Exxon Mobil profit soars 41%

[William Wallace]

I think what you're forgetting, Orthogonal, is that people are stupid and always in need of benevolent overlords to shepherd them through life. So, yeah, just remember that as you preach your "economics" or whatever.

[hefdaddy42]

I think what you're forgetting, Orthogonal, is that people are stupid and always in need of benevolent overlords to shepherd them through life. So, yeah, just remember that as you preach your "economics" or whatever.

The fact is that you're right.

[Super Dude]

Yes Ortho, the complex system required to make it is called civilization. You know, that thing that's held together by governance.

On an unrelated note, who will provide the monetary incentive to build a road? Certainly not the people using it; isn't the whole point not to allow theft of your money by projects involving the Commons?

[jsem]

It's not necessarily held together by governance. Rather be voluntary transactions between individuals.

[Scheavo]

Walter Block brings that up. In a free society, where roads are private, you sue the owner of the road. The road owner then has to impose costs on vehicles driving on his roads that pollute so that he doesn't get sued frivolously. You're right that it is inconceivable to sue every car driver that goes past your house.

Plausible, but it brings up a bunch of bureaucratic and logistical issues. How many owners of roads are there? How do those owners monitor the pollutants the cars are giving off? Why make the owner of the road responsible for the inadequacies of the car industry? It's not his fault people can't buy cars that get better mileage, so why make him the middle man in the negotiations?

The topic of air and water, well... If you'd privatize the ocean, you'd decrease the risks of say oil spills dramatically. And also stop overfishing the oceans. If say Exxon Mobil spills oil in your property, you can sue the crap out of them. If a Louisiana fisherman would own his share of the ocean, he could've just sued the crap out of BP. And any one fishing in his property would be trespassing.

You didn't address how proof would be given. Say I own some piece of the ocean, and some plastic rolls through my land. What recourse do I have to suing the perpetrator of this act? It could've been a 5 year old halfway across the world, on a different ocean. Who do I sue for my swathe of ocean being a plastic soup? Every single person who has ever littered in the ocean? The makers of the plastic to begin with? If oil comes running through my land, how am i going to track it to it's source? There are tons of minor oil leaks all the time, from a variety of sources, and I would be required to prove it was from this one source.

It seems to me the basic problem with this theory is that it assumes glass is easy to pick up after it's been spilled. It basically denies the second law of thermodynamics, making it a completely untenable theory.

[Scheavo]

It's not necessarily held together by governance. Rather be voluntary transactions between individuals.

Is that really all that different from government? Get enough people who no longer give consent to government, and you have yourself a revolution, which brings up a new government where there is more or less voluntary agreement. Don't like the government you live in? Move.

[jsem]

Yup, proof is really hard. But I don't see that, over time, we couldn't be able to develop forensics dealing with that kinda stuff.

I mean, could you really prove that some one was a murderer 100 years ago without DNA testing? I guess we shouldn't have laws against murder then, because you couldn't have proved with certainty? But because we had laws dealing with it, there was an incentive on the part of prosecutors to have better methods for proving guilt and forensics developed to be even stronger.

Basically, dealing with property rights in this way, is in a way like going back hundreds of years. But there has to be an active effort on the part of the property owners to defend their property by surveillance in some way. A store owner always puts up security cameras, or you're not sure you're going to catch the thief. People would come up with ways to defend their property, and be able to sue. That's really my point here.

Ugh, sorry for this reply being so incoherent.

[Scheavo]

Yup, proof is really hard. But I don't see that, over time, we couldn't be able to develop forensics dealing with that kinda stuff.

Why wait to try and come up with the forensics, when in the mean time we'd be harming ourselves? We can more or less stop many of these issues from being issues with government, that's my point. Maybe if you can come up with the forensics now, libertarianism would be applicable... but we don't have those tools, so the tools necessary for such a world are not present, meaning the world itself is impossible.

I really don't know how to prove that a plastic bottle cap came from one persons hands. DNA get's washed off, the bottle cap is mass-produced; the best possible thing I can remotely imagine involves a massive amount of tracking, meaning invasion of privacy. Oil is somewhat traceable, but I cant' think of how we could trace CO2, and other greenhouse gases, as well as other pollutants, to it's exact source.

[Orthogonal]

On an unrelated note, who will provide the monetary incentive to build a road? Certainly not the people using it; isn't the whole point not to allow theft of your money by projects involving the Commons?

