Property rights and pollution.

Economics Economics Questions
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1

I consider myself to be a fairly staunch Libertarian. I believe that the government should be limited to protecting life, liberty, and property (natural rights) from being harmed by others. I also think that much environmental law could simply be handled with tort law (for damage to property) or criminal law (for harm to human health).

I think this logic works well to protect health and private property. However, the sticky wicket is how shared resources are managed. For example, the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland was discovered to have suffered great environmental damage in the 1970s due to algal blooms & subsequent oxygen-depletion, industrial waste, and overfishing. Since it’s a shared resource, direct damage to private property is difficult to prove, and there are multiple polluters with different interests causing the damage (factories, farms, fishermen, etc.). It seems that some sort of owner is required to set rules for how the resource is managed and the government seems like an obvious choice. While the government has classically done a poor job of managing the environment on public or shared property, I haven’t found any good arguments for an alternative, which suggests that the public must hold the government accountable for managing public/shared regions to prevent environmental damage. Seems reasonable.

The other tricky thing is small-impact pollution, which may be difficult to deal with using the clunky court system to cover damages. For example, if a neighbor were to leave bags of garbage on my lawn, they are certainly causing harm to my property. However, taking them through the clunky court system to cover the damages would probably be more trouble than its worth, since the cost of cleanup is relatively small. Hence littering laws seem like an reasonable deterrent, where a minimum fine is imposed for any littering that is much higher than the cost of cleanup.

Another tricky thing to deal with is damage to ecosystems that may not readily surface as property damage. For example, if farmers are shooting wolves to protect their livestock, and the animals are hunted to the point of extinction, who speaks for the wolves? They don’t explicitly belong to anyone, and their benefit to humans (controlling deer populations, etc) isn’t apparent to everyone (and certainly not livestock farmers). Legislation protecting/managing wildlife seems appropriate.

The last thing that I have difficulty with is situations where the polluter is difficult to identify. For example, if an industrial site buries waste on their property and it contaminates the ground water. If people are harmed a criminal suit is probably appropriate, but it may be difficult to identify who has done the damage without an investigation. Would this sort of investigation be conducted by the local police force if people begin getting sick? How would the police know to start an investigation? It seems as though establishing rules to prevent the mishandling of dangerous waste is reasonable.

I suppose the question that I have is whether there are alternative ways to deal with these sorts of situations that I haven’t thought of. Again, I think that most environmental laws can be handled with tort law or criminal law, but it seems to me that there is a legitimate argument for environmental law in cases such as those described above. I wonder what others think of these situations and others like them.

2

You threw out a lot of topics in your OP, but regarding the problem of polluter ID, I have a little insight as I’m in environmental consulting. Generally, groundwater and soil pollution problems are absolutely able to be investigated, and the actual cost of doing so isn’t astronomical. Part of the cost problem is our old friend: state licensing. Everything from the geologists associated with the investigation, to the drillers used to advance borings and monitoring wells, to the labs used to analyze the samples, have to be licensed to admissible to the state DEPs, at least in the US. In a private-law society, I’d imagine that you’d have environmental consulting firms similar to the type we have today, although instead of producing reports for the state DEP, they’d be more like private investigators, hired by property owners to build evidence for a tort case.

“Dangerous waste” is only so when it find a pathway to human consumption. Even today, in many cases a state environmental enforcement agency might allow tons of old industrial waste to stay buried and mostly uncontained, as long as the site remains in industrial use and nobody drinks the water.

3

Chris,

I think you’ll notice that the problem common to almost all of your issues is an attempt to mandate “no ownership of private property over X”. While technically the current bureaucrats in the government own the resources, their policy in these cases is to exercise no stewardship over the resource so as to emulate a lack of ownership. Nobody is allowed to own the bay, nobody is allowed to own the wolves, etc. The good alternative is private property.

This link may be of value to you: http://mises.org/daily/1760

4

Actually there’s a lot you can check out…

“Environmental Preservation: A Matter of Property”

“Austrians on the Environment”

“An Austrian Theory of Environmental Economics”

“A Primer on Natural Resources and the Environment”

“Environmentalism Without Government”

“Privatizing Climate Policy”

“Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution”

5

How do you determine if the benefits of any such law outweigh its costs?

