RFK2
OK, I'm willing to get on the bandwaggon. Here's something for my "environmentalist" friends to think about:Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (yes, son of that RFK!) acts as Chief Prosecuting Attorney for Riverkeeper, "an advocacy group that monitors the Hudson River ecosystem and challenges polluters, using both legal and grass roots campaigns." He also serves as Senior Attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council and as President of the Waterkeeper Alliance. At Pace University School of Law, he is a Clinical Professor and Supervising Attorney at the Environmental Litigation Clinic in White Plains, New York. Earlier in his career Mr. Kennedy served as Assistant District Attorney in New York City.blah blah blah
OK, here's what the libertarian critter and the mutualist have both already blogged:
You show me a polluter and I'll show you a subsidy. I'll show you a fat cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and load his production costs onto the backs of the public.I read this and I'm awfully suspicious. I'm suspicious of any Kennedy. I'm especially suspicious of a rich-boy Yankee in the spotlight.
The fact is, free-market capitalism is the best thing that could happen to our environment, our economy, our country. Simply put, true free-market capitalism, in which businesses pay all the costs of bringing their products to market, is the most efficient and democratic way of distributing the goods of the land -- and the surest way to eliminate pollution. Free markets, when allowed to function, properly value raw materials and encourage producers to eliminate waste -- pollution -- by reducing, reusing, and recycling.
In a real-market economy, when you make yourself rich, you enrich your community.
The truth is, I don't even think of myself as an environmentalist anymore. I consider myself a free-marketeer.
Corporate capitalists don't want free markets, they want dependable profits, and their surest route is to crush the competition by controlling the government.
Let's not forget that we taxpayers give away $65 billion every year in subsidies to big oil, and more than $35 billion a year in subsidies to western welfare cowboys. Those subsidies helped create the billionaires who financed the right-wing revolution on Capitol Hill and put George W. Bush in the White House.
But I read this. I reread this. And all I can say for now is:
"Right on, Bobby, Jr!"
4 Comments:
RFK2 = Utilitarian?
In other words, is it the enviromentalism aspect which motivates him, or the love of free markets?
I suspect its the former, not that latter, since his proposal calls for ending subsidies, not de-commonizing the commons.
Even the figures given for government subsidies, might include tax credits which I don't consider to be subsidization, since that would equate government non-intervention (by not collecting tax dollars), with government funding (which involves intervention when others are forced to pick up the tab.)
If he clearly calls for de-commonizing (the privatization of resources), then he is an honorable man in my book, regardless of his ethics.
I am partly an "environmental lawyer", meaning that I get to tell my client-employer to genuflect before the EPA and/or its state counterparts. You can't "win" with the EPA, and you are forced to collaborate with them in investigation and clean-up. You do get considerable protection from third parties, even property owners, when you do go along with the program. And while it sometimes seems burdensome, it is much better (cheaper, easier) than dealing with private litigants with trespass or nuisance claims.
Taken by itself (and I'd love to see the context), Kennedy's statement is nicely libertarian. What makes me doubtful is his choice of employer. Riverkeeper funds terrorists, as documented on activistcash.com.
In other words, is it the enviromentalism aspect which motivates him, or the love of free markets?
But you're missing the point. The whole object of libertarianism is that there IS NO DIFFERENCE.
I hate how business-centric the libertarian movement is. Why does it all have to be based on profit? Environmentalism is a noble motivation - and if he arrives at the most efficient solution, so much the better!
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