other nation plans to attack than you are collaborating with criminals and therefore share the guilt. If you work for the government and receive secret information it is in your contract that you may not sell it. If you acquire secret information by illegal means you already have broken the law.
_I_ know that, that seems totably sensible to me. What if the information isnt acquired by illegal means but rather by accident? You know, you confused whose briefcase is whose at the airport after you both fell and found yourself in the possession of secret industrial knowledge, or important national security information. You are under no contract not to sell the information afterall, and the need for profit in an objectivist society is merciless since if you cant produce there is no guaranteed safety net from the government, so the temptation to sell will be very strong. Maybe you dont even know the information is secret or have no reason to believe it is, and sell it and make a profit. Should the government confiscate your ‘wrongful’ profit? Doesnt the existance of things youre not allowed to sell by contract create a black market? (elsewhere someone said there would be no black markets under objectivism and implied nothing would be illegal to sell because it’s all free contract)
To me there are things which are obviously criminal and things which are not criminal. Yet there are people who would insist that because EvilCorp can produce gasoline at $1/gallon while sickening thousands, and my nondamaging sustainable method produces gasoline at $2/gallon without damaging health, that if I lobby to have laws passed for common health and enviromental protection that I am somehow wrongfully taking the profits of EvilCorp by making their nonsustainably produced gasoline illegal to sell and further harming free choice by forcing people to go with what I just so happen to sell. Depending which Objectivist I ask, i’m told that that is sensible and fine, or would be totally forbidden by Objectivism.
The danger is when one is falsely sold as being the opposite and the public is vulnerable to go along with it politically, such as taking production for granted and implying that businessmen simply loot what they didn’t actually produce. (sometimes they do, in grand and horrible fashion, but most business in laissez faire would be legitimate) I just dont see Rand explaining the distinctions anywhere (yet) in my readings and I feel it’s a failing. I see some parts of her writings which seem to contradict it, it seems to imply everything for sale, no restrictions from any governmental anything telling you what can or cannot be sold with the sole exceptions of force or fraud. That still leaves alot of room for abuse. I’ve had discussions with non-Objectivists who have raised these problems with me and I have no answer to give them within an Objectivist context about why it wouldn’t happen.
Loaded question.
It may be a loaded question but it’s a legitimate concern. :-/ On one hand there are the requirements for national survival and individual survival. (health and such) On the other hand there is the freedom of the economic market. At some point the two will come into conflict. Objectivism seems to always favor the freedom of the market, by what i’ve read in Ayn Rand’s writings so far, and this is where i’m having the most trouble.