Calling all Libertarians [benlehman]

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So, I have this question for my libertarian friends. As I understand it, the basis of your political philosophy is essentially the elimination of "coercion," which is to say people being forced to do things that they might not, otherwise, choose to do.

Now, most libertarians are against environmental regulations. Why? It seems to me that the only way to enforce the "no-coercion" policy in this arena is to have a massive, top-down, strictly enforced environmental policy.

Let me put it this way. Suppose that you are running a factory. It necessarily will produce pollutants. This is damaging the air and lungs of everyone within a hundred miles, maybe more, depending on wind currents. Have you contracted, indvidually, with each of these people to damage their lungs? What have you given them in exchange? Doesn't that mean that pollution is, in fact, highly coercive?

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There are 11 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Huh.

I consider myself a libertarian, but I'm not against environmental regulations. Why? Because, to me, the core ideal is "You can do whatever you want, so long as it does no material harm to others". The key bit comes from determining what constitutes 'material harm'. Upsetting someone else's belief structure doesn't qualify. Impacting someone elses' quality of life through carcinogens or mercury in the water supply does.

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What have you given them in exchange? Doesn't that mean that pollution is, in fact, highly coercive?

It in fact does, or at least it's damaging (libertarians call it an "initiation of force"). Anyone who was damaged by the factory would have a case against it. Libertarians also believe that if you're doing it only to your own land and no one else is affected by it, then no one else should have anything to say about it.

Some links, if you're interested:

http://www.ti.org/liberty.html (http://www.ti.org/liberty.html)
http://www.issues2000.org/Celeb/Libertarian_Party_Environment.htm (http://www.issues2000.org/Celeb/Libertarian_Party_Environment.htm)
http://www.lp.org/issues/environment.shtml (http://www.lp.org/issues/environment.shtml)
http://www.perc.org/ (http://www.perc.org/)

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But, even if you do it only to your own land, it naturally effects your neighbors through groundwater and evaporation, right?

I mean, as I understand it, the act of driving your car is an initiation of force against your entire metropolitan area.

yrs--
--Ben

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Well, you do have to show a real effect. Not necessarily to the extent of proving harm, but if you can, say, find traces of a contaminant on your property then you have grounds for action against the contaminator.

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So, how should one go after polluters? Let the government legislate againist it before hand, or wait for someone to sue?

BTW, who are the people Libertarians point to as their intellectual founders? It all seems like JS Mill to me, but that just doesn't seem to be correct.

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So, how should one go after polluters? Let the government legislate againist it before hand, or wait for someone to sue?

Generally, wait for someone to sue; if you can prove a real effect, you have grounds to sue; if you can't, then what you're doing is meddling in someone else's business.

BTW, who are the people Libertarians point to as their intellectual founders? It all seems like JS Mill to me, but that just doesn't seem to be correct.

Mill occasionally shows up in the woodpile, though he's not frequently cited. Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith, Lysander Spooner, Patrick Henry, Henry David Thoreau, Ayn Rand (to varying degrees; not all of us like her), Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman, Hayek, Von Mises, Frederic Bastiat, Peter Kropotkin, Robert LeFevre, Peter McWilliams, L. Neil Smith, Robert A. Heinlein, Samuel Edward Konkin III, H.L. Mencken, occasionally Noam Chomsky.

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Wow, that's a mixed bag.

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(I ate my own post. Trying again, more tersely.)

Why most libertarians ignore environmental stuff

* most environmentalists may lean anti-capitalistic, or at least move to restrain the market

* environmentalists may be based in Malthusian thinking, which has had a long historical clash with the optimistic/utopian/near-Panglossian view of Enlightenment-style progress + markets

* many environmentalist solutions call for centralized control

* many environmentalist solutions are functionally like trade barriers; sometimes, this can even be by design.

* (The Real Reason) a HUGE cultural gap between environmentalists and libertarians

When you add these up, many libertarians believe that the market is adequate to provide a solution (civil litigation vs. pollutors, or environmentalists buying out land for the purpose of conservation), or even go so far as to ignore any and all possibility of actual environmental harm. (This leads to tripe like Crichton's Climate of Fear. Yuck.)

Personally, I'm not Malthusian, but I do think that environmental crisis is a real concern. Since pollution is indeed substantive coercive harm (cancer is bad, right?), then it would be understand to have some big, top-down means of controlling it. However, centralized authority & micromanagement in general would (according to my ideology) tend to have major inefficiencies at best, and possibly corruption/biases as well. There are probbably better ways of roping in pollution than centralized control - but realistically, there does need to be some overall power saying "You, with the pollution and the not paying the smog-tax. Cut it the fuck out."

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