From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Mon Aug 12 2002 - 05:40:48 MDT
On Sunday, August 11, 2002 1:10 AM Dan Fabulich dfabulich@warpmail.net
wrote:
>> Pollution can be handled by the market. I have property,
>> you damage my property through your negligence.. we
>> have arbitration, possibly a lawsuit.
>
> I believe you dodged this question. What should the
> arbitrators find? Who should win this lawsuit? On what
> basis should penalties/restitution be awarded?
This is kind of like saying that if people have freedom of the press,
what will they publish, don't you think?:)
> Of course the market will handle the question. But, er,
> that's us, or people we pay/hire. How should we
> handle it?
If it's private arbitration, then it will be up to what both sides can
agree to and can be enforced. In most cases, I gather this will mean
that the polluter will be fined or at least stopped. What the actual
fine will be would depend on the situation -- things like the value of
the property, the value of the damage, court costs, and the like. I
don't think there will necessarily be a cookie cutter approach -- though
there might be in many cases. (Why? Well, sometimes it is more
efficient to just standardize such things to lower discovery costs,
arbitration costs, and the like.)
>> <Plus, it's better to prevent damage in advance
>> than to suffer the effects
>> of the damage.>
>
> Well, all we have are criminal/civil penalties for damage. So we just
> have to hope that penalties are adequate prevention.
Prevention is often better, but not always. It depends on the costs of
prevention vs. the costs of repair or replacement. If you own an acre
of land or a pond, you could, e.g., have a satelite watch over it, an
armored division defend it, and buy up all the land for 200 kilometers
around just to prevent anyone from damaging it. This would probably be
overkill in almost all cases. (Surely, government could carry out the
role as a preventer here, but that does not necessarily lower costs. It
just shifts them from the owner to other people -- the taxpayers. (The
owner might be a taxpayer too, but I'm sure her taxes aren't totally
paying off the above bill.:))
> "choose to control the vector persons"??? How
> is that a market solution? That sounds more like
> initiation of force to me: you've forced sick people
> to remain in their quarantined house/ghetto/whatever.
>
> On what authority? You being in the majority?
>
> What'll you do if they leave? Shoot them?
If all property is privately owned (whether by one person or a group of
people) or unowned -- there will be no such thing as public property --
then a vector person can be prevented from coming onto a particular
property by the owner. This is no different, in many respects, than the
government solution: not allowing disease victors to immigrate or to
move about. Of course, unlike the government solution, each property
owner wil lface the cost of her decision. If I decide, e.g., to
arbitrarily keep off certain people from my property, then if I do so
for the wrong reasons, I will experience the cost of that -- in terms of
lost chances for trade and interaction, being boycotted by others, or
even ostracized from still others.
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
See "Macroeconomics for the Real World" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Macro.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:16:01 MST