In reference to http://blog.mises.org/16687/defeat-the-epa-with-this/
I went to Lowes yesterday looking for this stuff and wasn’t able to come up with anything. I asked a few people and one person asked, “What is phosphate?” To which I replied,“well, it apparently used to be in dish washer soap but was banned.” His response was, “If it’s banned, we don’t sell anything close to it.” I chuckled a little and said, “No, it was banned from being used in dish washer soap.” Anyway, no one was really able to help me. Headed over to the grocery store and found this stuff called Finish - Glass Magic. Its phosphorous content is 21%. I’m assuming then that this wasn’t a full on ban. Anyway, I’m still going to look out for the stuff from Tucker’s blog.
I live in one of the states that apparently instituted the ban.
i checked out the mises blog post and it seems surprising to me they make it sound like the EPA is just out to make it harder for people to wash dishes.
nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus are huge problems in many water systems. specifically, they foster algae blooms that can lead to massive fish kills. its a big chunk of why there is a massive deadzone forming the gulf of mexico and elsewhere like the chesapeake bay. we’re talking about destroying ecosystems and commercial fishing in these areas.
http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/deadzone/
i can see why they might want to downplay this though. this is an externality problem that would be very hard for a market to solve even if property rights were well defined. transaction costs would be huge because nutrients are flowing from everywhere: not only point sources like municipal waste water facilities (that nominally treats the sewage that comes from households that contains phosphates in dish soap) but non-point sources (like farms where fertilizer runs off). how would one even identify them let alone nagotiate a contract withthem? Maayybe if you owned the miss. river AND the gulf of mexico you could nagotiate with point sources, but non-point sources still comrpise the vast majority of loading.
Anyway, it is one thing to openly assume away externality problems like this in theory. but to openly encourage people to engage in destructive behavior? seems at best distasteful. it seems like the literal equivalent of saying people should leave their lights on all night (even while you’re sleeping) just to stick it to those green-do-gooders that think carbon emissions contribute to global climate change.
If a non-point source is found to be destroying another person’s private property, wouldn’t they have a case against the person who owns the land of the non-point source? I don’t see how it would be difficult for the market to find a solution to your problem.
Student-
Doesn’t the problem with phosphate come in when it becomes highly concentrated in an area where it is rare? Better water management would solve that problem wouldn’t it? I think the idea that we have to manage every little ecological problem, or the possibility of every little ecological problem, is ridiculous. What is the optimal state to begin with? I think that the level of risk that people want to take and the level of damage that people want to endure can be decided on the market through consumer choice and prices.
Anyway, it is one thing to openly assume away externality problems like this in theory
This is something that has been bothering me lately. It is one thing to wish to reframe or contextulize the intellectual debate, but what is odd is how many libertarians seem to ignore the fact that the apperatus we have now is what people depend on in their day to day life and calculations. It is bizarre to think that a radical paradigm change could, would, or should happen to the general homeostasis of society.
Even if the EPA is inefficient and ultimately a very very bad thing; it is simply what we have to work with for the time being.
jmorris84
well just to be clear, it isn’t “my” problem. the consequences of nutrient pollution are well documented and the persistence of those consequences around the globe are a testiment to how difficult the problems have been to solve in the past.
second, the key thing to know about a non-point source is there is no single point of emissions. think about it this way. when it rains, the rain falls everywhere, not just the land next to the stream. so the nutrients arriving at the edge of the stream come not only from the land right next to the stream, they are washed down from the land upgradient as well. so if you are thinking about suing someone for the damages nutrients have caused to the gulf, you will have a hard time figuring out who is liable (except, in a sense, pretty much everyone is) and for how much.
Who do we sue for volcanic eruptions? I mean come on student, you can’t expect me, at least, to care about attempting to micromanage nature. I mean, it seems like what you’re saying basically is that we don’t even have the capability of dealing with these problems at the moment.
Phaedros
I think that the level of risk that people want to take and the level of damage that people want to endure can be decided on the market through consumer choice and prices.
But through what process (in a world of ill defined property rights and/or high transaction costs) do the damages from nutrient pollution become included in the prices of products containing those chemicals?
And you’re right that better water management is part of the solution. Most WWTPs could do more to reduce nutrients in thier effluent. But, it is typically very expensive for them to do so. and even if they pursed these expensive treatment options, the bulk of the problem (non-point sources) would largely go unaddressed.
Who do we sue for volcanic eruptions? I mean come on student, you can’t expect me, at least, to care about attempting to micromanage nature. I mean, it seems like what you’re saying basically is that we don’t even have the capability of dealing with these problems at the moment.
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The “who to sue” is a legal and not an economic issue, so unless there is an extant court you are referring to the question is meaningless
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What is so difficult to conceptualize about a person or group of people unable to deal with a catastrophe? It happens all the time. Pompeii, Plague, Tsunami, the list is endless
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What are the limits in the language of economics?
Who do we sue for volcanic eruptions? I mean come on student, you can’t expect me, at least, to care about attempting to micromanage nature. I mean, it seems like what you’re saying basically is that we don’t even have the capability of dealing with these problems at the moment.
