At 06:25 PM 3/2/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Louis P.,
> Well, as a matter of fact this sort of case in
>Rochester is exactly the sort that says that there needs to
>be some very specific quantity controls. This is the kind
>of case I had in mind with my mumbling about risky
>situations and how social cost curves can suddenly go up,
>that is that there are critical threshold levels that one
>may not know about beyond which very unpleasant things can
>happen, catastrophes.
This is one of the things I don't understand about using tradable permits.
Barkley, don't tradable permits essentially mean that companies get to
decide which residents are poisoned? If so, this isn't this an incredibly
unjust system? If we had permits, then Kodak, not the people who live near
its factories, would decide whether more kids would die, right?
Incidentally, I agree that the permits vs. taxes approach doesn't get at
the more fundamental issues, particularly the issues of democracy and
accountability.
Anders Schneiderman
