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Comment by xigma | Hacker News Reader

Polluting the environment is damaging someone's property (private or state), for which they will eventually demand restitution. It's part of market forces.

Conversely, a certain amount of pollution/environmental destruction is a price people are willing to pay.

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That is all nice and true in theory. But property rights don't exist from nowhere, they need to be created by private actors or governments.

Global property rights issue will not be solved by simply law-suit the way you might fix a noise problem. Governments are not only not establishing property rights they would actively prevent anybody that did.

If your read the literature on the economics of property rights and Ronald Coase own writings you will see that he did not believe simplified version of the 'Coase theorem' that was formalized by Stigler.

The point is not that "the market fixes everything", the point is these are still market forces.

Even in a completely free market, you can get screwed over.

In the real world the cost of figuring out who is polluting your property when it comes to acid rain, engine particulates, etc dwarf the cost imposed by this pollution. I'm all for trying to minimize pollution in an economically efficient way but thinking you can do this by suing each of the 10,000 car owners who drove past your house for $.15 each is ridiculous - we really do need government regulation here.

What market forces allow them to convert their demands into action?

Aren't all market forces in the end the result of private property and contract law? Without those, people would quickly stop being able to trust any deals they made, and would have to resort to cash, and even then only in cases where they have a high level of social trust in the person they're trading with.

I’m not sure how that connects with what I’m asking. The other comments said that market forces would result in people demanding reparations for the damage done by pollution. But in the absence of a legal framework giving them some rights regarding pollution, those demands won’t go anywhere.

lol if you think the government is going to be able to sue for the profits paid from then-bankrupt gas companies at any point in the future

and how would displaced Bangladeshi people even be able to sue Exxon Mobil for the environmental damages they are currently suffering from? This is a really dumb libertarian fantasy

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