I thought the pages Chris Hedges wrote about Ralph Nader's 2000 pre-presidential campaign career in Death of the Liberal Class were very interesting. Not nearly as interesting, but some hints here.
I've been thinking about free markets some lately and I don't understand the confidence with which people say the free market can do this and the free market can do that if only because, as far as I can tell, the only places that truly free markets have ever existed were in the pages of The Wealth of Nations and Das Kapital. Nothing in actual human history that I can think of even comes close.
The barter system was always a free market system.
That is to say, plenty of free market economies in the goblin kennels.
I'm not a true believer in the free market, but I can't think of a more pure form of it than the halls of government and the free buying of politicians.
Its not that the free market is good, but that government intervention is worse.
There are plenty of options that are neither free market nor socialism. How about we give one of them a try?
Free market and closed market are opposite ends of the spectrum, as are capitalism and socialism. My point is you could very well have a free market socialist economy. Does that count?
Edit: added a verb on DD's advice.
Okay, here's my question: do you think the capitalist/socialist differentiation and the freedom/oppression differentiation exist in the same spectrum? (I know, it doesn't even make any sense unless you've studied color theory.)
From what I understand, you want to increase environmental protection by dumping, wholesale, all environmental regulation. The theory being that people will just sue when the pollution affects them adversely, through groundwater contamination or air pollution etc. Further, the government will always fail to effectively protect against such pollution, because those in charge of regulating can easily be bought off.
Is this about correct? Please adjust as you see fit, but this does seem to be the long and short of it.
So here's my problem with your proposed model, DD.
Now all the power for environmental regulation lies not in regulations, decided upon by democratically elected officials, but rather on judges. One of 2 things happen then. Either the company just buys off the judges, directly through bribes if they are appointed to their positions, or if they are elected positions through the same methods in regards to campaign finance as we already see politicians being bought. The strategy changes, subtly, but the end result is the same: sludge in the rivers, poison in the air, and an infinitely powerful oligarchy with no governmental bulwark to check the corporate powers.
I'm not a true believer in the free market, but I can't think of a more pure form of it than the halls of government and the free buying of politicians.
Its not that the free market is good, but that government intervention is worse.
There are plenty of options that are neither free market nor socialism. How about we give one of them a try?
I understand that we don't share terminologies, Citizen Duck, but, from where I stand, the United States has never been neither free market nor socialist.
But what are these other options that you suggest "we" try?
The barter system was always a free market system.
That is to say, plenty of free market economies in the goblin kennels.
Actually, we Anklebiters live in conditions that some Marxists would call "primitive" communism, but that's because they're anti-goblin bigots, just like Paizo.
Srly, please add an unspoken clause about "in modern times," or "under industrial capitalism", etc., to the post above.
I'm all for the withering away of the state, Citizen Duck, but I doubt we'll ever agree on how that is to be accomplished.
I'll look at ESOPs, but I doubt they will sway me from my fondness for international proletarian socialist revolution.
Also, note that it is "power tends to corrupt," otherwise there would be no need for the second clause of the statement.
Its not true that all the power for environmental regulations now lies in the courts rather than regulations. Using the Cuyahoga river fire, for example, when the state of Ohio assigned the Cuyahoga status as an Industrial river and issued licenses to pollute the river, it made it impossible to take relevant cases to court.
As far as buying off judges, that's why we have an appeals system.
The first part is gibberish to me, since it doesn't actually address any questions I asked.
As for an appeals system: buy off appellate court judges.
I think you willfully refusing to see the obvious problems with your proposed system of regulation which is...the exact same problem we currently have. You're MERELY shifting the power from the executive and legislative branches of local, state, and federal governments onto the judiciary, which is consolidating power into fewer people than currently hold it.
It also relies on the judiciary's quick response time and ability to enforce any rulings it has made, which are things I have as little faith in as you have in the legislature to legislate justly.
I ignore that because I don't think its feasible. Even if it were feasible, its a lot harder to pull off than buying off key players among the couple of hundred Senators and Representatives.
No, it's not feasible to buy off every judge.
You only have to buy off the ones that make the important decisions. In a game you always have to pick your battles, let some of your opponents' victories slip by as part of a larger strategy to win. This is no secret to the oligarchs.Furthermore, your ability to imagine something does not limit their power. If you believe in the power of the free market to find solutions, it will find a solution to the problem of "all these people keep suing us for poisoning them."
EDIT: Furthermore I'll add that, at the moment, the game isn't buying off legislators. There area already too many strong regulations on the books and people pay far more attention to their legislator than the people they should. The regulators. Right now the individual state and local agencies are being not bought off but the agencies themselves are being corrupted from the inside, from the top down, by political appointees. It's happening right now in Wisconsin with Kathy Stepp, head of the DNR, and her refusal to follow the laws of the land and regulate phosphate emissions (among other egregious problems).
So, you don't have to buy off the judges, you buy off whoever is in charge of appointing judges. That includes appellate judges. Remember that both sides can appeal. So if you're a small environmental activist firm who makes your money "regulating" industrial waste effluence (or something), when/if a court rules in your favor, the industry can appeal the decision as well. And they have better lawyers. So then the ONLY really necessary game is to buy or otherwise control appellate courts or the people who appoint those judges, since you can count on every one of your cases going there eventually. Deep pockets allow you to play the long game.
Unless, like in Wisconsin, your Supreme Court Justices are elected officials, and then the same corruption happens in that process as happens with legislators and executives.
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If the state refuses to interfere with the freedom of a company to dump toxic waste into my drinking water then they have to but out of my freedom to grab a CEO and pour battery acid down his throat.