Times have caught up with Ingersoll. Ronald Coase, prominent
Chicago economist, says polluters (whom he calls emitters, to
avoid bias) have as much right to emit as victims (he says
receptors) have to breathe clean air. It doesn't matter, says
Coase, how we assign property rights originally: as long as
property is firm, the market will sort it all out. However, since
emitters have invested in costly facilities, and property is
sacred ... you see whither this unbiased science is tending.
Was he laughed to scorn? Au contraire, he was raised on the
shoulders of his adulatory peers and anointed a demi-god (which
tells you something about his peers). Having risen on wings of
theory the idea found its way into practice, and today The South
Coast Air Quality Management District awards "offset rights"
to those with worthy track records of emitting. New emitters must
buy "property rights" from old ones.
In effect, we don't fine people for emitting, we reward them
with a right to continue. Then we can pay them to stop, by buying
back the right we just gave away. This is putting the free market
to work, they say. If you have not been emitting before, too bad.
I have offered not to emit millions of tons of nitrates, and
sulfates too. My price is modest, and highly competitive. I
underbid the big refineries by 50%, but Air District officials
just hang up on me, if you can believe it. They say I must have
earned my offset right by suffocating the neighbors in the
unregulated past.
Pursuant to Coase we should no doubt award the Ukraine a
perpetual right to have melt-downs at Chernobyl, rights they could
then sell to Uganda or Paraguay or other LDC wanting to modernize
with a melt-down or two. Nicotine fiends with proven records of
smoking in crowded rooms regularly over at least the last four
years will receive official charm bracelets they can flash
whenever asked to butt out. These, of course, will be modern "bearer
bracelets," transferable to the highest bidder. Anyone caught
leaving a room filled with such legally sanctioned smoke might
well be fined, and charged with violating the bracelet-bearer's
5th Amendment rights.
And those who want to breathe? Coase says they should pay for
the privilege, as they pay for indulging any personal taste. After
all, they already pay those who supply them with land to live on.
Only welfare bums would expect property owners to dip into their
hard-earned savings and supply them with free air, when the market
has a solution at hand. All they need do is buy offset rights from
Ancient and Honorable Emitters. When they want to breathe, they
just retire the rights upwind of them.
This is a marvel of efficiency, too. They retire only what it
takes to clean the air they need: no waste.
If they can't afford to buy outright, they could rent -markets
have ingenious solutions for all problems, like any good panacea.
Gas masks are another free-market solution: much better than
socialistic policies that would impose uniform clean air on
everyone, whether they want it or not.
What about the new-born, with no prior history of either
emitting or breathing? They come innocently into the world with no
basis for being grandfathered in, and little money. Sometimes
real men must put aside maudlin whining, grit their teeth, and
just pull up the ladder, lest the lifeboat be swamped. It's the
free market way of population control, a modified kind of natural
selection. As for the alleged innocence of the little brats,
remember Original Sin, and The Lord of the Flies. There is, to be
sure, a noisy crowd who want clean air to be generally available,
and prate emotionally of natural beauty and rights. They are only
"environmental activists," an odd elitist lot whom
objective scientists may disregard.
For that they gave Coase a Nobel Prize. You see, old Ingersoll
was on the mark. Nothing is too absurd once we accept invading,
usurping, and leeching as the bases of property.
