| This question <10|12> overall <10|12> Hans: <8|13>. |
| Question 4: Can you think of things which are part of the riches of capitalist society but which are not produced for and traded on markets? |
| [11] Hans: The Lawyer's Approach to Pollution Control VonMises's rebuttal [10] is not a defense of capitalism as it exists today, but of a fictional version of capitalism in which individual responsibility is pushed to the extreme. Those affected by the pollution have the responsibility to sue the polluter and in this way force him to stop polluting, and deter others from doing the same. VonMises does not even talk about specific laws against pollution; he is appealing to some abstract notion of justice which the victim of pollution must prove to be violated. |
| So next time you open the window and the air is thick with pollution, you know what to do: sue the polluter. And while you are at it, it is also your responsibility to sue those who burn down the Amazon, and those who use pesticides that do not harm you but decrease the variety of living species, and those who use drift nets for a wholesale killing of fish in the ocean. What they are doing is surely not just, is it? |
| VonMises does not see the difference between social and individual issues. Capitalist society is set up in such a way that capitalists have to expand production without limits. If they don't grow, they will not be able to survive in the competitive struggle. The economic system they are in forces them to be reckless against the environment, and to externalize as many costs as possible. |
| You cannot remedy this with law suits or even with government regulation. This is called the “regulatory illusion”. No judge or regulator will be able to keep up with the destructive inventiveness of millions of self-interested capitalists. You have to eliminate the bad incentives and direct all this creativity towards more worth while goals. In the face of the limited resources of our planet, production must be deliberately planned. We can no longer rely on the profit motive to automatically generate the right outcomes. Many very specific decisions and tradeoffs are necessary to achieve the greatest benefit in terms of quality of life for everybody, including future generations. For this we need democracy, not the power of money. VonMises is such a fan of democracy in the political sphere, why not also have democracy in production? |
|
|
|||||