Not entirely unrelated since I can bring my response in line with the OP. Your premise that roads is a "Commons" is flawed. Roads don't meet the criteria of a commons, they are finite in number and capacity (they are scarce) and there must be a way to allocate usage among the users. The roads are also not free. You are definitely paying for them in excise taxes on gasoline, or through other random taxes appropriated to roads.

Addressing roads is difficult because everyone has grown up with socialized roads and are conditioned to think it is the only way it can be done. There is certainly an incentive to build roads, pretty much everyone needs to use one. You want to get from point A to point B, and a paved road is much more efficient and safe than off-roading, so Roads have demand. Now, one of the major reasons people fear private roads is they can only envision a world littered with toll booth after toll booth and the whole world coming to a screeching halt. This is obviously not an ideal situation, which is why it would never happen in a private market for roads. There would be some toll booths, but there are many other ways roads can be built and maintained. What is not realized, is that average joe is not the only one who needs roads.

Every business needs roads to operate, everything from a way for their employees to get to work, to a way to transport their goods to customers. From retailers, to trucking companies, they all need roads, so there is a business need to build them, but most of all, the Automobile manufacturers and the energy providers need roads (Oil Companies), otherwise their product is more or less useless. The reason car companies and oil companies don't pay to build out roads is because we are all under the presumption that they are publicly owned. In every other industry, it is common practice for companies to invest in other companies both upstream and downstream in the production chain to improve their own business prospects and grow the market. Just like how computer companies invest in network companies to build out WiFi for their computers to use, car companies and oil companies would build out roads for their customers to use, but why would they do that now when they can get you to pay for it in excise taxes when you buy your gas. Just like a cell phone manufacturer, it doesn't do them any good to build a phone if there is no cell phone network, so they have strategic business alliances with telecom's to provide the networks.

There are other ways too. Retailers need a way for people to come to their stores, so they have an interest in roads. Retailers routinely offer perks to customers to help drive business from things like Free WiFi or Child Care while parent's shop, they could also offer a road to their business. They already own and maintain their parking lots, it's not a big stretch for them to own the road.

Other possible models could be sponsorship. Either full sponsorship like having a "Google Blvd" or ad based using billboards etc.

In the absence of a government, people will be resourceful and find ways to make things work. Sure, public roads "work" now, and maybe they really are the best method, but we don't know that, and we could very well be overpaying for what we have.

[jsem]

Yup, proof is really hard. But I don't see that, over time, we couldn't be able to develop forensics dealing with that kinda stuff.

Why wait to try and come up with the forensics, when in the mean time we'd be harming ourselves? We can more or less stop many of these issues from being issues with government, that's my point. Maybe if you can come up with the forensics now, libertarianism would be applicable... but we don't have those tools, so the tools necessary for such a world are not present, meaning the world itself is impossible

But they didn't have DNA testings to deal with murder cases 100 years ago. Should they have legalized murder?

[hefdaddy42]

Yup, proof is really hard. But I don't see that, over time, we couldn't be able to develop forensics dealing with that kinda stuff.

Why wait to try and come up with the forensics, when in the mean time we'd be harming ourselves? We can more or less stop many of these issues from being issues with government, that's my point. Maybe if you can come up with the forensics now, libertarianism would be applicable... but we don't have those tools, so the tools necessary for such a world are not present, meaning the world itself is impossible

But they didn't have DNA testings to deal with murder cases 100 years ago. Should they have legalized murder?

  DNA isn't the only form of evidence for murder.

[Scheavo]

Yup, proof is really hard. But I don't see that, over time, we couldn't be able to develop forensics dealing with that kinda stuff.

Why wait to try and come up with the forensics, when in the mean time we'd be harming ourselves? We can more or less stop many of these issues from being issues with government, that's my point. Maybe if you can come up with the forensics now, libertarianism would be applicable... but we don't have those tools, so the tools necessary for such a world are not present, meaning the world itself is impossible

But they didn't have DNA testings to deal with murder cases 100 years ago. Should they have legalized murder?

How does that compare to pollution at all? For starters, there's other evidence for a murder other than DNA testing, you're acting as if the only way to know is DNA testing. Additionally, the comparison between polluting and murder is of such a different quality than murder, that the comparison fails outright. It would be like imagining we somehow had all the would-be-murderers in prison, and that we could somehow know for sure that they would be murderers, and then suggesting we should just let them all free because we can gather the proof of their crime to punish it for them when it occurs. We should keep them all imprisoned.

You're also transferring your logic to me. Even if we could prove, 100%, the source of the pollution, I would say we should still keep it illegal, for the reasons in my comparison directly above. Besides, you're implying that, right now, we don't have the DNA testing, so we should make murder legal and let the free-market sort out the kinks.

