However, if you were the typical MBA, then we all believed that companies had the right to pollute as much as they wanted
The typical MBA maybe. The typical economist, no. The typical libertarian? Well that's less certain but I guess why they generally aren't huge fans of the way the EPA works, the majority, probably a large majority of them would disagree with the contention that companies should be able to pollute as much as they want.
More to the point I would not support the idea.
The connection between strong support for for free market in theory and to the extent you can get it, in practice, isn't strongly connected to "you should be able to pollute as much as you want". Dumping pollution on someone isn't a market its an externality. In severe concentrations it could even be called an attack on them.
Now pollution controls have all sorts of direct and indirect costs, and it makes sense to allow a certain amount of pollution, because to try to cut it too much is very damaging to the economy (and poverty isn't a good environment for people). Also over time economic growth and technological innovation give us a greater ability to reduce and deal with pollution.
But the idea "just pollute as much as you can and thats fine" is unreasonable.
I would bet we could easily allocate at least $300B a year spent on military that we could avoid if we no longer needed oil.
To put it simply I disagree on many levels. I would not call keeping trade in vital (or even non-vital) commodities a subsidy to them, and I don't think we reasonably could, or more to the point would, cut anything like $300bil a year from the military if we didn't need to import oil, or even if we didn't need oil at all. (And even if we don't use oil for energy we still would have a need for some oil)
Another point to consider is that if we reduce our oil needs to the point where US sources can meet them, the marginal US sources will shut down. We would reduce imports, but we would likely reduce US production even more, meaning that we would still import over half of what we do now.
And before, you accuse me of being a liberal
I wouldn't bother. I'm not sure if its true, and more importantly its irrelevant. The validity of your arguments isn't determined by your overall political ideology. |
