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Amateur UAV Pilot Exposes Texas River of Blood
Presto Vivace writes "Carlton Purvis of Security Management News reports that a tip from an amateur UAV enthusiast 'is what led Texas authorities to open a major criminal investigation into the waste practices of a Dallas meat packing plant.' The photo shows a river of blood."
After reading that article I get the feeling there will be a law passed about "model aircraft" using cameras soon.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Columbia+Meat&hl=en&ll=32.751275,-96.787695&spn=0.001405,0.002068&sll=32.802955,-96.769923&sspn=0.47903,0.576782&vpsrc=6&t=h&z=19
Remember how many people were caught "in the act" on Google Street View. Imagine Google Sky View! Every sunroof, every light well, every rooftop garden!
*their
Pollution is destruction of property, destruction of property is a civil or possibly criminal crime.
Not true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riparian_water_rights
Most slaughterhouses in the US pay no attention to federal humane slaughtering & biohazard laws, what I find most surprising is they just *threw away* the wastewater-- that stuff makes perfect additive for fertilizer!
Now someone needs to pilot a UAV into the home of the company's CEO to expose his life-prolonging Voodoo practices.
To the extent that dumping blood into a river is harmful to others they are entitled to compensation. If you think libertarians are in favor of "liberty" to harm others, then your understanding of libertarianism is as bad as your spelling.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Did you not see the Movie? Teleportation and Flies Never ends well!
...get the charcoal and the rope swing. We's gonna have us a party.
Silence is a state of mime.
Can this technology notify me when it discovers Wonka's river of chocolate?
Thanks for that link. I'm not a "PETA-freak", by any stretch of the imagination, but as a photographer, and just as a citizen who believes in the 1st Amendment, those are some of the scariest links I've read since NDAA. I'm glad I don't live in any of the mentioned states, but I have certainly photographed farms without written permission (I have a fondness for pastoral scenes with hay bales). I'd gladly contribute to any effort to get these ridiculous laws thrown out as unconstitutional.
Since each typical polluter only causes a tiny amount of damage to the environment, and therefore only a small amount of damage to each individual, the recourse of individual against the collective effect of all polluters (which is non-trivial, by the way) is massively limited. Unless of course the public were to organize to protect their rights. Maybe the organization could even hold elections for leaders that would (ostensibly) represent the interests of the constituents. What do libertarians have to say about such a collective organization of individuals?
That creek is just flowing with the blood of their enemies.
#DeleteChrome
We made a toaster dance with it.
Pretty sure there are regulations against polluting a stream. 1580 feet downstream of this is a navigable river.
So your huge philosophical troll-bait is moot.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
So if everybody owns the land, we are enslaved, but if individuals own all the land we are not... right. Freedom is slavery, up is down, libertarianism isn't batshit insane stupidity. I'm not sure how I really feel about this little game.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Isn't this really something for the Free Market to decide? I mean, the Government and all its "rules" - talking about public "health" and "safety" - are just going to get in the way of the Job Creators at this Dallas meat packing plant...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I can see how they can do this undetected for so long, the Trinity around Dallas is little better than an open sewer. It's nasty and smells really bad.
In the GOOGLE MAP where the creek joins the river, it's pretty obvious.
I'm wondering how this could have been going on for so long, long enough for Google to have images (so obviously it's not a one time or sporadic event) event, without anyone noticing, does no one boat up that river? Fish on it? No nearby land owners?
Odd...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Don't hurt yourself too much. Pure libertarianism is about as viable as pure communism. Both have the laudable goal of freeing the common man from oppression.
I wonder if it isn't the common man's lot to always be oppressed to some extent; and money and power will always be worth, well, money and power.
Since we are talking about environment, compare the amount of pollution (and for that matter individual liberty) in capitalist countries and in socialist countries. So yes, if land is privately owned there is more liberty than if the land is owned by the state.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Also the air.
Libertarian naivete would be cute if it weren't dangerous.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
The organization would have to collect taxes! Theft! Socialism! Slavery!
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
A court system.
