Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mmintl.UUCP Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!mcnc!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: Newsflash! [JoSH on Socialis Message-ID: <899@mmintl.UUCP> Date: Mon, 16-Dec-85 18:59:05 EST Article-I.D.: mmintl.899 Posted: Mon Dec 16 18:59:05 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 19-Dec-85 19:20:15 EST References: <266@meccts.UUCP> <4340015@csd2.UUCP> Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT Lines: 80 In article <4340015@csd2.UUCP> sykora@csd2.UUCP (Michael Sykora) writes: >>/* franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) / 11:42 pm Dec 10, 1985 */ >>I propose that it be handled by democratic political processes, as it is >>in the U.S., Europe, and Japan today. With notable success, I might add. > >You have not presented a solution, but rather described the means >which you (and probably most of the rest of us) would like to see used >to decide upon a solution. Yes, but the result of the political process is not to produce *a* solution. It is to produce solutions to each case as it comes up. So in a real sense, the process *is* the solution. >As for "notable success," how do you measure such success? Do you take >into account the cost effectiveness of the means that have been chosen, >as well as the oportunity cost of these measures? How do you know >other means would not have been more successful? What other means? So far, the only other means even suggested is the exercize of the autocratic political process. This has been notably less successful. (Although this may be an artifact caused by their less developed economies.) One can only measure opportunity costs and cost effectiveness when there are alternatives. The success is measured by the fact that we have (1) kept pollution under control, while (2) retaining a strong and vital economy. This is crude, but it is the level of feedback available for most social policy questions. >>The problem with this solution for the libertarians is that it requires >>a powerful central government, with the ability to collect taxes. I >>don't see any solutions which are compatible with libertarian ideas on >>government. > >Libertarians are in favor of a government powerful enough to accomplish >its legitimate role, but no more powerful than that. To speak of a >"powerful" central government without a reference point that we all >agree on is useless. When you state it that way, it is a truism. "The government should be as powerful as it should be." A number of posters with Libertarian leanings have expressed their opinions about how powerful the govern- ment should be. None that I have seen favor a government as powerful as the one I propose. >>(I do quibble with the details of how our government deals with the problem. >>Instead of regulations limiting the permitted pollutants, there should be >>>taxes on the amount of pollutants emitted, with an effort made to match >>the tax to the costs imposed on others thereby -- this is hard to do when >>health and life are at stake, but not impossible. This would not diminish >>the need for a powerful central government.) > >The above measures may be consistent with libertarian philosophy to a >significant extent. Libertarians would probably not call these taxes, >but fines. Kind of in between. The purpose of taxes is to finance government activity (which on my theories should be directed toward maximizing the common good). The purpose of fines is to punish misdeeds, and thereby to deter further acts of the same type. The object here is not to punish, but to make the polluters pay the appropriate costs imposed by their actions. And, ideally, the money collected should be used to defray those costs for those on whom they are imposed, so they are intended in some sense to finance government activity. (Of course, all monies collected by the government are, in some sense, used to finance government activity.) Yes, I was aware that this proposal is quasi-libertarian. (It is not original with me, by the way, although I can't tell you where I got it from.) And I do not, in fact, think that such "taxes" or "fines" are always an adequate solution -- in some cases the government must outright forbid certain activities (because administration costs and/or technical problems make my preferred solution too costly); in others the cost of letting the pollution proceed without penalty is less than the cost of administering any sort of controls. So the government must have the right to intervene as it sees fit in any economic activity. (Of course I believe in checks and balances, and in principles to guide and limit such inter- vention.) But many of these principles are necessarily subject to political interpretation, because they are too vague to be completely formalized. Frank Adams ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka Multimate International 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108