British water company dumps sewage, claims "no right to swim in the sea"

The Brits thought the world would line up to trade with a free UK based on the fact that they were…the UK???

There’s been sewage in the seas and oceans for as long as there’s been sewage in proximity to those places. Long before caring for the environment as it’s now understood was even a concept. I’d hazard a guess that on a population density normalized comparison for developed countries there has never been a better time for responsible sewage handling. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of problems like this article highlights, just that it probably has not been better in the past. Hopefully the UK courts will hand this lady a decisive win and reinforce the idea that industry does have responsibility.

Corps quitting caring about the environment implies they ever did.

They did not until environmental regulations forced them to, and they ignore those regulations every time they think they can get away with it.

And individuals are not much better.

Do you have any idea how many sea creatures there are, all of whom are shitting straight into the ocean, constantly?

Around 2 billion metric tons of them.

By contrast, there are only about 60 million tons of human beings.

Handwaving any differences in metabolic rates, the ocean animals are outshitting us by a factor of roughly 30, or, to put it another way, if every human turd in the world went straight into the ocean it would only increase the amount of shit in the ocean by around 3%.

Of course, the overwhelming majority of human waste does not get dumped directly into the oceans, so it's far less than that.

Something something market forces...

Makes sense. The rising sewage will lift all boats.

Buy a castle, surround it with a moat, and float the boat in a moat of "water".

That's probably assault if doesn't have a profit angle. Maybe its expected that everyone should just screw the rest as much as they humanly can without petty crime.

For example, maybe can be a good business to create a company that takes control of all the coffee production/distribution and algorithmically price the cup of coffee to be about 5 quids or %0.1 (whichever is greater)of the monthly income of the customer.

To facilitate this, of course the company will need to collect information like the cars they drive or the house they live so it will require an account with their financials for the individuals displaying wealth.

If that sounds monopolistic, alternatively all the independent coffee shops and coffee sellers can start running the same algorithm and have the exact same effect but technically they won't be price fixing. Why would they do that? Well, it's called catching a whale, they may end up losing the opportunity to make 5 pound of few billionaires but may end up making a fortune of one that really really needs a fix.

What? The solution for the tragedy of the commons is making the common thing private.

There are large green areas in the UK owned by private funds, that are amongs the best preserved in the whole country, or even the whole Europe.

Recent Nobel price Elinor Olstrom studied this theme, and found that in places where the tragedy of the commons is avoided, there are mechanisms that are akin to private property, like a common river being "owned" by a guardian or a private organization that keeps it safe from pollution.

I haven't put any blame, just curious how a libertarian solve the issue as a thought experiment. Maybe there's an angle I haven't thought of.

The "make the waters private" doesn't solve the problem of making the waters private if you haven't made the waters private before you want to swim.

If you are going to purchase everything you need to live a life, this will quickly spiral into socialism with capitalist titles because you will need someone to manage all that so you can do stuff you actually care for. Someone will come up with a package that sorts things out for a subscription, you will just have your taxes called monthly subscription fees and the unelected officials will be called managers or CEO or something. Then they will reduce service quality since it would be very hard for you to simply switch to other providers if you are not happy(they will optimize for profit once the growth slows). Then the management will start selling access to you, for example if someone want to do taxi services to subscribers like you, they will have to pay a fee to the management.

Honestly, IMHO this is not even socialism but just communism with different accounting formula and labels.

Courtesy of Brown Beaches, LLC :D