Those that are damaged sue.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Under the Libertarian model, the harm done to others by this slaughterhouse will be instantly and automatically undone the moment it is recognized, mediated by completely impartial and omniscient courts and lawyers who cost nothing to hire. The slaughterhouse always has sufficient cash reserve (or at least dissolution value and insurance coverage) to compensate for all the damage it has ever caused, and the damage is always completely reversible, in direct defiance of various laws of physics and biology. Human nature is modified so that everyone recognizes their own responsibility instantly and does not try to evade it. Life is good.
Then you wake up and realize that Libertarianism is great in theory, but completely untenable in the real world.
Here is a great essay called, "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution" by Murray Rothbard.
http://mises.org/rothbard/lawproperty.pdf
In the libertarian theory unused property comes into ownership through homesteading which basically mean you have to start using unused land. The same theory exists with air/water pollution, noise, and radio waves.
So if an airport is build far away from people it homesteads the right to make the noise associated with running an airport. Anyone that decided to move nearby has to accept that level of noise. If people still move in then the level of noise the airport makes cannot be increased say by landing a new jet that is louder than previous aircraft. This is because it is a nuisance to the other property owners. This is the same reason an airport couldn't be built in a populated area without violating peoples property rights.
If a coal plant is built in a remote area where it's exhaust cannot be detected by surrounding property owners they have gained a right to pollute that air. If someone moves into that area they do so with the knowledge that the coal plant pollutes there. But if people move in anyway they can't sue to stop the pollution. But they can sue if the plant increases the pollution.
The same with a river. If before anyone owned property downstream on the river a meat packing plant moved there and polluted the river they would have homesteaded the right to pollute that river. That isn't very likely. There were most likely owners of property on the river before any industry. Therefore anyone that polluted the river would be violating everyone downstream property rights and they could sue for damages.You can have a class action lawsuit by all plaintiffs against a single polluter.
In reality a libertarian system would have a much cleaner environment because anyone could sue for damages. The EPA exists to protect businesses from lawsuits. It sets a legal limit where companies can pollute to where they face no threat of lawsuit. Also they don't get sued for damages but are fined by the government which leaves the property owners that had their property damaged with no recourse.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
The Horton test applies here.
1. they would be lawfully present (it's a public waterway).
2. they lawfully accessed the evidence (saw it in plain view with the unaided eye**).
3. the incriminating nature was immediately apparent (river of blood).
** When it comes to fancy technology, the current precedent is Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001) although it was a close (5-4) decision, the premise being the police used "technology not generally available to the public".
That'll do, pig. That'll do.
Most libertarians I know think that business owners should be free to, say, only serve white people.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Ideally people who cause pollution would pay up compensation based on the amount of harm caused to each individual. That is just a fair guiding principle. It is true, as you say, that sometimes it is impractical to work out the exact amount of damages. Like with just about everything in law, some pragmatism is required.
The problem you mention comes up in tort law all the time. If you drop fireworks which then explode and startle an old lady a block away who stumbles into a ladder causing a worker to drop a can of paint onto somebody's head causing them a large hospital bill. Who should pay it? It is almost always complicated but the only answer is to figure out the general principles and do the best we can in each case. Libertarianism doesn't provide a clear cut answer to every question, but then neither does anything else.
Since tort law doesn't handle pollution problem perfectly, why do you think that a better answer is to pass regulation? Working out the details of that regulation will be just as complicated, and quite often can cause more harm than good. Who will write up the rules regulating each industry? Your elected representatives don't understand every industry and every type of pollution in every situation, not even one percent of it. In practice it is only the industry itself that has the knowledge to do so and what tends to happen is that regulation is written by the biggest players with most lobbying power in order to benefit themselves against competition, increase cost of entry etc.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Grandparent is being snide, but actually asks a legitimate question.
Parent mocks, but Libertarians would be perfectly fine with such an organization...as long as it was supported by voluntary contributions, by selling a product, or some other means besides taking money from people by force.
