From: lee@wang.com (Lee Story)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.elections,misc.taxes,alt.society.civil-liberty
Subject: Re: What keeps me from being Lib. (was Re: FW: news release:
Date: 15 Apr 92 19:00:47 GMT
	<1992Apr9.225400.17519@vexcel.com> <LEE.92Apr14151714@meercat.wang.com>
	<1992Apr15.000233.9014@vexcel.com>
Distribution: na
Organization: Wang Laboratories, Inc.


Alright, I asked for it, so I'll try to answer Dean point by point.

(dean alaska) writes:

   Do you always make so many assumptions about what other people say so that
   you can fit them into your neat little definitions?

Yes, but see below.

   Did I say anything about a police state?

Indirectly.  You said "When all pollution violations are subject to
criminal law [...] then the important step towards a clean economy
will have been made."  But "pollution" is practically impossible to
define exactly (and I challenge you to do so) in any but the broad
terms of "modifying an ecosystem by human action to the detriment of
some one or more of its preexisting components", and even that may
not be broad enough to satisfy everyone.  You would either criminalize
all human action, or would have vague and therefore arbitrarily-applied
law (not that we don't now!)  In such circumstances, civil litigation
and arbitration are much more appropriate than criminalization.

   Radical Greens DO NOT look to an enlarged govt
   for solutions.  That is why I said that people must support a concept
   before it becomes a law.  The law will do no good if a small percentage
   support it.  In a Green society, the central govt wouldn't be too
   much bigger than for Libs.  

This business of "people must support a concept before it becomes a
law" is so ill-defined that I ignored it.  My presumption is that this
is irrelevant, and that your party would increase government in any
case, to administrate the enormous prison system in which the victims
of the War on Pollution join those of the War on Drugs.

   Doing a cost analysis of whether to prosecute a burglary is very
   different than doing a cost analysis of whether a burglary should
   be permitted.

You said "cost benefit analyses for burglars", an ambiguous wording
which led me to believe that you meant analysis of the worth of
prosecution, though I agree with you that perhaps the other
alternative (studying whether a burglary should take place) is more
parallel to explicit regulation of industrial pollution.  I still
don't see why the non-criminal alternative isn't to be preferred:
admit that some practices are damaging, and charge an excise for
permission to perform then---a high enough one to render most such
practices not cost effective.

   Today, it is considered acceptable to
   subject my property and health to damage and injury so that someone
   else may make a profit.  Is it okay for a burglar to subject a store
   owner to crime so that the burglar may make a profit?

Yes and no.  The situations are fairly parallel.  Responsible
government (I don't say Reagan or Bush) doesn't accept pollution
which may damage your health "so that someone else may make a profit"
(image of Pacifica Lumber boss, or maybe Mark Hanna with a big cigar,
looms large) but because industrial society is a series of compromises
between economic, physical, and psychological welfare.  I seek no
"neat little definitions" here.  Some pollution will occur.  If it is
more than the environment can absorb, we're headed for
ecological/environmental collapse.

Nor does government devote all the citizens' resources to police
protection, saving the store owner from any possibility of crime, but
devouring economic welfare in the process (and, as I said, instituting
a "police state" which would also destroy psychological, then physical
welfare).  Some stores will be robbed.  If so many stores are robbed
that old ones close and no new ones replace them, a city is heading
for economic collapse.

   Please explain to me what the fundamental difference is.

Only that environmental collapse is much less likely to allow for a
second chance.

   Please explain how preventing property damage or personal injury in the
   form of polution is "wiping their arses on the Bill of Rights".

Criminalizing ordinary unavoidable behavior is giving to government
powers which it should not have, even if those powers prevent a
certain amount of property damage or injury.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Lee Story (lee@wang.com) Wang Laboratories, Inc.
              (Merrimack Valley Paddlers)
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