6

“I think you’ll notice that the problem common to almost all of your issues is an attempt to mandate “no ownership of private property over X”. While technically the current bureaucrats in the government own the resources, their policy in these cases is to exercise no stewardship over the resource so as to emulate a lack of ownership. Nobody is allowed to own the bay, nobody is allowed to own the wolves, etc. The good alternative is private property.”

Thanks for the links. Quite a lot of information there and I’ll give it a gander. It seems like private ownership becomes tricky for some things. Would private ownership of a bay give the owner a natural monopoly? Would private ownership of wolves mean the owners were liable for their attacks on livestock? Is it practical to establish ownership of the ocean or portions thereof?

I’ve previously read a bit of Murray Rothbard’s argument for dealing with air pollution based on the damage that it might do, and I mostly agree. However, the enforcement seems like it could become difficult. For example, if several power-plants have smokestacks in an area, and people are getting sick, how do you establish which one is causing the harm? What if the emissions from a lone power-plant are acceptable, but the emissions from multiple power-plants in an area becomes dangerous?

Mind you, I only ask these questions because I’ve found the argument against government management of environments to be perhaps the most difficult libertarian argument to make. I certainly don’t think that the state does a good job of it, but I think that there is an argument that the lack of environmental regulation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries resulted in substantial amounts of environmental damage which is difficult to refute. Health problems due to factory emissions in London, Paris, and New York during the industrial revolution are well documented. Perhaps this was a failure of the court systems to adequately prosecute the offenders?

I think that it’s safe to say that whatever your political philosophy is, everyone want’s a clean environment. I also think that property owners and individuals are the biggest stakeholders in maintaining things like clean water, forests, and clean air. However, to make this argument, I have to be able to address opposing viewpoints with a concise, eloquent argument for individual liberty.

7

How do you determine if the benefits of any such law outweigh its costs?

Perhaps through taxpayer referendum? As I mentioned, I don’t believe that the government does a particularly good job of maintaining commons, but private ownership of some things seems impractical.

8

You threw out a lot of topics in your OP, but regarding the problem of polluter ID, I have a little insight as I’m in environmental consulting. Generally, groundwater and soil pollution problems are absolutely able to be investigated, and the actual cost of doing so isn’t astronomical. Part of the cost problem is our old friend: state licensing. Everything from the geologists associated with the investigation, to the drillers used to advance borings and monitoring wells, to the labs used to analyze the samples, have to be licensed to admissible to the state DEPs, at least in the US. In a private-law society, I’d imagine that you’d have environmental consulting firms similar to the type we have today, although instead of producing reports for the state DEP, they’d be more like private investigators, hired by property owners to build evidence for a tort case.

“Dangerous waste” is only so when it find a pathway to human consumption. Even today, in many cases a state environmental enforcement agency might allow tons of old industrial waste to stay buried and mostly uncontained, as long as the site remains in industrial use and nobody drinks the water.

Thanks for the answer. Perhaps hidden impacts on the environment aren’t all that hidden after all. I assume that investigation is merely done by taking soil samples around a region and plotting them on a map versus concentration of pollutant? It seems to me that groundwater polution would be a violation of property rights if not a criminal act (if people were hurt by it). Would the local police perform (or hire someone to perform) the investigation?

9

The economic knowledge required to ascertain the benefit of any government action cannot be revealed through referendums. Referendums do not make economic calculation possible. Do you know what I’m talking about? Because you bring up the issue of what is “impractical”. It is important to understand what is really impractical and what is not before offering a solutions that may be worse then the problem.

10

In your bay example, that is not the meaning of a natural monopoly. Regardless, one could buy the whole bay (either from the government today, or - in some hypothetical free market - from the lot of current owners) and have a monopoly on… Chesapeake Bays in Maryland. So what?

Yes, owners of wolves would be liable for the damage to others’ property that their wolves cause.

