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

I thank Laissez-Faire for accepting debating this interesting topic with me. Observation 1: By simply living, humans necessarily pollute. So, this debate should be focused on which system maintains the optimal amount of pollution, not which system totally eradicates pollution.Self Ownership is PresupposedBy the mere act of engaging in debate, I am exercising my right of self-ownership via my physical body as well as my cognitive functioning. Through debating, my opponent and I both implicitly recognize our individual right to exclusively control our individual bodies. Consequently, we understand that the anti-coercion principle is surmised as well. Therefore, communication with individuals necessarily presumes self ownership and anti-coercion. Deviating from argumentation and self ownership to the extent of bringing the violent monopoly of the government to prohibit an expression of self ownership violates both of the principles previously established; it is therefore, immoral and illogical. [1]Property Rights are PresupposedHans-Hermann Hoppe writes,[Self-Ownership and the Non-Aggression Principle are presupposed] Furthermore, it would be equally impossible to engage in argumentation and rely on the propositional force of one's arguments, if one were not allowed to own (exclusively control) other scarce means (besides one's body and its standing room). For if one did not have such a right, then we would all immediately perish and the problem of justifying rules — as well as any other human problem — simply would not exist. Hence, by virtue of the fact of being alive, property rights to other things must be presupposed as valid, too. No one who is alive could possibly argue otherwise. [2]What’s the source of environmentally detrimental pollution?Gary D. Libecap writes, In one way or another, all environmental and natural resource problems associated with overexploitation or under provision of public goods, arise from incompletely deﬁned and enforced property rights. As a result private decision makers do not consider or internalize social beneﬁts and costs in their production or investment actions. The gap between private and social net returns results in externalities – harmful effects on third parties: overﬁshing, excessive air pollution, unwarranted extraction or diversion of ground or surface water, extreme depletion of oil and gas reservoirs. These situations are all examples of the ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’. [3]Murray Rothbard explains, There is, first of all, this stark empirical fact: Government ownership, even socialism, has proved to be no solution to the problem of pollution. Even the most starry-eyed proponents of government planning concede that the poisoning of Lake Baikal in the Soviet Union is a monument to heedless industrial pollution of a valuable natural resource. But there is far more to the problem than that. Note, for example, the two crucial areas in which pollution has become an important problem: the air and the waterways, particularly the rivers. But these are precisely two of the vital areas in society in which private property has not been permitted to function. [4] Property Rights and Accountability with regard to PollutionRichard L. Stroup, Ph.D. and Jane S. Shaw write, When backed by effective liability laws, private property rights tend to work well. Because well-tended property increases its value, private owners generally take care not to despoil their land. This safeguard works even when owners care only for themselves, not for their heirs. For at the very first signs of poor stewardship--the first indications of land erosion, for instance--appraisers and potential buyers can project the results into the future, and the value of the property declines immediately. With an effective liability system, these pressures can also keep corporations from despoiling land or property that they do not own. Although disputes occur, the obligations of those who harm others' property are so widely accepted that many people do not even have to go to court when their cars are damaged: insurance companies generally handle such cases routinely. Unfortunately, environmental damage is often not as recognizable as a dented fender. Common law requires plaintiffs to prove damages and identify the responsible parties, and though the standard of proof is not as high as in criminal cases, it remains substantial. [5]Historical ExampleRothbard writes, It is important to realize that this failure has not been a question purely of ignorance, a simple time lag between recognizing a new technological problem and facing up to it. For if some of the modern pollutants have only recently become known, factory smoke and many of its bad effects have been known ever since the Industrial Revolution, known to the extent that the American courts, during the late — and as far back as the early 19th century made the deliberate decision to allow property rights to be violated by industrial smoke. To do so, the courts had to — and did — systematically change and weaken the defenses of property right embedded in Anglo-Saxon common law. Before the mid and late 19th century, any injurious air pollution was considered a tort, a nuisance against which the victim could sue for damages and against which he could take out an injunction to cease and desist from any further invasion of his property rights. But during the 19th century, the courts systematically altered the law of negligence and the law of nuisance to permit any air pollution which was not unusually greater than any similar manufacturing firm, one that was not more extensive than the customary practice of fellow polluters.As factories began to arise and emit smoke, blighting the orchards of neighboring farmers, the farmers would take the manufacturers to court, asking for damages and injunctions against further invasion of their property. But the judges said, in effect, "Sorry. We know that industrial smoke (i.e., air pollution) invades and interferes with your property rights. But there is something more important than mere property rights: and that is public policy, the 'common good.' And the common good decrees that industry is a good thing, industrial progress is a good thing, and therefore your mere private property rights must be overridden on behalf of the general welfare." And now all of us are paying the bitter price for this overriding of private property, in the form of lung disease and countless other ailments. And all for the "common good"!ConclusionMurray Rothbard writes,Thus, when we peel away the confusions and the unsound philosophy of the modern ecologists, we find an important bedrock case against the existing system; but the case turns out to be not against capitalism, private property, growth, or technology per se. It is a case against the failure of government to allow and to defend the rights of private property against invasion. If property rights were to be defended fully, against private and governmental invasion alike, we would find here, as in other areas of our economy and society, that private enterprise and modern technology would come to mankind not as a curse but as its salvation. [6]Thanks for reading and debating! Good luck in the next round! :D[1] http://mises.org...[2] http://www.lewrockwell.com...[3] http://www.perc.org...[4] http://mises.org...[5] http://www.perc.org...[6] Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, 1973