I think that environmental law is the single biggest issue I “struggle” with when I do thought experiments about the philosophy of libertarianism. How does self- and property ownership interact with the externalities caused by the things that you do pursuant with your ownership of yourself and your property? There are many answers, but the currently implemented one is the EPA.
[Insert Standard Libertarian Disclaimer Here]
Everybody has that annoying neighbor. The one who shoots off fireworks at 2am on Thursday April 17th. The one who blows all of the lawn trimmings into your vegetable garden. The one who honks his horn every time he drives past his friend’s house (yeah, I’m looking at you, jackass!). A core competency of government is balancing your annoying neighbor’s habits with your want for peace and quiet. Noise ordinances keep the fireworks to a reasonable hour, trespass laws keep the lawn trimmings out of your food, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be given the keys to the city when I complete my horn-triggered IED.
One could argue, however, that a well-constructed civil court system may prevent the need for all of these laws and regulations. Between monetary damages and injunctive relief, a civil court could restore me to whole and prevent my annoying neighbor from further annoying me. Tort law has been a hallmark of government for millennia, and its classic application is neighbor v. neighbor.
Great! We’re done! Torts take care of annoying neighbors. On to minarchy!
Not so fast, my friend!
There is a genre of annoying neighbor that is downright toxic. Let’s say, for example, that I have a well pulling groundwater from the regional aquifer, and my neighbor’s in-ground heating oil tank leaks heating oil into the aquifer. If the amount of heating oil is enough to spoil the aquifer and make it non-potable, tort law make for an easy, albeit inefficient, resolution to the issue. Neighbor pays everybody who uses the aquifer enough money to get them hooked up to an alternative water source, and voila! Everybody is restored to whole!
Oh wait, the neighbor is living in a house still using heating oil in 2019, and the aquifer supplies 15,000 people. Neighbor is judgement proof, and those 15,000 people will not be made whole again.
Not For Sale
This exposes one of the core issues with the tort system as currently formulated. The default relief from damages is cash money. If, for some reason or another, the cash judgment is insufficient or left unpaid, many people are left damaged by the negligence/recklessness/idiocy of Neighbor.
I can hear the rejoinder already. In beautiful harmony, a thousand libertarians belt out “Insurance!” There are two issues with that answer, though.
First, insurance is protection against bearing the full consequences of an injustice. It doesn’t prevent the injustice. Insurance may pay out enough money to tap into the local city’s water system, but it can’t unpollute the aquifer. Insurance still doesn’t make the person whole again, because the insured is paying for the service. Insurance is akin to hanging a portrait over a hole in the drywall. As long as you’re happy with that portrait staying there for the foreseeable future, it’s a decent restoration. However, there’s still a hole in the wall.
Second, insurance operates on the convenient fiction that everything has an objective value. It’s a fine assumption for commodities and furniture, but it starts to break down when more unique property is involved. The easiest example is life insurance. That’s not an even trade. I’m not gonna off myself for a few hundred thousand dollars. Even if the insurance pays way over the “market value” of unique property (like a family farmhouse), the sentimental value can’t be replaced. Properties that are “not for sale” are not easily compensated for when they are damaged.
If the aquifer under my “not for sale” 5th generation family homestead is poisoned to the point that there is no convenient way to get potable water to the house, Neighbor has done irreparable, uninsurable harm to me. I may have some of the harm reversed through cash payments, but nothing is going to restore me to being able to live in that house again.
There are three solutions that come to mind for handling this issue. The first one isn’t all that appealing: tell victims of such environmental harm to suck it up and deal with it. Maybe you can get some traction telling somebody displaced from a sentimental property to get over it and smile about your payday, but this one doesn’t translate well when the damage is to people instead of things. “Suck it up and deal with your 5 year old dying of leukemia” isn’t a winning argument.
The second option is prevention. There may theoretically be some libertopian way to do this without using government force, but color me skeptical. Unfortunately for libertarians, the two most effective ways to prevent environmental damage are 1) an expansive growth of the use of injunctions by courts; or 2) a regulatory agency (e.g. the EPA). Self-policing doesn’t work. Communities usually don’t even know enough about the issue (because it’s occurring on a company’s private property) to be able to gin up an angry mob in time. Heck, the injunctive power of the court only works if the community knows that the polluter is planning on polluting. Short of a whistleblower giving his/her best Louis Armstrong impression, it’s too late for injunctive relief by the time it ends up in court. That only leaves the regulatory option. Hello EPA!
The third option is remediation. This is a “sometimes” solution in cases where pollution can be reduced or made inert using chemical or mechanical processes. It’s great when it works, but it’s not all encompassing, and it’s not a substitute for prevention. As they say, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
A Wafting Stench of Statistical Significance
Another issue causes the reactive systems of justice to bind up. Risk factors. In a car accident, for example, it’s pretty easy to prove that Neighbor swerved out of his lane, causing his car to impact my car, causing me to smack my head into the steering wheel, breaking my nose. It doesn’t always work that way with environmental contaminants. To take an obvious case, not everybody got cancer in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, epidemiological surveys show a massive uptick in the amount of certain cancers and birth defects.
Exactly how much is a 3x elevated risk of leukemia worth in Benjamins? Can you even say that it was caused by environmental contaminant X if somebody gets lung disease after being exposed to it? Again, the reactive system of justice fails when these unique harms are merely compensated ex post facto with greenbacks.
Libertarians apply the NAP in situations where somebody employs force, fraud, or coercion, but it may be appropriate to expand that to “risk” as well. It’s a bit of a blurry line, and it’s rife with totalitarian pitfalls, but risk is just diluted force, and the pollution itself is a form of force and/or coercion. Much like celebratory gunfire, the lack of a guaranteed harm doesn’t prevent the community from proactively stopping behavior that presents a high risk to others.
The EPA may be a bloated monstrosity these days, but the preventative justice it affords to the community is a unique form of protection for land, life, and limb that would otherwise be sacrificed to short-sighted and irresponsible polluters.
[/SLDs]
Nixon created EPA. Nixon bad. Therefore, EPA bad. Therefore, EPA good because reasons.
Another alternative is that a lawless mob crucifies Neighbor in the village square to serve as a warning to future judgement-proof persons that there are real consequences to hurting a large number of people through gross negligence.
And if that neighbor was actually framed and innocent of the allegations, no big deal. The mob will have been satiated.