It is absolutely practical to establish ownership of portions of sea. Most people don’t want random space in the ocean, though - they want fish or other sea life, or the stuff that can be found under the sea floor at a certain spot. Those are also physical things that can be owned, and it is practical to assign ownership of them as well.

11

In your bay example, that is not the meaning of a natural monopoly. Regardless, one could buy the whole bay (either from the government today, or - in some hypothetical free market - from the lot of current owners) and have a monopoly on… Chesapeake Bays in Maryland. So what?

Semantics aside, perhaps if one had a monopoly in Chesapeake Bays in Maryland they could exert undo influence on a shipping company in Baltimore, for example. The shipping company would be unable to send ships across the Chesapeake bay without paying the owner for the right to use their property. Perhaps this is reasonable, as there are other forms of shipping transportation available to the citizens of Baltimore, but it seems as though concentrated power can be corrupting, whether in the hands of representative government or in private ownership. To take the example of owning large areas to the extreme, one might consider the King of England’s claim to owning the English isles or the King of Saudi Arabia’s claim to the country of Saudi Arabia. I’ve always believed that Lord Acton’s pronouncement is essentially right - power should be divided.

Yes, owners of wolves would be liable for the damage to others’ property that their wolves cause.

What, then, would be the incentive to own wolves on your land? They seem as though they might be a liability as they might eat a neighbor’s livestock. Would it be possible that this could lead to the eradication of wolves? Again, looking to the extremes, at what point are organisms no longer owned? Are birds owned? Are bugs owned? Are bacteria owned? It seems as though some organisms might not be of a direct benefit to people, but benefit to an ecosystem.

It is absolutely practical to establish ownership of portions of sea. Most people don’t want random space in the ocean, though - they want fish or other sea life, or the stuff that can be found under the sea floor at a certain spot. Those are also physical things that can be owned, and it is practical to assign ownership of them as well.

In order to own something, don’t you have to be able to claim sovereignty over it (a-la Hobbes)? For example, if you own a piece of ocean, don’t you have to be able to defend your claim to ownership? I do suppose that it’s possible to establish the boundaries of your ocean property with buoys and to prevent abuse of your property by patrolling it, but it seems impractical to me. Do you have an example of this sort of ownership so that I can understand what you mean better?

Again, I bring these discussions up here because I really want to understand a better way of managing ecosystems than handing control over to governments. However, I fear that my lack of understanding of certain concepts hinders my ability to argue the case for private ownership. Really, to make the argument for individual liberty, I want to have clear, concise arguments to challenge socialist ideas. If I can’t make a believable argument to myself, I can’t make a belivable argument to others.

12

The economic knowledge required to ascertain the benefit of any government action cannot be revealed through referendums. Referendums do not make economic calculation possible. Do you know what I’m talking about? Because you bring up the issue of what is “impractical”. It is important to understand what is really impractical and what is not before offering a solutions that may be worse then the problem.

Perhaps my understanding of how things can be owned is skewed. I’m merely stating the way that things seem according to my worldview. Perhaps there is another way of looking at things that I haven’t thought of.

13

Can you explain what is undue about the influence a theoretical Chesapeake Bay owner would have over shipping in the area? If they are the legitimate property owner, then whatever influence they gain by determining who gets to use their bay is their due influence.

To use another example, suppose I own some property and a railroad wants to put in a railway. This railway needs to be perfectly straight so that it can go super fast. This super fast railway will be a boon to people all along the route. If I do not sell my land to them, they must either reroute or put curves in their railway - forcing the trains to go slow and not be as useful. It is pretty clear that I am exerting influence here. Not only on the railroad company but on all of the potential beneficiaries of the faster railway. But is it undue influence? Do I really have some obligation to give up or alter the use of my legitimately owned property for the benefit of others who have no legitimate claim on the property? No, of course not.

The idea that the legitimate owner acting without aggression still has some duty to others is the bread and butter of the technocrats, do-gooders, and outright thieves that plague governments.

I ran out of time so I’ll have to respond to the other parts of your post later. On an unrelated note, I noticed you are listed as being in Cinci. to Ohio people! I’m in Columbus, myself.