> the environment is not something the market will automatically solve
Not quite true. The market can easily solve for it. You just have to internalize the external costs. Usually done through taxes (ie carbon tax).
Not quite true. The market can easily solve for it. You just have to internalize the external costs. Usually done through taxes (ie carbon tax).
Either the market (which has no tax-levying power) can solve it on its own, or it can't. What you're describing is legislators fixing the market because it's stuck in a vicious circle — not the market fixing itself, let alone easily.
But any economist worth their salt would never discussed these issues in the simple market<->government paradigm because it simply breaks down.
There is lots of research on property rights and institutions, whole sub-fields of economics are devoted to it you are vastly oversimplifying and projecting a idealistic view of government and their intensives.