Does it matter if the mob formed spontaneously or was hired by 50% plus 1 of the people that show up at the polls on a given day.
To me, yes. I’m probably a little naive, but with the government (and a great lawyer) you might have a chance.
Against an angry mob? I don’t like those odds. No, sir. Not at all.
I know you’re kidding, but due process is the difference (such as it is).
That said, I’m not a big fan of being managed by a thin majority of my moron neighbors either.
We had a situation in my neighborhood where neighbor A was complaining about a supposedly dangerous tree on neighbor B’s property, which she was afraid would fall on her (A’s) house during a forthcoming storm. A shot herself in the foot by describing B as an elderly woman. The mob turned on A for the very good reason that B was an elderly woman living on a fixed income and didn’t have the bucks for tree removal. That’s what insurance (as in A’s) is for.
Never did find out if that tree fell, suspect not.
Or cut a deal with a neighbor.
In my case I trimmed a tree crossing the the property line and contacting my house. I have a good relationship with this neighbor and informed them what I was doing. I didn’t have to do so as I could trim it at the property line, but would be responsible if I killed it. Plus it is better to trim it back properly over their property.
In this case if you are that concerned – tell the neighbor that you will pay to remove it.
The bottom line the entire tree belongs to B, but A is allowed (not obligated) to remove whatever parts of the tree encroach A’s property, at cost to A. If B’s tree causes damage to A’s property, B is obliged to pay for the loss to A (typically through B’s insurance).
I’m not sure what “mob” you’re talking about (HOA?) but the mob’s opinion doesn’t matter compared to the court’s opinion. A probably needs to get an arborist’s opinion on the danger of the tree – if it’s considered a short-term danger it is B’s cost to bear. If it’s only a theoretical danger, A can only cut the parts of the tree encroaching her property, at her expense (her insurance may cover the cost or not).
Not HOA. I don’t do those. She was a young, snotty resident trying to stir up a mob against her elderly neighbor. It backfired on her. Badly.
Or you make people true outlaws living outside of the protections of law. If you declare you can’t (or won’t) pay the judgments against you, you no longer have the protection of law or society.
I’m not seeing the problem.
“my neighbor’s in-ground heating oil tank leaks heating oil into the aquifer”
I was that neighbor, I had an old oil furnace that went down, too old/expensive to repair. I had 175 gals of oil in my basement tank and as time passed I was concerned that
#1. The tank would spring a leak and drain into my own basement/aquifer. I offered the oil free to the oil companies, they had no interest (since few people use oil plus the inconvenience of getting it out.
#2. I offered it to a friends that used diesel trucks/tractors, no takers
#3. Finally found a friend that took the oil (that’s like $500 free), then took out the old furnace for scrap and filled the holes in the wall where the fill point had been.
Probably bout 5-6 years had passed when I wanted to get rid of the oil, tank was over 40 years old, I’m guessing. I converted to electric heat, since the cabin is small and wasn’t used much in the winter anyway.
From the previous thread:
Sorry that you misunderstood me. I meant Cruz, suddenly is sporting the macho look. His whole life he looked as smooth as a baby’s butt. He’s doing what politicians do best, look like a tough(er) guy.
My fault for not being more specific. I’ll take my punishment, Festus
It’s a dead thread but now I really feel like shit.
One could argue, however, that a well-constructed civil court system may prevent the need for all of these laws and regulations. Between monetary damages and injunctive relief, a civil court could restore me to whole and prevent my annoying neighbor from further annoying me. Tort law has been a hallmark of government for millennia, and its classic application is neighbor v. neighbor.
Isn’t this why small local governments work best though? You can always move to the next town over where the Residents have all agreed to shoot fireworks off every turn of the hour.
A conversation comes to mind, for better or for worse, about this. I was debating federalism with my proggie poli Sci prof and she mentioned Muncie, Indiana as a counterpoint. She said that a single family, the Balls, were able to run the city because they employed half of the city, founded the local college, etc. They could dump all the toxic waste into the river that they want, and the city wouldn’t do anything about it.
Convincing? Not really. Worth further thought? Yeah, I think that the conversation tempered my “federalism cures all ills” naivete.
I would argue that the city isn’t the smallest possible unit of government, and eventually you could get down to one that wasn’t Ball-dominated.
That is also why even under a federalist system, there are still fundamental rights that are defended by the courts at the higher levels.
I would choose not to live in Muncie. I would find a community more congenial to my preferred way of life.
Fundamentally, I am not opposed to the EPA. I am opposed to overzealous action on their part to cure all of the perceived ills of the world. Reining them in and focusing them on maintaining sane standards for clean air and water that would be fine.
I also think that it is useful to have a watchdog of sorts that people can go to when the local government has been bought off or incompetent, e.g. Muncie, Flint water scandal. Sort of like the Justice Department should be when the local cops are out of control.
I think you dismiss insurance too glibly.
Insurance companies don’t take losses lightly, and have entire divisions devoted to “Loss Control”
These divisions perform inspections and monitoring to reduce the number of losses that the companies have to pay out on.
How do they do it? Insurance companies write into their contracts conditions that the insured must fulfill (eg, “your oil tank has to be inspected by someone we certify every two years to verify it’s in good condition”). They will work with the insured to remediate deficiencies, and if the insured fails to keep things satisfactorily, they will cancel the insurance.
Thus insurance acts as a private, voluntary regulatory system that attempts to prevent harms before they occur.
It’s not the intrusive government inspectors that keep things in check. It’s largely the private insurers.
+1 Underwriter’s Laboratory
I think you dismiss insurance too glibly.
But how else would we do it?
I lack the power to narrow my gaze to the degree this comment deserves.
Swizzy! Help a brother out!
*narrows gaze*
” too glibly.”
Drink?
I wore a helmet skiing for the first time ever this year.
Why? Because my life insurance policy is void if I don’t.
Gay.
HAH HAH HAH!
Insurance made him gay…
Quick get the frogs away from insurance!
That’s why I live in NH: there is no legal requirement for auto insurance.
Miss me with that gay shit.
I steer with my feet just because I can.
A few (additional) issues:
If you don’t opt in to insurance, there’s no one to keep you in check, and no one to pay the people you harm.
Calculating the value of the payout, and the people affected, by environmental harm. Hell, for that matter, determining whether these is any compensable harm in the first place.
