Environmental Disaster in Hungary - How would Laissez Faire Deal with it?

[Redmond]

I haven’t looked deeply into it yet(probably no-one has) but looking at thte Dam Construction, permits, regulation, etc, etc - this will probably end up with more restictions on business.

Is this the result of Laissez-Faire? De-Regulation?

Chief of company behind toxic sludge spill in Hungary arrested - CNN.com

Business News - Latest Headlines on CNN Business | CNN Business

Anyone have any ideas on how to approach this from an Austro-Libertarian Perspective?

Thanks

[Prateek_Sanjay]

Why must the ideas come necessarilly from a libertarian perspective? If the sludge is better dealt with through coercion, it is better dealt with through coercion. Why discuss a matter from foregone conclusions?

As it is, I would give you the same answer if I were a communist, a fascist, a social democrat, an Ecuadorian militant, or anything else - there is no such thing as no risk. Meaning that you can reduce the chance of something bad happening but you can never eliminate it, and it all depends on how much you are willing to sacrifice to prevent a disaster.

Of course, anybody who has picked up a good book on probability theory will know that chances of one kind of disaster happening may be slim, but take all kinds of disasters together and estimate the probability of at least one disaster happening, and it is very high. It’s what the disciples of a French school of probability call Fat Tails i.e. extreme events happen more often than normalcy.

Neither laissez-faire nor anything else has an answer to uncertainty. Nothing in the world does. Who could have stopped a toxic sludge any more than your computer exploding in blue smoke tommorow, if it happens?

[Redmond]

As it is, I would give you the same answer if I were a communist, a fascist, a social democrat, an Ecuadorian militant, or anything else - there is no such thing as no risk. Meaning that you can reduce the chance of something bad happening but you can never eliminate it, and it all depends on how much you are willing to sacrifice to prevent a disaster.

But that is the point of Socialism - to reduce risk to the smallest possible point - Unemployment Insurance, Centralised Single Payer Healthcare, State Ownership of the Means of Production.

All in the name of providing a predictable future where from the Cradle to the grave the Nanny state provides for all of your needs.

So is Statism the answer? Or Laissez Nous Faire? To Ecological “Problems”.

[Smiling_Dave]

@Prateek Sanjay

Why must the ideas come necessarilly from a libertarian perspective?

If the sludge is better dealt with through coercion, it is better dealt with through coercion.

Yes, that is a tautology. But there are deeper issues here. Who is going to decide that it is “better”? You? Me? The one coerced?

If you mean that the measure should be what gets rid of the sludge quickest, what about if we just nuke the whole country into oblivion? Then nobody would be bothered by that silly ole sludge in the least.

The point is that “better” is a very difficult word to nail down. One may well believe that loss of freedom [=coercion], both in and of itself as well as setting an evil precedent, is never “better”.

Besides, if it’s so great, why is coercion needed in the first place?

Why discuss a matter from foregone conclusions?

Is that not what you are doing? You have foregonely concluded that coercion is worth it sometimes.

As it is, I would give you the same answer if I were a communist, a fascist, a social democrat, an Ecuadorian militant, or anything else - there is no such thing as no risk. Meaning that you can reduce the chance of something bad happening but you can never eliminate it, and it all depends on how much you are willing to sacrifice to prevent a disaster.

Of course, anybody who has picked up a good book on probability theory will know that chances of one kind of disaster happening may be slim, but take all kinds of disasters together and estimate the probability of at least one disaster happening, and it is very high. It’s what the disciples of a French school of probability call Fat Tails i.e. extreme events happen more often than normalcy.

What is your level of mathematical knowledge?

Neither laissez-faire nor anything else has an answer to uncertainty. Nothing in the world does. Who could have stopped a toxic sludge any more than your computer exploding in blue smoke tommorow, if it happens?

Straw man here. The question is not what will provide an “answer”, but what will maximize the chance of success. Not the same thing.

[Smiling_Dave]

@Redmond

But that is the point of Socialism - to reduce risk to the smallest possible point - Unemployment Insurance, Centralised Single Payer Healthcare, State Ownership of the Means of Production.

If by “point”, you mean “stated goal”, then yes. If you mean “result”, then there is plenty of evidence that Socialism always results in the opposite.

All in the name of providing a predictable future where from the Cradle to the grave the Nanny state provides for all of your needs.

So is Statism the answer? Or Laissez Nous Faire? To Ecological “Problems”.

We can generalize the question and ask, “Is Statism or L. N. Faire the answer to Problem X”, where X can be any problem.

And we can easily predict the answer by reasking it. “Which method is more likely to solve problem X, one that does not punish poor performance [=Socialism], or one that does”?