Well, unlike volcanic eruptions WE are the ones actually pouring these nutrients into our lakes and rivers. The products we buy (like dishsoap), the fertilizers we use on our fields, heck even by putting down pavement we are working to put more nutrients into our waters (large areas of impervious paved area like in cities means rain water and the chemicals it picks up run off into surface water rather than soaking into the soil).
So I don’t mean to make it sound like there is nothing we can do. There are at least 3 things.
#1 Use products that contain less phosphorus and nitrogen [using dishsoaps without phosphates for example!]
#2 Treat our sewage to reduce nutirents (points sources like WWTPs)
#3 Treat our non-point source run off for nutrients. For example, you can plant trees along the banks of streams in rural areas. This will 1) slow down the runoff before it reaches the stream and 2) the treats will eat up some of the nutrients as food. Or, if you are talking about urban areas, you can build stormwater ponds where rain runoff can collect and nutrients can settle before moving onto surface water.
Federal, state, and local governments are already engaged in all 3 of these activities.
Student-
You’ll have to enlighten me further I guess on what the transaction cost has to do with anything, buying a banana has a transaction cost, that’s reality I guess. However, the real problem is as you say, ill-defined property rights. That is a problem of politics I think, or rather it is a government induced problem mainly. The main way, I think, that markets will deal with the phosphorous thing is that as reserves of phosphorous become lower and lower, prices will rise and people will use it less. Until that happens what ways are there of dealing with the phosphorous that has concentrated in areas around the coastlines? Well, one way I could think of that will never ever happen is a sort of homesteading project where people who clean up areas of the ocean become its owners. That, of course, will never happen so people will not have any incentive to do it without being paid. I guess if environmental groups are really, really concerned they should put their money where their mouth is. That is, on the free market purchase labor and resources in order to clean it up.
William-
I’m not sure what you mean at all so we can just leave it at that lol.
Anyway, it is one thing to openly assume away externality problems like this in theory
This is something that has been bothering me lately. It is one thing to wish to reframe or contextulize the intellectual debate, but what is odd is how many libertarians seem to ignore the fact that the apperatus we have now is what people depend on in their day to day life and calculations. It is bizarre to think that a radical paradigm change could, would, or should happen to the general homeostasis of society.
Even if the EPA is inefficient and ultimately a very very bad thing; it is simply what we have to work with for the time being.
William, I am in total agreement. Nominally, I agree with many of the folks here that everything else being equal more personal freedom is better. But, at the same, I recognize that the institutions we have today weren’t just forced upon out of no where. They developed over time as imperfect solutions to very real problems. And I am more confident that improvements in these institutions over time will have a better chance of improving our lives and moving us toward more personal freedom than trying to recreate society from whole cloth.
I’m not convinced really that those things need to be done. Some might believe it should be done because they don’t like this or that. If that’s what they believe then they can do it. Are you sure that these solutions won’t present new problems, or even worse ones? For example the sewage treatment solution, what are you using to reduce nutrients? It seems strange, to me at least, that now we’re fighting nutrients, I mean what’s next? There’s too much water? Anyways, I get the issue, but I think that it’s hard to say what the optimal environment is and how we achieve that environment.
I’m not sure what you mean at all so we can just leave it at that lol.
Shit I misread your post completely, lol. I’ve been sick and bed, I guess the medicine is getting to me.
Oh well: exit William
From wikipedia-
“Dead zones are reversible. The Black Sea dead zone, previously the largest dead zone in the world, largely disappeared between 1991 and 2001 after fertilizers became too costly to use following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of centrally planned economies in Eastern and Central Europe. Fishing has again become a major economic activity in the region.[12]”
I just thought of something after initially posting this. I think maybe there’s a lack of entrepeneurial spirit as well. I mean given the above why couldn’t groups like Greenpeace make proposals to fishing companies or whatever about how they can clean up a given area and make it more profitable by increasing the number of fish in that area. I kind of know why they might not do that. They might not do it because they’re so ideologically blind that they would then cry about too much fishing or something.
Phaedros,
Well, i tried to include an example of how transaction costs matter here earlier. Imagine one person owned the entire miss river and the gulf of mexico in the same way a person might own a piece of land. would that solve this problem? well, the person could offer to pay the polluter some sum to reduce their emissions in someway. That is the transaction. The problem is that in this case EVERYONE is a polluter is some way. and it is very hard to figure out which individual would be more responsible than another. That is the transaction cost. And since the cost of figuring out who you would need to pay to reduce emissions is so high the transaction never takes place.
The main way, I think, that markets will deal with the phosphorous thing is that as reserves of phosphorous become lower and lower, prices will rise and people will use it less.
I am not sure I would call that a market solution. Lets just use this non-renewable resource carelessly, destroying our aquatic ecosystems in the process, until it becomes too expensive to use anyways (phosphorus, btw, is a chemical that is as essential to our food cycle as water)? I would say that is exactly the situation I would want to avoid in the first place.
Dead zones are reversible.
Yes that is true. As I understand it, the problem is that nutrients create algae blooms which use up the oxygen fish and other organisms would normally use (thus making the water uninhabitable for them). If you take out the nutrients, you take out the food for the blooms and it can be come safe for aquatic life again.
But the clear message is that we can’t undo the damage without reducing nutrient loading in one way or another. Regulations on removing phosphates from dish soap is one way of doing that.