[Orthogonal]

Yup, proof is really hard. But I don't see that, over time, we couldn't be able to develop forensics dealing with that kinda stuff.

Why wait to try and come up with the forensics, when in the mean time we'd be harming ourselves? We can more or less stop many of these issues from being issues with government, that's my point. Maybe if you can come up with the forensics now, libertarianism would be applicable... but we don't have those tools, so the tools necessary for such a world are not present, meaning the world itself is impossible

But they didn't have DNA testings to deal with murder cases 100 years ago. Should they have legalized murder?

How does that compare to pollution at all? For starters, there's other evidence for a murder other than DNA testing, you're acting as if the only way to know is DNA testing. Additionally, the comparison between polluting and murder is of such a different quality than murder, that the comparison fails outright. It would be like imagining we somehow had all the would-be-murderers in prison, and that we could somehow know for sure that they would be murderers, and then suggesting we should just let them all free because we can gather the proof of their crime to punish it for them when it occurs. We should keep them all imprisoned.

You're also transferring your logic to me. Even if we could prove, 100%, the source of the pollution, I would say we should still keep it illegal, for the reasons in my comparison directly above. Besides, you're implying that, right now, we don't have the DNA testing, so we should make murder legal and let the free-market sort out the kinks.

You guys are totally dismissing the main point and just bickering over little things. The point is that because Murder and Rape are acts of aggression that violate people's rights, we have continually made strides to improve forensics to aid the implication of suspects. Yes there could be other evidence for murder, but improving forensics helps regardless. If we had similar protections of private property with regards to pollution, we would also continue to improve environmental forensics. You dismiss this like you are afraid of improving environmental forensics, like it would be a threat to the overlords or something.

You say, lets just pass a law to address it. That's exactly what they do with murder and rape, pass laws to address it, but that doesn't fix anything. We still need forensics to prosecute criminals.

[Scheavo]

You guys are totally dismissing the main point and just bickering over little things. The point is that because Murder and Rape are acts of aggression that violate people's rights, we have continually made strides to improve forensics to aid the implication of suspects. Yes there could be other evidence for murder, but improving forensics helps regardless. If we had similar protections of private property with regards to pollution, we would also continue to improve environmental forensics. You dismiss this like you are afraid of improving environmental forensics, like it would be a threat to the overlords or something.

There were laws against murder and rape before we had the forensics to help in prosecuting... yet the forensics still developed. There isn't the forensics to deal with all the environmental possibilities due to the nature of reality. See, this is just that invisible hand of the market, "give the market the ability to, and it'll pull an elephant out of it's ass!" Not everything is possible, not everything can just be done.

Murder and rape involve human emotions, meaning it's a natural tendency, and thus ridiculous to think it can be eradicated; pollution does not arise out of human emotion, it is not irrational to think it can be handled. You know a simple way to stop forms of pollution? Make them illegal. That in and of itself will stop a lot of it from happening, due to fear of possible repercussions. What do you do when you see a cop car when you're driving? Check your speed and make sure you're doing everything right. The cop doesn't have to pull you over and charge you with something in order to be effective. All the same, not allowing a company to use a chemical, or put it into the air, or spray it on land, etc, actually does have an effect on it's use, in some cases, making it altogether absent. Remember DDT? Rather hard to find that anymore, since the it was made illegal. Prohibition works on certain industrial chemicals, because those chemicals are optional, and there's other legal routes. Prohibition doesn't work with things which humans naturally crave, desire, and want. Toxic chemicals do not fall into that category.

[Orthogonal]

You guys are totally dismissing the main point and just bickering over little things. The point is that because Murder and Rape are acts of aggression that violate people's rights, we have continually made strides to improve forensics to aid the implication of suspects. Yes there could be other evidence for murder, but improving forensics helps regardless. If we had similar protections of private property with regards to pollution, we would also continue to improve environmental forensics. You dismiss this like you are afraid of improving environmental forensics, like it would be a threat to the overlords or something.

There were laws against murder and rape before we had the forensics to help in prosecuting... yet the forensics still developed. There isn't the forensics to deal with all the environmental possibilities due to the nature of reality. See, this is just that invisible hand of the market, "give the market the ability to, and it'll pull an elephant out of it's ass!" Not everything is possible, not everything can just be done.

Non-sequitur, the presumption of free-markets does not conclude that everything is possible.

