Re: green permits and taxes

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Anders,
     Whether you have taxes, permits, quantity controls, or 
whatever, if someone is poisoning someone else and that can 
be shown (not always an easy if, as the Kodak situation 
indicates), then the poisonees ought to be able to take the 
poisoners to court, period.  This is quite beyond any of 
these systems.  
     There are some pollutants, if sufficiently dangerous, 
that should be simply outlawed, period.
Barkley Rosser
On Tue, 03 Mar 1998 08:49:40 -0800 "R. Anders Schneiderman" 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 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

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]