Comment Re:Net metering is little more than theft (Score 1) 374
That is intrinsically impossible. The EPA can no more make rational tradeoffs about pollution for the entire country than the USSR could fix prices rationally: the EPA simply doesn't have the necessary information, conditions are far too variable across the country, and the people inside the EPA simply have no incentive to do the right thing
...Man, you're past jaded.
Necessary information: It has most of it.
Variable conditions: You do what you can.
No incentive to do the right thing: Says you. I'm not saying it'll be perfect, but collecting tax money is done rather routinely.
Job seeking after EPA duty: Meh. Like I said earlier, a fairly simple fee structure is harder to mess up.
You're still committing a fallacy - do nothing unless the solution is 'perfect'. I don't demand perfect.
Fascist economics means strongly regulated markets based on what politics decides is in the interest of society as a whole (a "mixed economy"). That is what you are advocating, isn't it?
Actually no. I'm actually advocating loosening control by changing the way the EPA does business. Currently it works on a basis of dictating the AMOUNT of pollution an industry, down to specific industrial facilities, can produce through a system of permits. If you violate your permit, you may or may not be charged substantial penalties. If it doesn't want a particular industry inside the USA, it simply has to set the permitted levels of pollution low enough, require expensive enough remediation, to render the business uneconomical. Meanwhile it preserves current players through grandfathering, often allowing orders of magnitude more pollution from older facilities.
By default, you don't have a right to pollute other people's private property at all, whether it's their air, their land, or their water;
Correct. Though 'their air' and 'their water' gets rather complicated because it's constantly moving.
you should have to pay for that right, just like you pay for the right to cross their land, mine their land, or do anything else to it.
Which is what I proposed, so why are you complaining?
Right now, the EPA gives you a free license to pollute and kill other people at no cost to you using some blanket standards that are too strict in some areas and too lenient in others.
Which is what I was complaining about... 'Grandfathering' = 'free license'. Blanket standards being too strict in some areas and too lenient in others is probably always going to be an issue, which is why I simply said 'use the best available science'. Then add an administrative fee on top because you're probably underestimating it.
'You're overcharging for sulfor dioxide and undercharging for nitrogen dioxide' isn't, to me, a condemnation of my system, it results in a shrug and me updating the fee schedule.
There are plenty of books on that. Murray Rothbard's "For a New Liberty"
Okay, read the pollution section from the ebook. I'll summarize my thoughts:
1. Just who do you propose to sell the rivers to, where they can still be used for trade, wildlife preservation, and such without massive, massive issues with negotiating with, potentially, thousands of owners?
2. How do you arrange it so that companies are liable for their pollution when it's basically impossible to point your finger at a specific factory having caused you harm, or making it so easy that anybody who gets a cough is suing everybody and clogging the courts up?
What I'm getting at is that my 'solution' is to make the government the overseer - the union, if you will(still not a good comparison, but I can't think of better at the moment). It then charges the industries for their pollution, so we can still have industry, but charges enough that it can then spend that money(through lowered taxes, if nothing else) to remediate the harm caused by remaining pollution, and industries, because they have to pay for what they emit, are 'encouraged' to prevent said emissions.
Just to let you know, you've been arguing with a self-described moderate libertarian. You may be closer to the anarchy scale.
I'll summarize:
1. We need a policy that is 'simple' enough for businesses to be able to work with it.
2. It needs to be as non-intrusive as possible.
3. It needs to render external cost(pollution) internal in as efficient of a method as possible. Lawsuits aren't efficient. Negotiating with potentially thousands or tens of thousands of people isn't efficient.
3a. By rendering the cost internal, companies are encouraged to not pollute.
3b. By avoiding lawsuits as much as possible, we can still have industry.