And finally, insurance pays based on the likelihood that a court will find the insured legally liable. So, really, insurance is little more than a funding source for restitution, and the weaknesses noted in the tort system all apply.
Yes and no.
Insurance company Loss Control, in my experience, is more to determine if the risks are as the insured describes. With that said carrier LC is sold to insureds as benefit as the carrier most definitely does want to keep losses low. So it will offer its experience to insureds to help them lower losses.
Problem is on “middle market” commercial lines it is very expensive to LC risks and offer competitive pricing.
I’m really enjoying this series. I think it’s good to re-examine one’s positions on issues from time to time. Thanks for your writing.
The EPA is a great example of both how the government can resolve communal disputes as a neutral arbiter and how that power can be abused terribly. It is in some ways its own counterexample.
That is well put, that was my thought as I was reading the article.
Also, government is generally the worst polluter and doesn’t apply the EPA requirements to itself. See, Hanford.
Also, government is generally the worst polluter and doesn’t apply the EPA requirements to itself.
Or probably the most famous environmental case, Love Canal. That particular case was interesting because the polluter had to be dragged kicking and screaming into offloading the environmental hazards onto others (after the local government threatened to seize the property though immanent domain, the company sold it for a dollar so they could put restrictions on its use and disclaim responsibility for any hazards. The local government proceeded to ignore the agreed-upon restrictions and disaster ensued. And, of course, when the crap hit the fan, it was the company that didn’t want it to be put to any purpose that might harm someone, rather than the government that ignored its warnings, that was held responsible.
Based on what I have seen about that I suspect that was said government’s intent from the start.
Then there’s the Gold King Mine…
I can’t help but think that lot of the progress we’ve made environmentally has more to do with our wealth than our governmental agencies. Who the fuck wants toxic rivers and six-eyed fish?
Nice thought provoking article, Trashy!
Who the fuck wants toxic rivers and six-eyed fish?
Exactly! However, to play devil’s advocate, who the fuck wants roads filled with aggressive, unsafe driving and daily fatalities?
Lord Humongous?
Rivers are cleaner, roads are safer.
The number of deaths doesn’t change much, but the rate is much lower. Cars are safer, people choose better when it comes to drinking and driving.
Also, damages from driving are a hell of lot better understood. I pay a shitload of money to insure me and mine, as well as protecting us from the assholed who don’t insure.
Lies! Next you will tell us we are all less likely to be raped, robbed, or murdered.
Does the order matter?
IT MATTER LOT TO STEVE SMITH!
I guess body temp would be important to some.
Just to clear up this point: the latest uptick aside, the easiest way to think of total US auto deaths is that they’ve been almost halved since Tet. When I was a child, each year almost as many people died in car wrecks as in the entire US KIA for VietNam, so, in round numbers, 60k then, 30k now . . . a bit off but good enough.
Deaths per passenger mile is widely regarded as an excellent proxy for car/highway/driver safety (I think it’s important to look at all processes by the elements included). We drive much more, we die much less, and the dying per mile has plummeted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year#/media/File:US_traffic_deaths_per_VMT,_VMT,_per_capita,_and_total_annual_deaths.png
What, specifically, is the difference between regulations passed by Congress or an administrative department authorized to do so on their behalf, and common law in terms of deterrent power? Sure, it’s still government force, I’m not are of any way to reconcile common law and anarchic distributed private courts, but it is a minarchist solution. Sure, it would be reactive, but I’m not sold on that being worse than a proactive system. Granted I take a very hard line on actual harm having occurred before criminal charges can be pursued, and I’m comfortable holding that minority opinion.
As to your point on remediation, there would still be some need for remediation, regardless of the system. Whether relying on insurance, the collective “wisdom” of judges, or magical incantations of a three letter agency to prevent environmental issues from occurring, occur they will.
What, specifically, is the difference between regulations passed by Congress or an administrative department authorized to do so on their behalf, and common law in terms of deterrent power?
Oh, my. Such can, so many worms.
Congress passes laws. Sometimes those laws are very specific, ie limit pollution to a certain number of PPM or whatever. But most of the time those laws direct the director of the EPA to determine appropriate levels. And that’s where people like us have problems. Congress delegating its authority to unaccountable bureaucrats, and those unaccountable bureaucrats having de facto authority to unilaterally create laws (technically regulations with the force of laws).
Common law defines things like injury, etc, but that’s only good if two individuals are in conflict. Government is subject to constitutional law, not so much common law.
The solution: 1) Congress (etc) cannot delegate regulatory power; they must set the limits themselves. 2) No more immunity for government officials, all government officials.
Administrative law is evil.
But very, very lucrative.
Oh, I know that there are plenty of differences in how the laws are created and modified, my question was more to the point of their effective difference if any in deterrence. Common law says if you do something close enough to a previous case you get fined, pay restitution, go to jail, etc., while laws passed by Congress or regulatory bodies say if you do something we have determined verboten you get fined, pay restitution, go to jail, etc. From my point of view they should be equally effective at deterrence. If that’s the case, and I can’t see why it wouldn’t be but I’m open to correction on that, then using common law should be included as an option alongside regulatory bodies. It certainly has drawbacks, but do does everything else trashy has provided, which unless I’m mistaken is kind of the point of the article, illustrating the thorny edge cases where good solutions may not exist, only better ones.
This to me is the real problem.
Congress has delegated its authority to non-elected apparatchiks.
The entire purpose of having a “democracy” is to make the government accountable to the people, but when the government sidesteps the accountability in this manner, it ceases to be a democratic republic and becomes a government of the nomenklatuira.
1A “the right of the people to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”
I think this precludes immunity for government officials and also grants citizens automatic standing to challenge government actions in court.
The question on insurance? Who has the insurance?
It seems a sort of Coasean problem. Do I buy insurance to protect my aquifer against you polluting it or do you buy insurance to protect against your tank leaking and damaging the aquifer. If the former, how general can I get an insurance policy to be? If the latter, is it mandated? That seems to bring back around the legal problems. If it isn’t mandatory, then a judgement proof individual remains judgement proof.
That’s a good point. For the article, I tried to assume the worst case bad actor. Uninsured, poor, and devious.
A lot of people, particularly poor ones, let their insurance lapse when they finally pay off their mortgages, etc.
