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To: gpowell who wrote (20104)	1/5/2005 2:17:54 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

Without a mechanism to redistribute the costs of your actions the opportunity for profits would encourage you to continue. I think one has to account for the idea that a free market doesn't resolve conflicts arising from individual rights and freedoms. My right to pursue happiness stops at the limits where it inhibits your right to the same. This is why for a free market to flourish you need laws protecting private property and the rights of individuals, a free market doesn't mean a free for all. I agree with your premise, if history shows anything it shows that the greater the power of the state, the greater the environmental damage. The reason is two fold, a free market system creates greater wealth which allows more resources to be devoted to "clean air" and "clean water" things that people want, secondly in a country with the power tipped towards government as opposed to individual rights and property rights, people have little recourse aside from petitioning the government. Here we can use the free market and the courts to get companies and individuals to clean up their acts, we can punish offenders by avoiding their products. Too often environmental laws are used in a way which erodes private property rights and I think this is a mistake, you give up this very important right to the state and it is very difficult to win back. When the state makes decisions based on the "common good" they could easily interpret that to mean larger more extensive steel plants or oil field production or strip mines in order to produce more jobs or higher output, at the expense of public heath and a clean environment. There will always be a trade off between industry and the environment, a cleaner environment requires the use of resources which have alternative uses. Industry creates these external costs to the environment at the same time they create external benefits so there has to be a mechanism to balance those costs against the benefits. The real question is who gets to choose how much of a tradeoff they are willing to live with and how much of the external benefit you are willing to part with to reduce the external costs. Does the government decide unilaterally or do individuals or groups of individuals decide incrementally? I visited a small town in PA recently that has a large paper mill and anyone who has ever lived near a paper mill knows that the smell coming from one is not that of roses. The mill represented the majority of the employment opportunities in this tiny town, either directly or indirectly. Those who live in the town benefit and suffer from it's existence. To me, it's not a trade off I'm willing to take, but to them it seems worth it. Everyone seemed especially proud of that mill, thankful for olfactory fatigue I suppose. It is the source of their small piece of prosperity. But we live in a country where it is entirely possible to move away from this sort of enterprise, the trade off is that you live somewhere where there are few industrial jobs, but alas, clean smelling air.