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

My Proposal:Pro wrongly assumes that my proposal needs taxation and government bureaucracy to work. This is not the case—I argue that "pollution should simply be disincentivized with some sort of tax or fee." A tax is an example of a disincentive, but not the only way it could be done. Obviously, I don’t support any sort of taxation—like Pro, I am an anarchist. I used the example of taxation because we currently live under a state, so that’s how it would have to work in today’s society, and it’s simpler than discussing how an anarcho-capitalist legal order would accomplish the same thing.But since I don’t need much time to rebut my opponent’s case, and have some extra space, I’ll explain why an anarchist legal order would probably follow my plan. As David Friedman argues [1], law in an anarchist society wouldn't necessarily be perfectly libertarian, it would just be efficient. Imagine that there is a generally agreed upon private law code in an anarchist society that the private defense agencies follow. It includes a ban on harmful pollution, listing it with other acts of aggression like arson. For simplicity’s sake, assume that there are only 2 agencies, A and B. When disputes arise between their customers, they settle them according to the generally agreed upon code mentioned above. Some customers of Agency A pollute the land of customers of Agency B, causing pollution worth $100 to Agency B’s customers. The production is stopped, causing the polluters a $1,000 loss. The agencies see this, and decide to get together and make a deal. Instead of stopping the pollution, they let it continue in exchange for Agency A giving $150 to Agency B. Agency A charges its polluting customer more for making this deal for them—but the polluter is happy to pay, because the extra fee is still less than they’d lose with a pollution ban. Agency B lowers its rates to the victims of pollution to keep them happy. And nearly everyone is better off. It’s likely that there are a few radical environmentalists who wouldn’t be happy with the deal, since pollution usually affects a lot of people at once, but they don’t have as much money as all of the people who benefit, so the agencies ignore them. Their property rights are violated in this scenario, but that price seems worth it. Under Pro’s plan, such a deal would be impossible—if a single environmentalist disagreed, they’d have the right to stop the pollution, because it was violating their property rights.Rothbardian Property Rights:Pro argues that the Rothbardian property rights solution is not to try banning pollution completely, but fails to explain what exactly it is instead. From Rothbard’s writings, and Pro’s own case, it’s hard to see what exactly the property rights solution would be, if not trying to ban pollution completely. Rothbard writes, “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] In Pro’s own R2, he advances Hoppe’s argumentation ethics—an ethical system of absolute property rights. Surely, if your solution to pollution is enforcing property rights, and pollution is a violation of someone’s property rights, then the solution is to stop that violation. Pro says he wants “the market to function with strict property rights”—but what could that mean other than stopping pollution? The “strict property rights” solution to arson and other rights violations is to stop them and punish the aggressor. [1] http://www.daviddfriedman.com...[2] http://mises.org... p319