I have this vision of Libertopia, sometimes, where everyone wears the insignias of their insurance companies like a NASCAR Driver’s jumpsuit. You are likely to need more than one, and it lets everyone you meet know how well protected you are. People who aren’t insured would be pariahs and outlaws since it would be apparent that no one is willing to risk insuring them. It’s not perfect, but it sure would be an interesting world.
I see a market for look alike insurance patches…
See trade marks and intellectual property — another libertarian bugaboo.
Every time I have argued against IP, I have said “Except Trademark”.
Everything would be on a blockchain and quickly verifiable by augmented reality.
Any change that system gets abused by the powers that be?
Already been done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_insurance_mark
Stephenson should have included that in Snow Crash.
I need to read Stephenson. Just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Yes. Just be prepared, his books end abru
reckon many poor folk pay off a mortgage ?
Actually, yes, as they often have trouble getting loans for smaller homes, they are often paid for.
Most people can cause damage (actively or passively) far greater than their ability to provide recompense for such damage, such as the oil-leaking neighbor in your example. One solution is mandatory insurance, but forcing people to buy insurance violates the NAP, etc. You also did a really good job of explaining the limits of insurance wrt making people whole.
I don’t know how I feel about people being able to walk away from judgements, ie “judgement proof,” at least until their estates are settled. Under one definition of fairness the government would seize his property and auction it off to pay the judgement, and he could keep whatever was leftover (if anything). That sounds good in theory but increases the power of government which is never a good thing.
I bought a house last year which still had an aboveground oil tank (effectively empty). It cost me several hundred dollars to have that removed by a licensed company. There are a crapton of EPA regs about removing oil tanks, disposing of the oil, etc. I’m guessing that waste oil disposal is a good business if you can keep up with the permits. You get to charge the homeowner to haul it off, and presumably get paid for the oil by the company that recycles (or whatever) it.
Also, good article, Trashy.
Regarding mandatory insurance in minarchism: I may be wrong, but I understand that medieval Iceland required membership in litigation insurance co-op unless the group of usually about 10 to 30 people were collectively sufficiently wealthy. For you pendants: I am specifically referring to the Commonwealth era.
Anyone for: “But that wasn’t real minarchy!”
That’s pretty sophisticated.
This seems to be on your point: https://notendur.hi.is/bthru/iep.htm
“I wonder if librarians have souls. On the one hand, they’re no longer human. On the other hand, they need a soul to be thrown into hell.”
https://twitter.com/ProperOpinion/status/1135782246860906496
LOL I’ll ask my orphan slaves.
Aw, hell. I read that as libertarians. Made a lot more sense.
I did too.
Me too…
Librarians don’t have skills because sugar free is hoarding them all.
Librarians or libertarians?
also, souls or skills (Cpt. L^^)? or skulls? I assume SF has a skull collection.
Totally off topic.
Sansa beats up a ginger.
Watch the video.
“insurance is protection against bearing the full consequences of an injustice”
That’s the socialist’s definition of insurance. And it’s wrong. I don’t blame you, I blame Bretton Woods.
Insurance is protection against bearing the full cost of your own fuckups. And your cost of insurance is determined by your track record in preventing fuckups AND being able to convince enough like-minded people to pool their resources. Insurance is supposed to be a mutual society – aka free association, which also means freedom to not associate. You can self-insure if you want: aka save enough money to cover the full cost of your fuckups. You could have put a more hail-proof roof on your house, if you didn’t that is your fuckup and your insurance cost is priced accordingly.
It’s true if your neighbor is self-insured then it’s possible your own insurance will cover his fuckup. But that likely means your insurance cost goes up and possibly even kicks you out of the pool. You could, in theory, sue your neighbor for the full cost of his fuckup and be awarded all of his assets and STILL not have enough to cover the full cost. But that is partially your fuckup by not learning enough about what you were moving next to nor keeping out what moves in next to you.
Insurance is supposed to be a mutual society
I dislike the notion that insurance is fundamentally spreading risk across a pool of people. At the micro level, insurance is a contract between me and an insurer under which the insurer pays certain costs regardless of whether I can afford them or not. From the insurance companies perspective, its a business that they hope to make profits from.
How the insurance company finances risk and makes money is their problem. A risk pool is just an insurance company’s way of setting premiums, and does not really describe who ultimately pays for the liabilities. The famous Lloyd’s syndicate was originally a bunch of rich dudes looking to make money on shipping insurance; many of them weren’t even in the shipping business, but they were damn sure looking to make a profit. My hospital is in an area completely devoid of natural disasters – no hurricans, earthquakes, tornados, etc. Yet our property insurance rates go up after a bad natural disaster year, not because we are in the same risk pool as properties that are at risk of a natural disaster, but because the insurance company needs more money, doesn’t matter who from, after a bad year.
Funny, as a person with an insurance background I try to think of it from the other direction!
To hit closer to you – do you cost your services based on what they actually cost you or do you start with base rates from CMS?
That said, there isn’t anything I particularly disagree with in the way you approach it. The mechanism by which the insurance works is the risk sharing and the pricing of it. The contract exists between you and and your insurers as to what is covered.
To hit closer to you – do you cost your services based on what they actually cost you or do you start with base rates from CMS?
Base rates from CMS.
I don’t think there is risk sharing among an insurance company’s customers in any meaningful sense. The insurance company is liable, it pays out of its own assets. If those aren’t sufficient, it goes out of business. It doesn’t send a bill to other customers saying “Hey, we just got tagged for a billion dollars and only have $100 million in the bank. Here’s a bill for your share of the shortfall.”
Risk is only shared between each customer and the company. The customer’s share of a covered risk is defined by its deductible/co-pay and limits. As a customer, I have no risk for any other customer of the insurance company.
The mechanism by which the insurance company finances its risk is premiums (and investments). It prices its premiums at a level above what it thinks the risks will cost it, subject to the market pressure to keep prices lower than its competitors.
I’d agree with that.
The pricing on the renewals is the closest thing you’d get on the risk sharing. There are some oddball things like Workers’ Compensation assessments. But WC is an odd line of business. Mandated and no fault.
The pricing on the renewals is the closest thing you’d get on the risk sharing.
I think so. What surprised me in talking with bigshot reinsurers was the way premiums go up across the board, all companies, all insureds, due to natural disasters.
R C: WTF? Our premiums are going to go up because of a tsunami in Asia? We’re in the desert!
