From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Jun 29 2002 - 14:49:44 MDT
Before the ever-busy "progressives" forced most
businesses into the corporate mode, as distinct from
the "trust," via "trust busting," all in the name of
the public good, of course, even though it removed
much of the liability for full damages that helped
keep the trusts in line, substituting government
oversite by bureaucrats hand-picked by the
corporations they were supposedly regulating (whose
old-money, coincidentally had funded the progressives
trust-busting campaign), ... before all that, if a
private company caused distributed damage to the
environment that could be measured, as in polluting a
river or lake or the air, then a class action suit by
everyone impacted could be brought against them, and
full damages extracted.
Of course, now, the case could be made that we all are
involved in the pollution, and we all are essentially
free riders despoiling the commons. Perhaps a class
action suit by humanity against itself is in order?
Suppose a couple of us humans filed a suit naming the
entirety of humankind as defendants? If the suit
succeeded, then some kind of mechanism for assigning
relatife blame and collecting appropriate damages
would have to follow. Potentially, a Georgist kind of
solution, no? It could even happen in an
anarcho-capitalist utopia.
Then, people would think twice about having a dark
roof on their home in summer here in S. CA. If you
look at the arial photos, it's pretty clear that a lot
of the dark areas could be made light or vice versa as
needed. When municipalities got a bill for the actual
pollutants due to people waiting in traffic due to
unbelievably long, unsynced traffic light locally,
they might decide to cut costs by doing the right
thing for a change.
After all, we do all breathe the same air, etc. But
to date, we have no effective, efficient and equitable
mechanism for assessing the relative costs of our use
of that commons.
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