Or by charging for a service such as contract enforcement through courts. Given that every transaction involves a contract that could be a fair amount of money, enough to finance a government as our constitution envisioned it, and it would not involve force - you would be free not to pay it, but your contract would not be enforceable in court. There are many other ways too.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Oh please! China is about as communist as my left buttock, in fact other than a few hippie communes in the northwest in the 60s I don't think anyone has ever tried to have an actual communist state. What China was and to a point is, which was one of the reasons for the great Sino/Soviet split when the USSR divorced itself from his example was a variation on Stalinism, which is where a handful at the top live like Gods while the people do without. I know its hard after being pounded with propaganda to this very day (notice how anything the right doesn't like like healthcare for the poor is labeled 'socialist' like that is the same as kiddie fiddler?) but its easy enough to tell the difference as i sincerely doubt "the people' were asking for The Holodomor, the great purges, or to eat bark in NK while dear leader's fatass kid ate all the cookies. As for why China is so polluted its because they don't care how the worker's live (which again is the opposite of how Karl Marx designed communism) as long as they can roll around in cash while building up their military. it reminds me of old Joe and his 'five year plans" as by the end of those he had built some seriously pollution monsters, the only non Chinese city in the top 10 most polluted is an old Joe era chemical factory town in Russia.
As for TFA here is a perfect example of why the FDA and EPA need real teeth instead of letting the right gut what little regulations we have because its pretty obvious without the threat of millions in fines and a loss of their business most corps won't give a fuck about anything but the bottom line. of course the bitch is it never seems to fail that no matter how many times we think we've closed the loopholes the little bastards just get smarter, look at how many superfund sites we ended up stuck with because they set up some shell corp to take the fall. I'm seeing the same thing happen in my own state with the NG frakking and wildcatters as they've set up shell corps that rent everything from the tools to the office furniture to be the "face' company that just gets burned if bills pile up or they get hit with fines and then they can just start another shell corp, rent the gear again, and they are right back in business. We really need to make a law so these CxOs are held responsible for the damage their companies cause so they can't just 'pull an Enron' and walk away with the cash while we get stuck with the bills.
For a good example playing out now look how the airlines are gonna end up dumping their retirement accounts onto the US taxpayer while the CxOs bail with golden parachutes. they got to gamble with the funds and when things went pop they get to say "tough shit buh bye" and cash out, its completely fucked and rewards sociopaths and if we don't do something about it we'll have no choice but to become socialist because the majority of those with company run retirement accounts are libel to find nothing but a picture of the CEO snorting coke off some 19 year old hooker in their nest eggs they've worked their whole lives for.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Hmm. Bloody Libertarians, all "we the people" and "all praise to our founding fathers, their God guided hands, and their immaculate document." What'd we do with that document? We discovered that it dealt with damn near nothing of the problems the nation was and would face. So, we amended the hell out of it because it was anything but complete and still we had/have innumerable problems as society and its issues evolve. Our history--well before we established any kind of oversight--was fraught with a great deal of problems. Limiting thing to just water ways still includes and is certainly not limited to farmers damming up streams for irrigation to the detriment of their neighbors farther down. Mercury dumped without care into waterways for the extraction of gold. Manufacturing dumping whatever waste they saw fit into waterways to the point rivers actually caught ablaze. Septic systems amounting to little better than a pipe running from the house to the river (pond, lake, etc.). Collapse of fish populations due to pollution and over fishing. The list goes on...
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
In reality a libertarian system would have a much cleaner environment because anyone could sue for damages. The EPA exists to protect businesses from lawsuits. It sets a legal limit where companies can pollute to where they face no threat of lawsuit. Also they don't get sued for damages but are fined by the government which leaves the property owners that had their property damaged with no recourse.
Right. Because I want to spend the rest of my life (and income) suing various and sundry large corporations or interests that want to pollute or otherwise disturb the environment surrounding my own property.
I like arguing with people, but not that much.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Did you ever get a letter in the mail letting you know you were a part of a class action lawsuit? I get about 2 a year. It would be a good use of all of our lawyers.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
In favor of? No. At least not in spirit. Most people are not consciously and intentionally evil, just thoughtless, inconsiderate, and generally self-serving. However, in practice the outcome is the same
.