Reinsurer: Waddayagonnado?
Yes they do. Property is a bit unique.
OTH, your Workers’ Comp mostly stays within AZ. I’d imagine your Med/Mal and GL is primarily influenced by your industry.
I’d imagine your Med/Mal and GL is primarily influenced by your industry.
Yeah. We’re self-insured (offshore captive), so I only pay premiums for umbrella coverage and those vary based on a mix of our experience and industry-wide experience. Technically, I have an insurance company myself.
“It doesn’t send a bill to other customers saying “Hey, we just got tagged for a billion dollars and only have $100 million in the bank. Here’s a bill for your share of the shortfall.”
It does in effect by raising their rates.
Let’s take another example from my neighborhood. Neighbor recently reported her bike stolen from her side yard. Bike AND lock, which always means lock was not engaged. If she reported that to the police then my insurance ticked up by a couple of pennies because she couldn’t be arsed to actually use her bike lock. Also, this increases everyone’s risk of casual theft because the thieves now assume the neighborhood is a soft target. In a truly just universe this woman should send me a check for $5 to cover my future expenses and risk caused by her negligence. But you can’t even imply that she should have locked her bike because that’s “blaming the victim.”
Also, “Trek bike, blue.” Yeah, hon, that’s a nice bike – a bike store bike, not a department store (POS) bike. Which is probably why it got boosted instead of the other neighbor’s Huffy which he leaves unlocked on his porch. That bike was probably also stolen by, or sold to, someone outside the neighborhood. So cute she thinks it was just kids and that she’ll get it back with that description. Trek is a brand, not a model. Unless you can be very specific about the model I’m not even going to pay attention.
Auto insurance has a decent way of solving that problem.
They price premiums based on your driving record and the value of your car.
My insurance went WAY up when I got a new car, even though I’ve never had an accident or a moving violation.
Can confirm. I’m on older guy with a spotless driving record. On my twenty year old pickup, I pay basically squat. More on our company car and Mrs. A’s 2017 Expedition, but not frighteningly more. I think your driving record has a bigger influence than the vehicle.
All the new tech and active sensors located in the bumpers/sides are adding a noticeable amount to premiums. Since now, what used to be a mild $ damage fender bender is twice or more dollar amounts for repairs.
That’s why I never file claims. Fixing minor yourself is always cheaper in the long run.
And it’s also why I leave my tow hitch in.
“I leave my tow hitch in”
Illegal in some states
Didn’t know that.
Mine stays in. Extra rusty to boot.
As does mine, though I curse myself (and it) when I whack my shin on it.
The 2 components that were explained to me as the reason for the premium hike:
-the replacement cost (my new car is worth 20x what my old one was)
-liability. My new car is 3x as heavy, so if I cause a collision, I’m going to inflict a lot more damage on other people.
If I had a poor driving record, these would be weighted against me and I’d probably be paying double or triple what I am now.
of course the weight works in your favor for collision
Sure. Good for me, bad for the person in the Tesla who’s getting roasted in the battery fire.
?Chet’s nuts roasting in the Tesla fire?
Just wait until your spawn start driving. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Volvo. After school job.
I just got one of those but my insurance didn’t jump by more than 20%, even though I got rid of a much smaller and 6 year old vehicle. Then again, I have maximum liability coverage and had comprehensive cover (my ex religiously crashed a car every damned 18 months but always called me the bad driver because I am always going 20-40 miles above the speed limit).
my ex religiously crashed a car
“Jesus take the wheel!”
Or just wait until your 16 yr old daughter t-bones a landscaper’s truck.
Yeah… go to a group ride (20+ people) and you’ll probably see at least a couple that match that great description.
I’ve been hinting at these same points for the past few months.
As is pointed out, I can’t insure myself well enough that I’ll be happy to be paid to get cancer, but there are tons of cancerous agents out there I can’t avoid. It might, say, be raining mercury at my house at 2ppm, but the guilty are hundreds of miles away, each contributing only 20ppb; I can’t save myself from them physically, financially, or legally. When I bring it up here, it’s laughed off as angels dancing on the head of a pin, but Caesar died: he really died, and I don’t know who killed him but there were a lot of bloody knives in the Senate that day and he is very very dead.
But, Brutus and the other Senators wielded those knives with the specific and limited purpose of killing Caesar. Once he was dead they didn’t kill anyone else.
Those people emitting those pollutants aren’t doing so with the intent of killing you, or anyone else. They know that the pollutants are a risk, but a small risk spread over a large population. It’s really hard to point to an individual case of cancer and say “that was caused by XYZ Corp,” unless you were a miner working for that corp or other high exposure situation.
absolutely correct across the board
would you at least stipulate that there is some ambient level at which you would concede you had suffered a loss, a violence?
you really just believe that day is not now, and I’ll leave you to do so, but the day comes
I had started to compose a thoughtful, responsive answer. Until I got to: “you really just believe that day is not now.”
Fundamentally, something is going to get you. And it could very well be an “externality” that does.
I see no way to completely insulate yourself from it. Risk is part and parcel of life and progress and the simple fact that we live in proximity to other humans makes us a threat and a boon to each other.
In the old days, Mog might simultaneously defend the tribe from invaders, but then kill the children by shitting in the creek.
That said, as a society we do set guidelines on the risks we are willing to allow one to put upon another and it should always be up for discussion in a free society. Not so much like the Soviet Union or China.
A search of the article and comments so far reveals not one reference to “commons”, and I think your comment shows how that concept is relevant.
There are “commons” in the US (and everywhere), consisting of air and water. Nobody has any claim to own the air. Most water is also not owned by anyone. They are commons. Air and water pollution is degradation of the commons, with highly dispersed impacts and perhaps highly dispersed polluters as well, such that in many cases it is not practically possible to identify the polluter, or even the polluters who matter, for a given exposure or adverse impact.
The dispersed (and possibly unknown) “wrongdoers” and dispersed “victims” are the root cause of the flaws in any restitution model (torts and their bank account, insurance). While there are certainly cases where a polluter (or group of polluters) and maybe even a group of victims can be identified in a way that gives a start on restitution, there are many cases where this is not true.
So, the Standard Libertarian Model, which does not deal with commons (other than to say there should be none, which is not possible with air and water) or addresses dispersed/unidentifiable wrongdoers and victims, doesn’t deal well with many environmental issues.
