ODT: Pollution--Rothbardian Property Rights vs. Mainstream Decreasing Negative Externalities

Property rights:Pro's case for property rights makes an unjustified leap in logic. He goes from 'Doing X is logically contradictory' to 'Doing X is immoral.' To quote Hans-Hermann Hoppe, on his own argument, “What I offer is an entirely value-free system of ethics. I remain exclusively in the realm of is statements and nowhere try to drive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is.’. . . In strict analogy to this, I ‘only’ claim to prove that whatever Rawls or other socialists say is false and can be understood as such by all intellectually competent and honest men.” [1] Hoppe’s argument doesn’t claim to prove that property rights exist—only that any ethical system contradicting the property rights ethic is wrong. This still leaves open the possibility of there being no correct ethical system.The resolution says ‘better’—there is no ‘should’ or ‘ought’—so no ethical system is needed to prove either side of the resolution. I offer ‘better for the vast majority of people’ as a definition—but Pro can continue to argue for a ethical ‘better’ if he likes, the voters can decide for themselves which definition should be used.Causes of environmental damage:Pro argues that the causes of environmental damage are generally government ownership and poorly defined property rights. I agree—but this isn’t what the debate is about. My proposal includes private property rights—the disagreement is about what to do when someone’s private property is damaged by pollution. The Rothbardian position is that such pollution should be stopped outright, like any other form of aggression—“Air pollution, after all, is just as much aggression as committing arson against another's property or injuring him physically. Air pollution that injures others is aggression pure and simple.” [2] My position is that completely eliminating harmful pollution should not be the goal (not just that eliminating pollution isn’t possible, as Pro points out at the beginning of his round—but that it isn’t even a desirable goal). Rather, pollution should simply be disincentivized with some sort of tax or fee.My Proposal:Imagine that a production process that costs $1,000 to the company producing the product, but also creates pollution that causes $100 in damage to 3rd parties. One solution is to ban this production completely, because it is “just as much aggression as committing arson.” Another solution is to tax the pollution to reduce it and compensate those damaged by it. For example, a tax of $1 per $1 of pollution could be levied, to make the producer’s cost include the social cost of his production. The production process might then be altered to reduce pollution. If the producer could make the same product with a $1025 direct cost and $50 in pollution, they would change to that instead because the lower taxes would make up for the higher direct costs. If the process couldn’t be altered, then at least the victims of the pollution would be compensated.This solution is ‘better’ because it is a pareto improvement compared to trying to ban pollution completely—that is, it makes at least some people better off while making no people worse off. There are 3 groups involved—the producers of pollution, the people who consume the products made by pollution, and the victims of pollution. The first two groups are obviously better off. The 3rd is at least not worse off, because they are compensated to make up for the damage pollution causes them. But the people in the 3rd group are almost certainly also in one or both of the first two groups—in a modern economy, so much of production produces some sort of pollution that nearly everyone consumes products that were made by emitting pollution. So we can be reasonably sure that everyone is better off under my plan than under Pro’s.The alternative:The alternative is that any production processes that emits pollution must either be changed so that it doesn’t emit any, or if it can’t, be shut down.The quote about the smoke emitted during the Industrial Revolution just proves my point. Even with pollution, surely Pro would agree that the Industrial Revolution was a good thing. We’re much better off because of it—and so were the people alive at the time. Should economic progress have been stopped completely because of the pollution it causes?Conclusion:Following Pro’s example, I will also conclude with a quote: “A pollution-free society is unattainable, both physically and economically. To think otherwise is not to think.” –Alan Blinder [3][1] https://mises.org... p401[2] http://mises.org... p319[3] Hard Heads, Soft Hearts: Tough-minded Economics For A Just Society