[ExI] External costs (was Re: are all cultures equivalent?)

Rafal Smigrodzki rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com
Sun Apr 19 22:37:46 UTC 2009


On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 6:07 PM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> Once they have obtained a quick profit, it makes good business sense
> for them to leave the wasteland behind and move on to strip mine the
> next piece of land that they can obtain at a reasonable price.

### That's the whole point - supply and demand. If there is a high
demand for pretty views, the price of unspoiled land will be high, and
the greedy bastards won't be able to buy anything to strip-mine at a
reasonable price.

--------------------
>
> All perfectly logical. They buy, they make a profit, they dump, they
> move on, leaving a trail of destruction behind. Of course they still
> own the trail of destruction, so it is nobody else's business what
> condition it is in. You think?

### If it makes economic sense to restore stuff, they will. You see,
in a market economy the customer (i.e. you) is the real master. You
demand pristine beauty, and are willing to buy it, they will bend over
backwards to deliver.

-------------------


>
> Everyone else just has to live in an environment of slag heaps.
> Sounds like a nice libertarian world.

### I am actually a bit of an expert on slag heaps, since I grew up
playing on them. They were about 150 ft high, stretching for miles,
burning for years, with red-hot cracks spewing sulfurous fumes. One
day I melted the soles of my sneakers there. And all that was under a
socialist regime.

In a libertarian world there would be exactly as many slag heaps and
exactly as many beautiful lakes as customers desire which means the
richer you are, the more beauty you buy and the fewer nasty slag heaps
are left.

Rafal



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