“it is not practically possible to identify the polluter”
China. It’s always China.
“chicken vagina, the Chinese chicken, he had a drumstick but his brain stopped tickin”
Water doesn’t have to be a commons, but you are right about air.
The Coasean solution would be to define the property rights so as to minimize transaction costs.
Don’t move off the homestead, SCIENCE THE SHIT OUT OF IT!
Cool!
Amazing
Well naturally, what else would you do?
Thanks to whoever posted the flightradar24 website yesterday. Now watching wife and two of the kids scream across this nation.
Sad that the flight time is pretty much equal to the time you need to give yourself to get through security without sweating bullets.
I time my trips to the airport using flightradar and flight aware.
I’m not getting to the airport 2 hours early if I know that the plane is still on the ground somewhere else.
The wife and I did the math, and we figured the amount of time it would take us to get to the airport, go through security, fly to TN, rent a car and drive to Pigeon Forge, with a toddler, was roughly equal to the amount of time it would take to just pack up the car and drive. It’s not necessarily that any individual step takes that long, but it’s the additional time you have to factor in to make sure you’re not late for any part of it. There’s a lot of dead time just sitting around an airport or in a plane.
Vegas or Mammoth is my driving limit. The rest of the country is just too far away.
I hate flying so much I just won’t go anywhere I can’t get by car. That limits where I can go, obviously, but luckily for me I’m too broke and to busy to afford to go anywhere far anyway.
Oh, I really try my best not to fly. Especially with 3 full fare kids.
Oh, man, I get stressed out taking one 4-year-old to a grocery store…
Flying has never bothered me, but all the peripherals, and the usual parade of assholes you need to deal with, make it real annoying these days. It also helps that with my sleep disorder airplanes seem to be the one place where i usually end up sleeping like a baby.
Oh, and I hate fucking driving anywhere over 120 miles away (and that is when I am driving, and if I am not is is 15 miles). Sitting in a car just feels like slow death to me regardless of how fast I am moving.
I make the same calculation when we’re in my wife’s hometown (we have a complicated bi-state living situation) for about a week to 10 days Driving, about 11 hours and about $120 in gas. Flying (getting to airport, security, flight, pick up rental, drive) is about 7-8 hours; $200 ticket, $200-$300 rental, $50 in gas. And that’s if I’m there for a week or so. Any longer and it changes the rental calculation.
Plus, driving there’s no TSA (yet). And, driving gives me more flexibility with weather. One Christmas I flew into Denver, and ended up staying at an airport hotel because the roads where I was headed were closed.
TSA is a big negative for me. Also, I just really like that I can more or less dictate the pace if I’m driving. Besides which, I typically drive a Highlander on long trips, and that’s a hell of a lot more comfortable than a seat on Southwest.
A co-worker drives from Ashburn to Pigeon Forge at least once a year. He plans to retire there. I never would have even though of flying there.
The drive’s nice, I think, once you get past DC. Not a problem obviously if you’re coming from Ashburn. That part of the world, broadly-speaking, is on my short list of places to live once we can get out of MD.
I hope we can make the finances work to stay here. Preferably a bit further west (Warrenton, Purcellville, etc.) given the sprawl and the HCOL. It’s a beautiful area. Everything inside the beltway could fall into the Chesapeake and I wouldn’t miss it.
I grew up in Warrenton, and it’s a very different place now. You still have a good amount of redneckery, but there’s more and more NoVa pollution every year.
The EPA may be a bloated monstrosity these days, but the preventative justice it affords to the community is a unique form of protection for land, life, and limb that would otherwise be sacrificed to short-sighted and irresponsible polluters.
When factories were using rivers to cart off their poisonous effluents, and the effects were clear, the EPA was doing good. Unfortunately, mission creep and the continuous expansion of the definition of “harm” have pretty much made the EPA a harm in and of itself.
Just yesterday, I was scanning the headlines and saw a story about another bullshit environmentalist lawsuit designed to shut down a business project.
That’s the thing, even in an ideal world where the EPA has a limited mission and adheres to it, at some point you’re going to wind up with a bunch of government employees sitting around congratulating themselves on a job well done, waiting for something bad to happen. People will get antsy. They’ll start asking why they pay these guys to just goldbrick all day, “making sure everything stays alright”. They’ll have to come up with reasons to keep getting paid, which means finding new emergencies.
But it was the role of Congress to right those wrongs, not un-elected bureaucrats.
There is a role for the EPA in an advisory/enforcement capacity, but he rule-making must be limited to the legislative branch.
pretty much made the EPA a harm in and of itself
I can agree it’s a bloated monstrosity without dismissing its real utility. There might be a guy on this thread who has filled out more Title V, VOC, RCLA, and CERCLA paperwork than I have, but I doubt few have designed as many processes where minimizing fugitives was a priority. In that half of my career, the chemical bit (my son is a chemist, even), let me assure you that every good Baptist Republican good guy proprietor I ever worked for would have happily rationalized ten times as much pollution if there had not been an agency he had to answer to.
I’m not gunning for Baptists or Republicans; I’m just saying these were otherwise good neighbors and parents.
I think there’s also plenty of instances where well-intentioned people just aren’t aware of possible damages they can cause in the normal course of business.
I refer to competent and informed persons
but instead of going into a bunch of detail that is just going to get me subpoenaed . . .
As kinnath sort of implies, you miss an alternative – however it is not mob justice as much as a culture of honor that includes dueling. Now, I hear some of you ululating, “Dueling? That’s crazy talk, Prof. Mulatto!” Yet, thanks to a shitty musical, a generation of Millennials have learned that the Founding Fathers were all in for dueling. If it is socially acceptable for me to challenge you to a duel over poisoning my water, then the offender has to weigh if the money he is saving from not properly disposing his industrial waste is worth his life.
It is not so much that arms make a polite society, but honor.
Who would you duel from Exxon?
Their public relations staff?
The majority shareholder or his/her champion. I could see that a corporation, being a legal person, would have a stable of “champions” on staff. Kind of like in-house counsel, but more badass.
So… Eugene from Accounting, got it.
I wouldn’t fuck with Herbert K.
I’m adding this to Libertopia.
more government regulation keeping a brotha down.
I’m just trying to picture that job posting now:
Apply now for a 1-3 year assignment.
It was a Sliders episode
I will note that the early seasons of Silders are some of my favorite television.
