As with all ideological shifts, the government is LAST in realizing that this is the popular view.

They’ve spent too long HELPING corporations get away with heavy pollution and other reckless behavior that property rights could have solved.

If we didn’t rely so much on the government (EPA, FCC, FDA, etc.) then we’d have a wellspring of competing “watchdog” agencies giving us honest assessments of how much damage different companies are doing, whether environmentally, or to our health, or whatever.

The government is a sad failure at almost everything it tries to get involved with.

The worst pollution in history has occurred under the most over-reaching governments (Soviet Union for example)…

In a free market with property rights, no one has any right to pollute someone else’s property, or air or water for that matter. Get the government out of the way on this and watch people work it out peacefully.

-Chad

BP gets break on dumping in lake

We need more government to do what again? Help the poor and protect the environment?

Some of the best solutions are simple.

Go Ron Paul 2008!

Gas companies willful pollute the environment and don’t care about their neighbors. These types of organizations require government intervention in order to keep the environment clean.

Where was the government when these companies were willfully polluting the environment? Willfully allowing it to happen, perhaps?

I am also concerned about willful pollution and having a clean environment. But something I don’t think many people realize is just how much the government regulatory agencies protect the industries they are supposed to regulate, and don’t protect the people.

you are correct, corporations don’t really care about the environment, they care about money. It is the job of the courts (not the executive branch of govt.) to make sure that corporations are held to strict account so that any damage to a neighbor’s property is turned into monetary damages to the corporation. Only then will the corporation care about the environment, or least they will care about their neighbor’s property.

But most state and federal agencies prempt the courts, and turn torts (legal harms) into taxes (fines paid to the govt.)

Just one example, there is a large oil refinery just south of Minneapolis/St.Paul. They have been leaking something underground, and it infiltrated the groundwater and is moving toward the river. Several private properties lie between the river and the refinery. Obviously these properties have been damaged, and you would think they could hit the refinery for millions, but the EPA and the MNPCA won’t allow any lawsuit to proceed until they have completed their investigation and assessed their fines, etc.

The problem is that the investigation has been going on forever, and the fines only amount to around $50,000 / day, which is chump change for the refinery.

Meanwhile the properties are left in legal limbo. Unable to collect damages, unable to sell, unable to live there (there are a lot of nasty smells around an oil refinery)

Later

The same situation exists in meat packing plants, you can’t sue the plant if their meat makes you sick – not even if your spouse or child dies. They just pull out their handy-dandy FDA / USDA inspection reports and say “Whoa, wait a minute; it’s not our fault, we took every reasonable precaution, and here is the report with the inspector’s signature and seal to prove it.” and then the judge says “case dismissed.” (I exagerate a little, the conversation won’t go exactly like that, but the effect will be the same.)

Other than that, what a great interview!