Regarding externalities, I think I agree that it's an important part of capitalism that needs to be corrected for and is often ignored by the hard right. But on the other hand, it seems logically like something kind of separate from what I was interested in.
For example... what if we punish or tax the behavior (like polluting) but we don't connect that to a transaction? In other words... isn't it just as much a harm to society that needs to be punished... if one person by themself decides to pollute (say, a farmer who wants to burn a pile of his garbage) versus if one person pays another person to do some task which ends up involving pollution somehow in that task? I guess what I'm saying is that, things like pollution are great examples that tie libertarians heads in knots because they tend to think too much about whether one individual is doing harm to another and not enough about whether one is doing harm to society as a whole. But it doesn't seem like a central problem with capitalism itself.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2012-03-01 05:43 am (UTC)For example... what if we punish or tax the behavior (like polluting) but we don't connect that to a transaction? In other words... isn't it just as much a harm to society that needs to be punished... if one person by themself decides to pollute (say, a farmer who wants to burn a pile of his garbage) versus if one person pays another person to do some task which ends up involving pollution somehow in that task? I guess what I'm saying is that, things like pollution are great examples that tie libertarians heads in knots because they tend to think too much about whether one individual is doing harm to another and not enough about whether one is doing harm to society as a whole. But it doesn't seem like a central problem with capitalism itself.