On Bobby Kennedy, Clean Air, and Property Rights

[CitySky]

In a speech here in Houston Monday night, RFK framed clean air and water in part as a "property rights" issue (as did Mayor Bill White, but we're ticked at him for a certain light rail bait-and-switch so let's pretend for a minute that he wasn't there) and spoke about environmental regulation as a way of internalizing the cost of doing business. I like this way of framing, 'cause boy we're big on property rights down here in Texas!

Essentially polluting companies take air and water that belong to everybody, alter it in such a way as to make it unusable or dangerous, and then give it back. IT'S NOT THEIRS TO BEGIN WITH. RFK argues that the "cost" of using that air and water should be borne by the company using it; whatever they need to do to give the resources back to us in the condition that they found them, they need to pay for. To give them breaks to do so is selling off the commons, corporate welfare, and anti-capitalist.

So here's how I'm thinking of that cost-of-doing-business model: Let's say I make a living selling my delicious smoothies. Pretty soon i figure out that my business needs another blender, but i don't wanna lay out the cash to buy one. Since you, my neighbor, aren't home during the day, i decide to sneak in and use your blender each day instead. Works great. My profits are way up. One day I burn out the motor on your blender; I leave it alone and hope you never notice. (This is the CitySky analogy, not an RFK analogy, I will hasten to note.)

When I finally get caught (hooray! the bad gal gets caught!), I know just what to do. I give the DA a bribe, and he drops the charges. Or at least that's what the illegal coal burning plants did: the industry gave $100 million in "campaign contributions" to *, and when * took office he ordered a halt to the prosecutions (initiated under Clinton) of the 75 worst offenders. Dropped all the charges. So they keep on stealing the air that we're supposed to breathe; pump it full of particulates so more kids die of asthma, pump it full of mercury so it rains on the fish so we can't eat them. And profits are up.

Anyway. I guess I'm just rolling all this around in my head to figure out how to 'splain to people what the * admin has done.

If you'd like to hear the RFK speech (and he is FAR more eloquent than CitySky, I assure you), it will be aired tonight on KPFT between 7 and 9pm, 90.1 Houston. Listen livestream or pull down the archive later via www.kpft.org.

-Peace!

[Viking12]

1. The problem with the property rights framing

is the policy conclusions to which it leads. If framed as a property rights issue, the solution invoked is a property rights oriented solution, i.e. privitization of common resources. I, for one, don't want to see CorporateUSA, Inc. selling rights to water and air.

[blindpig]

2. Nice sig line!

I just started Collapse. GG&S should be required reading for adulthood, citizenship, whatever.

Absolutely right about property, I think we need to go in the opposite direction and have private parties take full responsibility for their effect on the commons.

[CitySky]

3. unless you have a concept of the Commons

that is, property that belongs to everybody.

[funflower]

4. I think this is an encouraging line of thinking...

Fine, you own your own piece of earth, but your are responsible for everything that you do on that piece of earth that harms other people. Air and water are, by definition, the commons. I guess the question I have to ask myself is where that leaves me when I drive to work, polluting the air all the way....

[dcfirefighter]

5. If you embrace 'the commons'

you'll have trouble with the idea of 'owning your little piece of earth'. But it's nice to see other people talking about it.

[blindpig]

6. If you do not embrace "the commons"

you invite the tragedy thereof, as is all too apparent in our current situation. While I "own a little piece of the earth" I shall leave it as I found it, a slowly healing bit of land terribly abused by 150 years of intensive agriculture. I don't think we should own the land, perhaps just lease it from the commons, with restrictions on use by the tenants. I do not buy the "God given right" argument, rights are man-made, to be given or withdrawn by society.