Tell me, with out government overseers who the hell would have the pockets to fight and enforce justice? I can tell you that not one of those people living near that meat packing plant. Tell me, if someone in Minnesota dumps industrial waste into the Mississippi river, who would protect the residents of Baton Rouge from the resultant carcinogenic drinking water? What pockets would pay for justice? How would its residents make Acme Inc. stop?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
We're already seeing where things are heading this way just with water. People are pumping antifreeze up from their water wells, and the oil/gas companies pumping god knows what down there insist it isn't their fault. How do you figure out who to sue? When you can't even force the companies to tell you what they're pumping down, how can you prove that what you're pumping up came from them and not some long closed auto shop that for all anyone knows dumped barrels of whatever in the yard decades ago and it just now got down to the water table?
Why does the government have to provide water to the people of Dimock, PA? Oh wait, that's right, the government said that Cabot didn't have to fix the problem, they just had to give them some water for a few years. Imagine, if only the government hadn't been there to make Cabot do anything at all!
The air? How would you even begin to figure out who caused the pollution that gave you lung cancer? It's bad enough WITH government "regulation" where companies have to "self-report" their "accidental" benzene releases.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Such a shame wasting all of that pig blood. They could have made lovely black pudding.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
When you're the owner of a slaughterhouse, turning a river red with blood is pollution. When your name is Moses, it's Divine Judgement.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
But they can sue if the plant increases the pollution.
Only if it knocks on the door and says "Hi! I'm increased pollution from the coal plant next door".
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Heads are gonna roll. They dumped pig blood in a river. Pig blood that could have been sold to somebody! That is literally money down the drain. Someone's neck is going to be on the chopping block for sure.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
It's really bloody obvious and simple. That minuscule damage and similarly small redress each company/person must pay is most certainly insufficient to motivate them to stop polluting. This of course assumes that someone was even able to successfully wage a successful legal action against them in the first place. The expense of which would generally out weight the amount won in compensation. The only way in which to prevent damaging pollution is to make that pollution illegal and provide a reasonable means by which to monitor for violators. Libertarians call it "regulation" and big-brother. The reality is that it is but an extension of the framework that deals other acts considered immoral by society like theft, murder, rape, etc..
Just because government is corruptible, just because government doesn't always get it right doesn't mean that you throw the baby out with the bath water. You think corporations run roughshod over citizens now with government being the instrument they puppet to get their way. What do you think will happen when there is no one to stand in the way but Mr. Joe Public, and his $40,000/year income from which he must pay for a lawyer?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Now that he's made himself an enemy.
Pretty sure there's a movie in there somewhere.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well for one thing under a pure libertarian model everyone is armed and if enough people are mad they go in guns a blazin'
Hypothetically speaking.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sue for what? Can I sue if someone expels their exhaust (CO2) onto my property? How about if they distribute it on their property, and the wind carries it to mine? Do I get to determine what I don't want on my property and force them to obey (i.e. no cigarette smoking where I can smell it)? Or do I have to run my rights past a panel of libertarians to determine whether I'm worthy of having my rights doled out by them to stop the person polluting? In general, libertarianism fails completely when it comes to pollution, especially if those most affected have no nearby land (say someone decides DDT is a good thing to saturate their land in and does so until 1000 miles away in the ocean, the concentrations get high enough to start killing turtle eggs and such. Who can sue? The closest people to the pollution don't care that much and had no loss from the DDT runoff, and the turtles don't own land, so under libertarianism, they have no rights, so who gets to sue? Or is that not pollution in libertarian speak, since another human wasn't identifiably harmed by the DDT initially released?
Learn to love Alaska
My question concerning these types of situations and the whole libertarian "pollution is a civil matter and the polluter is liable for damages" method of dealing with pollution is; What if the polluter does not have the money or assets to clean up the mess they made?