Murder and rape involve human emotions, meaning it's a natural tendency, and thus ridiculous to think it can be eradicated; pollution does not arise out of human emotion, it is not irrational to think it can be handled. You know a simple way to stop forms of pollution? Make them illegal. That in and of itself will stop a lot of it from happening, due to fear of possible repercussions. What do you do when you see a cop car when you're driving? Check your speed and make sure you're doing everything right. The cop doesn't have to pull you over and charge you with something in order to be effective. All the same, not allowing a company to use a chemical, or put it into the air, or spray it on land, etc, actually does have an effect on it's use, in some cases, making it altogether absent. Remember DDT? Rather hard to find that anymore, since the it was made illegal. Prohibition works on certain industrial chemicals, because those chemicals are optional, and there's other legal routes. Prohibition doesn't work with things which humans naturally crave, desire, and want. Toxic chemicals do not fall into that category.

Any thing can be a crave, desire or want. The toxic chemical itself may not fit into someones personal preferencefor need, but it could be a means to an end for a want or desire. The reason you may find some success in prohibition of toxic chemical's is because there are viable substitutes. When it comes to other crimes, there may or may not be a substitute, and sometimes if there is, the substitute is also prohibited. There are arguably some health/environmental improvements to abolishing things like DDT, but there are millions of African's suffering from Malaria who disagree with you. The unilateral decision to "ban" certain things carries unintended consequences. You may be familiar with news reports of a resurgence in a bed bug epidemic. In a report on the subject, the news is not promising. There may be some link to the resurgence with the ban of DDT, but even then it's not conclusive, but what they do know is there are other methods of fighting it it, but those pesticides are also banned. So, environmental protections may improve health and safety in some regards, but there are unintended consequences which may result in the loss of other modern comforts, hygene and health safety. It's not always completely black and white and the use of toxic chemicals needs to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. There could very well be a way to use them in a win-win fashion by using them for certain benefits here and there, but shielding the environment and health of others from the ill effects as well. The market will allow us to figure out this balance.

[Super Dude]

I don't have anything really meaningful to contribute in this instance, but it interests me how proponents of market-oriented thinking talk about market forces.
"The market will take care of (problem)"
"The market will show us how to handle (problem)"

Almost sounds like invocations to some pagan deity.

[Orthogonal]

I don't have anything really meaningful to contribute in this instance, but it interests me how proponents of market-oriented thinking talk about market forces.
"The market will take care of (problem)"
"The market will show us how to handle (problem)"

Almost sounds like invocations to some pagan deity.

It's just a euphamism to refer to voluntarily acting individual's. It's less concerning than the flesh and blood Pagan Governmental gods the rest of you bow before.

[Scheavo]

Non-sequitur, the presumption of free-markets does not conclude that everything is possible.

I'm glad you admitted that, now please stop using arguments that assume this is true. The free market cannot go about creating anything, thus the assumption that we haven't had the forensics to track this exact pollutant to this exact source because we don't have the property rights is unfounded, and needs to be dropped. We cannot prove where environmental damage comes from on a case by case issue, but we can prove where it comes from in general. Stop the "in general" and you prevent the specifics - and its very easy to do the latter.

Any thing can be a crave, desire or want. The toxic chemical itself may not fit into someones personal preferencefor need, but it could be a means to an end for a want or desire. The reason you may find some success in prohibition of toxic chemical's is because there are viable substitutes. When it comes to other crimes, there may or may not be a substitute, and sometimes if there is, the substitute is also prohibited. There are arguably some health/environmental improvements to abolishing things like DDT, but there are millions of African's suffering from Malaria who disagree with you. The unilateral decision to "ban" certain things carries unintended consequences. You may be familiar with news reports of a resurgence in a bed bug epidemic. In a report on the subject, the news is not promising. There may be some link to the resurgence with the ban of DDT, but even then it's not conclusive, but what they do know is there are other methods of fighting it it, but those pesticides are also banned. So, environmental protections may improve health and safety in some regards, but there are unintended consequences which may result in the loss of other modern comforts, hygene and health safety. It's not always completely black and white and the use of toxic chemicals needs to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. There could very well be a way to use them in a win-win fashion by using them for certain benefits here and there, but shielding the environment and health of others from the ill effects as well. The market will allow us to figure out this balance.