Exxon doesn’t have a majority shareholder. Few, if any, publicly traded corporations do. The biggest Exxon shareholder is a retired senior vice president (somewhat to my surprise, for most publicly traded corporations, the biggest shareholder is going to be a pension plan, insurance company or mutual fund).
In case you didn’t get the memo, oil is evil. Most .gov pension plans are divested (in breach of their fiduciary duty).
You follow the path – eventually there is going to be a person who could be responsible. The buck always stops somewhere. I guess one could also challenge the chief executive officer, as he/she would be the one responsible for the decision to dump the waste.
Interesting question on whether there is a specific individual that would be responsible for corporate actions, or whether it your challenge is properly directed to the corporation, which would respond to by sending its designated agent. Likely an ex-Special Forces operative.
Typically, almost universally, corporations are held responsible for the actions of their agents and employees, not the other way around.
The “legalization” of dueling was contemporary with the founding of the USA. By legalization, I mean the shift from dueling being an extra-judicial process to one that was registered and overseen by the common law judicial system within the Anglosphere. As such, a duel can be seen as a type of meditation, in which the 3rd party is God (and this was how it was viewed in the Anglo-Saxon tradition – that is God chose the winner). I agree that like when someone brings service of process, there would be some sort of registered agent who would serve as champion: Someone expensive, whose life would not be treated lightly.
It will wind of being in a public pension fund and you’ll being yourself.
Assuming that it’s just you who are affected. Depending on how dispersed the externality is, there could be a “class-action” champion. And when the duel is televised, we’ll finally have the Running Man future we deserve.
FWIW, there are lots of forms where the company’s agent certifies that such is so (eg: disposed barrels are RCRA empty would be signed by a plant manager). That guy goes to jail if such is not so.
But who you need to shoot is a different matter.
HR. The answer is always HR.
If the champion comes from HR, that might create a perverse incentive for the big bosses.
– Minion : “If we do that, we’ll get challenged.”
– CEO : [chuckling] “Really? Well, that’s a risk we’ll just to take.”
Dueling is fine by me.
Neph, reposting my reply from the last thread re: servers losing time – You don’t have an ntp server configured? Your ntp server is borked? You are using bad sources for your ntp server? It’s amazing how fast high end IBM Power systems will skew time if they aren’t tied into an ntp server.
All of that is outside of my scope of support for these servers. I think they’ve got a bad ntp server somewhere in their network, but they didn’t want to look at it when I first brought it to their attention. Today it caused a minor self inflicted outage, and they wanted us to engage a vendor for the reason. We had to point out that the vendor doesn’t support Windows, just their applications. It doesn’t help that they’ve been having intermittent network issues and call issues over the same period (which they’re trying to blame on all sorts of things). To me, the servers jumping forward in time is a huge fucking red flag with flares on every corner saying, “LOOK AT ME!” even more then the worst millenial otherkin.
But what do I know… I’m just hired help. 🙂
But it was the role of Congress to right those wrongs, not un-elected bureaucrats.
There is a role for the EPA in an advisory/enforcement capacity, but he rule-making must be limited to the legislative branch.
No disagreement, here.
The base solution is that people pay for damages if they harm other people, but only after the harm happens.
This leads to the problem of people that can’t pay (judgement proof).
The current solution to judgement proof people is prior restraint — issuing regulations to prevent judgement proof people from causing harm in the first place. The problems with this solution is evident in the existing structure of ever-expanding regulations administered by 3rd parties that are immune the consequences of their own bad deeds.
I was just pointing out that before regulations, the threat of physical violence (frequently excessive physical violence) helped to keep judgement proof people in check. The problems with this solution are evident through out human history.
This leads to the problem of people that can’t pay (judgement proof).
I think that is one of the problems, but not even the most fundamental. See above re commons, dispersed/unidentifiable wrongdoers and victims.
Yes, I liked your comments on the commons.
About judgement proof: As noted above, IIRC, Iceland (933?-1266?) required membership in litigation insurance co-op unless the group of usually about 10 to 30 people were collectively sufficiently wealthy. For you pendants: I am specifically referring to the Commonwealth era. And that if somehow this led to judgements not being paid, and if the group of usually 10 to 30 did not pay it themselves or find others who would pay it on their behalf, the adjudication had the alternative options of banishment and indentured servitude. IIRC, violating the terms of said banishment or servitude was punishable by banishment, death, servitude, or slavery.
Anyone for: “But that wasn’t real minarchy!”
every good Baptist Republican good guy proprietor I ever worked for would have happily rationalized ten times as much pollution if there had not been an agency he had to answer to.
Trust the science. I can live with that. But there are plenty of real life examples wherein the “trust science” types go racing off to the courthouse when the science disagrees with their feelz. There is a judge, locally, who will not hesitate to shut down a project to which the Montana Department of Environmental Quality and/or the EPA have no scientific/regulatory objection.
And the scientific authority is subject to bribery.
along with land tax enviromental protection is one of the few areas I see a role for government and this makes me different… a hipster among libertarians. Or if not government the local community, elder council or whatever… As I am not the one to think anarchy would be just private everything. there would be commons and ways to avoid tragedy thereof
But sooner or later beatings would be involved.
I like clean water and air as much as anyone else, however, in this case, “enviromental protection” means stopping all development until the proper palms are greased.
I know… In Romania the view from the government forest department was to a bit of protected forest that had been completely cleared by illegal logging… And this is mild pollution wise. So I realize the issue. I cannot see it done without any government, but government fucks it up anyway. it is a conundrum.
I’m pretty much where you are, Pie. This seems inevitably a collective problem that requires a collective solution. Sucks that the collective solution is government.
I’ve been spilling plant food for miles and mils of roadway, and arrived on the shores of Lake Erie. This hotel has the distinction of being the first without a desk and chair so that I might set up the laptop in comfort. Admittedly, the room isn’t big enough to add these things, but still.
Welcome to the shore of the (record breaking) Lake Erie.
I drove through some of the new estuaries and inlets.
Oh, and did that other glib ever reach out to you?
They did. I passed along the time, location, and my cell number.
you can be pretty comfortable with the laptop in bed. more than whatever chair would be in a hotel.
No, no I can’t. There’s no mousing surface, and the machine constantly moves, not to mention the only comfortable positions in bed are completely uncondusive to use of a laptop.
