From: Grant Sparks (grant@sparks.to)
Date: Tue May 19 1998 - 03:47:21 MDT
I believe Bucky Fuller had something to say about this. The first time I
read his ideas on ecological accounting and global computer networks I had
to quickly turn to the publication page to see when it was printed.
It was early 1970's I think (Bucky had a long run - he pops up everywhere).
Grant Sparks
grant@sparks.to
-----Original Message-----
From: Warrl kyree Tale'sedrin <warrl@blarg.net>
To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
Date: Tuesday, 19 May 1998 17:46
Subject: Re: Near-Term Scenarios
From: Paul Hughes <planetp@aci.net>
> Actually, I think there are free market incentives for organizations
accounting
> for their waste.
The history of the economic development of the world can be described as a
process of internalizing costs and benefits. (An internalized cost is one
that
must be paid by the entity making the decision; an internalized benefit is
one
that is received by the entity making the decision. The alternative is an
externalized cost/benefit, which goes to some person who doesn't make the
decision. As an example, if the smoke from my fire makes it hard to breathe
in
my home, the cost of that smoke is internalized; but if it flows instead
into your
home, that's externalized. Guess when I'll be most interested in
controlling the
smoke...)
We had just seriously begun internalizing the costs of pollution through
common law and the market, when the government stepped in to protect
polluters from having to reimburse their neighbors for pollution-caused
damage.
So instead we have internalized the cost of following government-imposed
pollution regulations, which are (at best) only loosely correlated with
pollution.
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