As regards malaria (from wiki on DDT):

DDT was subsequently banned for agricultural use worldwide under the Stockholm Convention, but its limited use in disease vector control continues to this day and remains controversial.[5][6]
....
Resistance has greatly reduced DDT's effectiveness
....
Before DDT, malaria was successfully eradicated or curtailed in several tropical areas by removing or poisoning mosquito breeding grounds and larva habitats, for example by filling or applying oil to standing water. These methods have seen little application in Africa for more than half a century

So basically, we still do use it in limited, controlled quantities; the massive overuse of the chemical has actually made it less effective (thanks to the market); and there are various other, non-chemical ways to control mosquitos.

The same goes for other bugs. We've become reliant upon chemicals to do the work for us, when there are organic compounds that can do the same thing.

No, the market does not allow you to find that balance, in fact, the market has repeatedly shown that it creates a massive imbalance. We in fact do what you say with DDT, we use it in a controlled way, for specific reasons, and this is done without the market. I agree that everything is going to come down to individual analysis (which is why I haven't' said ban all industrial chemicals), but its quite obvious that certain chemicals are bad for the environment, bad for us, and just downright harmful. When there are other methods available, we should pursue those methods FIRST, because of their long-term effects. As it is, and as the market operates, chemicals are used first, and questions are asked later.

I mean, lets look at DDT. Imagine I contract a form of cancer thanks to exposure to DDT, thanks to farmers using the chemical on their fields. Right away, there'st he basic question of how to riddle down the cause of the cancer to DDT - that of itself is going to be extremely hard to prove, if it's possible at all. After possibly ascertaining that the cause of my cancer is DDT, I would then have to trace the DDT back to its source, as well as assume that such exposure wasn't due to numerous sources, over the course of years. How am I going to do that? Seriously. It could be thousands upon thousands of farmers, hell, it could technically come from someone is China! Face it, its IMPOSSIBLE to go back, and prove that this or that person gave you cancer. The problem doesn't arise out of one individual use, it arises out of every individual use. It's a macro issue, not something the markets and the judicial system can easily prove, and provide justice for. The ONLY practical solution is government.

[William Wallace]

I don't have anything really meaningful to contribute in this instance, but it interests me how proponents of market-oriented thinking talk about market forces.
"The market will take care of (problem)"
"The market will show us how to handle (problem)"

Almost sounds like invocations to some pagan deity.

Almost sounds like you've never cracked an economics book.

[Orthogonal]

Non-sequitur, the presumption of free-markets does not conclude that everything is possible.

I'm glad you admitted that, now please stop using arguments that assume this is true. The free market cannot go about creating anything, thus the assumption that we haven't had the forensics to track this exact pollutant to this exact source because we don't have the property rights is unfounded, and needs to be dropped. We cannot prove where environmental damage comes from on a case by case issue, but we can prove where it comes from in general. Stop the "in general" and you prevent the specifics - and its very easy to do the latter.

Lol, so you follow it up with another Non-Sequitur.

As regards malaria (from wiki on DDT):

DDT was subsequently banned for agricultural use worldwide under the Stockholm Convention, but its limited use in disease vector control continues to this day and remains controversial.[5][6]
....
Resistance has greatly reduced DDT's effectiveness
....
Before DDT, malaria was successfully eradicated or curtailed in several tropical areas by removing or poisoning mosquito breeding grounds and larva habitats, for example by filling or applying oil to standing water. These methods have seen little application in Africa for more than half a century

So basically, we still do use it in limited, controlled quantities; the massive overuse of the chemical has actually made it less effective (thanks to the market); and there are various other, non-chemical ways to control mosquitos.

Yeah, I knew it had some limited uses in Africa, which is why I brought it up.

The same goes for other bugs. We've become reliant upon chemicals to do the work for us, when there are organic compounds that can do the same thing.

I agree, we may have become to reliant on chemicals, just like we may have become too reliant anti-biotics and thus creating super bugs. The point is, in some cases the toxic chemical may be useful or necessary, in other cases, an organic/natural approach may be the only thing necessary. Clearly defined and enforced property rights will allow us to find that balance. Not a bureaucratic decree.

[Scheavo]

I like how you continually ignore every counter-argument made against you. I just gave a full out argument and example of how property rights won't do shit to solve some environmental problems, and you're only response os a dogmatic, unthinking response.

How would property rights help with DDT? Please address the example, or admit that you can't address it.

Non-sequitor's? LOL! Then you're entire argument is one giant non-sequitor, that never deals with the issues, that constantly ignores counter-arguments, and which asserts dogmatically that the market and individual property rights solves all problems.

[Orthogonal]

All right, but maybe we should start a new thread for this since we are getting very deep off-topic.

[Super Dude]

I have and continue to take econ courses, thank you. I just happen to think the market and economy shouldn't be all-important and revered as it is.