The system's virtue, in part, is its ability to deal with contamination as a regional problem involving watersheds and ecosystems rather than as a matter of individual polluters. Assessments of pollution-reduction objectives and charges are made with the exigencies of a large area in mind. It is also highly flexible. While environmental authorities once sought to impose ambitious standards, those goals are now decided in meetings involving businesses, community organizations and local environmental authorities. And while conventional fines once threatened businesses' very existence, pollution charges now start low and increase every six months until the charges exceed the cost of cleaner inputs or production technologies.
Freedom is the essential principle.
Factories and farms can continue to contaminate as long as they pay to use the rivers as their waste receptacles. But given the steadily rising costs of that strategy, most polluters find within two or three years that it is in their economic self-interest to stop fouling their waters. In the meantime, they make their own decisions on new inputs, technology or job training programs to reduce discharges. But when these same executives realized that they could flex with circumstances as long as they paid the bill, they felt freer and more enthusiastic. They saw that they could do what they wanted to adapt to the new regime and its costs.