*millions of porn sites cried out and were silenced*
every surface is a mousing surface. i keep my mouse on the arm of my recliner
As long as you aren’t one of these degenerates.
/spits on the ground
I bought the cheapest mouse in the store. It is a hama.
Had one of those once. Required constant cleaning. FAIL
I got the M570 initially, have a handful of them now. Got the MX Ergo ~2yrs back. I think I’ve done maybe 10 cleanings in 5+ years.
Maybe sweep off your desk more often, slob.
Needing a surface is why I switched to trackballs, initially just for my laptop, but eventually everywhere. Better for the wrist too.
Speaking of ill-defined “harm”-
We can always circle back to the phenomenon of whining about (and seeking injunctive relief against) logging projects because some otherwise completely unaffected individuals think it’s “ugly”.
I’ve been spilling plant food for miles and mils of roadway
These euphemisms…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk
Great article trashy! Do the BLM next, they help make normal wildfires huge!!!
And thanks to the commenters, I learned a lot
What I struggle with my self is:
Big things like rivers and lakes that will not fully belong to someone
And big cities and stuff like air quality. I cannot see how you can keep polluting cars from busy cities purely by a market. Then again in Bucharest you can bribe your way out of a failed inspection (mandatory every two years) and the most polluting cars around are government trucks from the municipality or the government owned public transport company. But in Switzerland i works quite better. So there is maybe a way to have a limited government environmental regulation that sort of works.
I can think of a couple of different options. Toll roads going into the city, the city having a special tag you need to purchase to drive in the city, a device to measure your exhaust and tax based on that, etc.
the city having a special tag you need to purchase to drive in the city – the city being some form of government i assume
Not necessarily, it could be an independent cooperative or such. Look towards Snow Crash by Stephenson or Oath of Fealty by Niven/Pournelle for some examples. Even if it was a government, it could auction off the rights to sell the tags to the highest bidder, and pull the rights if the air pollution reaches certain thresholds.
I just don’t see that. It is not what I get from my understanding of human history and human nature. AT least not in the near future
A city owned and operated by a cooperative is indistinguishable from a historical democratic or oligarchic Greek-style city-state. It isn’t as if there isn’t historical precedent.
I call that government
That is what I am saying. However, from a Voluntaryist point of view, the key phrase is “mutual consent between the government and the governed”.
well if it is bout consent Romania is rape but the use lube, could be worse no lube in the Sudan
CASCADIA HAVE NO LUBE, BUT STEVE SMITH SMOOOOOTH.
This is exactly how turnpikes were constructed in the UK and USA during the 18th to 19th Century.
and that is how the NHS was born
Whoever posted the bit about “Have Gun, Will Travel” doing an episode that illustrated the Coase theorem extremely well should jump in here.
The problem is that in the absence of a third party that raises the cost of pollution the market created by that problem is comprised of the people suffering the damages. In other words, aside from any moral or social qualms I might have, I as a driver don’t care that my car causes pollution, whereas people in the vicinity do. I’m benefiting from driving and, frankly, I can physically leave the area affected by the pollution. It’s the people outside the car who are immediately affected, and the immediate market would be for some way for them to mitigate the effects of the pollution on themselves. So you’re more likely to see respirators or air filters than some sort of improvement of auto emissions.
All the chimneys on the building across from me have those spinning vent coversw where the exhaust air causes the top to turn. This area is also infested with seagulls, and I just watched one try to root atop a spinning vent cover, confused about who it kept moving until forced to abandon the perch.
I laughed.
Every house in Amarillo has a chimney
but there are no trees in Amarillo to burn
is there any coal?
They burn armadillos in amarillo
It’s surprisingly barren; there are hydrocarbons to be had in the nearby (500km?) Rocky uplift, and the Permian Basin is an epic trove.
I exaggerated: turns out firewood in Amarillo is only twice what it is in east TX ($400/200). My bias comes from living in a two-canopy forest, so I glibly characterize every TX acre west of Waco as desert, which is only half true. I’ve driven through there a dozen times and left mostly with the same notions I took out there.
*Nods*
I’d never live west of Arlington, because I have no interest in living in the desert.
when i was on the english seaside the fucking seagulls were a nuisance. they were so fucking loud. and as english houses are shit you could here everything. I struggle with how rich countries in europe have such shit houses.
Anyway, I have a few hours to kill
Nephiliumbefore I meet Nephilium, so I’m off to see if I can find Gibson’s bakery. If there’s a student mob, I’ll take pictures and hide my camera.carbs are bad
NewWife wasn’t terrified to meet a Glib, but she knows I laugh at a lot of very dark things so she was braced. She loved his company.
Now this guy how to shitlord.
As do other fictional characters.
pulling no punches.
ouch
BIF #6, I think: Oddball Brewing Co — New Hampshire Bitter
It was nice, tasted like an english bitter should taste. I enjoyed it last night with some grilled pork chops and grilled corn.
It only has a 3.39 rating on beeradvocate, which I thought was horribly low, then I saw it only had 1 review. So that person is wrong.
I give it a 4.0/5.
“The EPA may be a bloated monstrosity these days, but the preventative justice it affords to the community is a unique form of protection for land, life, and limb that would otherwise be sacrificed to short-sighted and irresponsible polluters.”
What about the hypothetical problems of protection against nonexistent dangers, mandating one-size-fits-all solutions, and mandates that are far from cost-effective?
By international standards, should the EPA be ‘the gold standard’ when carving out an exception to “‘Just stick to the Constitution as written and leave me alone. Especially in the morning.”? Major and capital cities stereotypically have dirtier air, land, and water than the countryside. If you look at environmental results rather than the wokeness of their policies, of the 27 major and capital cities in the top 25, only five nations have more than one city on the list. Singapore only has one, but since that is the whole of Singapore, let us make that a list of six nations. Australia and the United States have 5 each, with Canada, Switzerland, and New Zealand having 4, 3, and 2 respectively. That’s 20 of the top 27. Although 5 ties for most cities, I understand that the United States (including territories and possessions) has 388 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) and 541 micropolitan statistical areas (μSAs).
I have no idea what you are talking about here. Top 25 cities by what measure?
There is an unquestionable (I think) link between the wealth of a post-agricultural society and the quality of its environment. Everybody wants a nice environment, but they ain’t free (especially taking opportunity cost into account).
EPA created by executive order. Kill it.