Space Pollution: A last word

--- Ravenart@... wrote:
> Ok, this is my last comment on space "pollution."
>
> While the techincal details are interesting, I think the pollution is
> ultimatly not a problem if we use private property rather than the law of
> commons in which everybody can use but nobody take responsiblity for
> anything. (look at the seas and lakes in which nobody have a personal
> property of the waters but of the boats, and naturally, the boats are in
> better shape and with less effort than keeping the watery enviroment in
> better shape than before).

Your reasoning here is completely flawed.

When it comes to space it's about as easy to privatise as the earths
atmosphere. Private property hasn't done anything to reduce pollution put into
the atmosphere. In fact it was regulation that stopped CFCs being released
along with some other nasties like sulphur oxides.

> When we consider that resources take time and engery, especially from
> earthland, to get from A to B then it make more sense to anybody who live and
> work in space to conserve as much of resources he have regarding his
> property, including pollutants. Also, because of his genetic nature which
> required him to be a good neigbor in order to get ahead in social and
> economic non-zero sum game, he will consider it to be in his advantage to
> keep as much of his space clean so that he neigbors can trade with him.

Sometimes it will be cheaper to just dump something and if the neighbours can't
prove who dumped it then there is every reason to dump the stuff. Besides what
if the entity polluting is a monopoly selling something that is needed? Don't
expect people to not deal with it because it's a polluter.

> Failure to do that will bring on the tort law on him. While there's a lot of

> problem with tort as it stand today, it is still much better at improving the
> enviroment than any regulation whiich tends to make things worst better they
> make the mistake of assuming that all sitituations are uniformly same, which
> ain't so.

Tort law does help the environment but without a doubt regulation is the best
way to do it. CFCs have been phased out thanks only to regulation, Leaded
fuels are being phased out (at least for car use), power plants are now
required to clean up their emissions, cars now have to have catalytic
converters. None of those came about through tort law, they were all
regulations and they didn't make anything worse.

> So, if you really are concerned about pollution, then support private
> property and the peaceful transactions, for while they may not seem like much
> in dealing with apparently big problems, from the science of complexity's
> pov, those are the most important causes that can effect major changes
> through out the system (20% create 80% of results as stated by the Law of
> Imbalance).

History has demonstrated many times that regulation is the best way to protect
the environment and that it doesn't matter whether property is private or
public.