Views: Pros and Cons Topic Map Slideshow

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Category: Environment
Tags: Free-market environmentalism, environment, business
Background information: http://en.wikipedia.org
 +5.94%

  Support:
 +5.94%
Points:
The free market is the best tool to preserve the health and sustainability of the natural environment  
  • but: companies and corporations will over-pollute the environment if no relevant legal regulations exist  +87%

    • because: a market mechanism, left to its own devices, contains in-built incentives for over-utilization or even destruction of the environment  +87%

      • because: it is in the interest of the companies and corporations to do so  +87%

        • because: it is profitable  +87%

          • because: they receive the full benefit of producing a pollutant but, in general, they do not pay the full social costs of polluting the environment  +87%

  • but: voluntary measure is unimpressive  +50%

    • because: studies sponsored by firms typically exemplify an illegitimately narrow focus that ignores a competitive market context and the prevalence of external effects  (Wikipedia (2019)) 

    • because: studies sponsored by firms assessing their own activities are invariably biased  

  • because: Governmental regulation proscribing polluting activities is not effective  +4.69%

    • because: the demands of regulation seldom appeal to the social conscience of industries or enterprise owners  +62.5%

      • because: violation is often seen as legitimate business practice  +62.5%

        • because: making profit is the main aim of doing business  +62.5%

        • but: if violation was punished severely enough so that it was not profitable, it would not happen  

    • because: regulation established is unjust and biased  +50%

      • because: large corporations play a large role in setting regulations, creating a system where things are far too biased in favor of them  +50%

        • but: this is merely a practical problem that neither validate free market environmentalism nor invalidate the regulation of government  

    • because: Regulations enforced by the companies themselves regarding the place as their own piece of property may be more effective  +50%

      • because: example: the case of Grand Banks fishery off Newfoundland (www.emagazine.com) 

    • but: in internalizing the costs of negative externalities imposed by the government, firms will face an incentive to reduce them  (Wikipedia (2019)) 

      • but: this solution makes invalid ethical assumptions about property (Rothbard (1982) ) 

      • but: the practicability of this theory is extremely limited  

        • because: it is ill-suited to the reality  

          • because: it was theorized to account for adjacent effects where transaction costs for bargaining agents are typically small, which are in fact high  (Wikipedia (2019)) 

    • but: government regulation on pollution is effective if enforced  

    • because: establishing regulations may give false information to the market and public which results in uneconomic utilization of natural resources  

      • because: example: the case of the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902  (Wikipedia (2019)) 

    • because: regulation is too general and broad to deal with particular case  

    • because: Money is instead spent on meeting regulation rather than on reducing pollution  -25%

  • but: free market environmentalism is entirely anthropocentric and ignores the innate value of nature outside of human use of it  

    • but: consequences, instead of the principles the measures seemingly based, should be assessed  

  • but: environmental protection can indeed be achieved through communities consciously designing institutional arrangements in response (Elinor (1986) ) -62%

    • but: this is an inefficient means  +62%

      • because: "what is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it." (Aristotle (1998) ) +62%

  • but: The conservation of endangered species is highly implausible in free market environmentalism  -100%

    • because: there is little economic value in the species in question  -100%

      • but: some species used in traditional medicine become the basis for modern drugs (Wikipedia contributors (2007) ) +100%


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