In a true free-market economy you can't make yourself rich without enriching your neighbors and your community. A true free-market properly values natural resources and promotes efficiency and the elimination of waste. Waste is pollution. So the free market eliminates pollution. But polluters subvert the discipline of the free market. Corporations are externalizing machines - ever seeking ways of foisting their costs on the public, and pollution is perhaps the most common method for loading production costs onto the rest of us. You show me a polluter, I'll show you a subsidy-a fat cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market.
All our federal environmental laws were intended to promote free market capitalism by forcing actors in the marketplace to pay the true costs of bringing their products to market. The Waterkeepers enforce these laws. We go into the marketplace, and catch cheaters. "We are going to force you," we tell them, "to internalize your costs the same way you are internalizing your profit." I don't even consider myself an environmentalist anymore. I'm a free-marketeer. So long as the polluters are cheating, none of us will get the benefits of the efficiency, prosperity and democracy that the free market promises America. |