Say I buy a corporation with a plant that handles toxic chemicals. It turns out these chemicals have been leaching into the groundwater for decades. I get sued by the property owners all around me and all the people that draw off that groundwater. I go to court and fight it out. I lose the case, and now owe $5 billion dollars in damages. The corporation files bankruptcy, but that's fine with me, because I walk away scot-free.
So, who ends up on the hook cleaning up the contamination? My corporation went the way of Enron, so it's not me or my corporation. Wouldn't the public then be on the hook for cleaning up the mess? What measures would the public be able to take in order to prevent a similar situation from happening again? Libertarians generally don't want regulations that would prevent this type of behavior before it occurs, so how do we actually prevent something like this from happening? Once it's happened, it's too late. We've all been drinking the poison, bathing in it, washing our clothes in it...
I've been reading about different environmental disasters here in the United States lately, things like Love Canal, Times Beach, Missouri, and the Valley of the Drums, and I wonder how the libertarian principles would have corrected those situations. The Superfund law gives the EPA the power to identify and work towards cleaning these sites up, but most libertarians I talk to think the EPA should be abolished due to the whole "regulations" thing. That being said, if we get rid of the EPA, how would sites like this be handled, and who would pay for it?
I'm not trying to be facetious; this is an honest question, because, while I totally agree with some tenets of libertarianism, such as legalization of drugs and ending the nation-building all over the world bullshit, I don't see how the free market alone could deal with situations like these. These problems, due to their severity, seem to extend beyond the ability of any one private entity to deal with. The people living around these areas certainly couldn't have done anything about it, these sites cost billions to clean up, and there's over a thousand Superfund sites in the U.S., as of November, 2010.
There's no evidence of this.
Take one look at how they want to treat their employees and you get to see exactly how little they care about others. While wrapping up in the flag is a reasonable attempt at hiding a colonial English Aristocrat slaveowner's philosophy it doesn't fool everybody. Washington fought against the attitude that is called "Libertarian" today.
The only way in which to prevent damaging pollution is to make that pollution illegal and provide a reasonable means by which to monitor for violators.
And what on earth makes you think that this is simple? There are infinite ways to pollute infinite variety of things, and in many cases it is not even clear how or if at all harmful that pollution is. So how much should a fine be for a company that dumps blood into a river? What if they didn't dump blood but coffee? Should it be more or less? Should a company be fined more if an accident at a factory releases 100 cu.ft. of Hydrocyanic Acid than if it releases a million cu.ft of methane? Can you imagine the magnitude of all that regulation and all the potential for mistakes, injustice and corruption?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Dude, China, communist? Sorry it's free market there, for quite a while. Totalitarian regime, sure, but in communism there is no private ownership of much of anything (a la Cuba). Buddy of mine just spend 2 years over there helping set up an American company to open plants there. It's complex, but essentially they had to buy stock in an existing Chinese (privately owned) company, and after a while were allowed to buy it completely. Sure, there were some tight regulations regarding the transfer of money and who owned what throughout the course of the buyout, but they were private businesses, doing business. China isn't very communist
I got nuthin
What if your "damage" is having to travel 2 miles to a cleaner portion of the stream to swim/fish? The damage to individuals is small. The "potential" damage is insanely massive and not collectable in court. Say mad cow was in the blood, and that flows 200 miles and a cow there drinks it and there's a mad cow breakout in the US 7 years later and 100s or 1000s of ranchers lose milllions from the damage to the exports? It would be impossible to track it back to this. So there is no way to sue pollution out of existance. In many cases, it's cheaper to pollute and get sued than to not pollute in the first place. By the time the suits build up and see court, the original owners are long gone after an IPO and such, so it's owned by people with no knowledge or control over the pollution issue. Libertarianism only ever stands a chance when combined with socialism, which drives libertarins crazy.
Learn to love Alaska
Tell me Trout, do you have the money to pay for a crack team of lawyers that are a match for or better than those of the corporation doing the polluting? Do you even have the money to pay for an average lawyer and expenses related to filing a suit against said corporation. What would such a lawsuit do to you financially--especially if you lost and were forced to pay for the legal defense of the corporation? Tell me, how about your job, are they flexible enough with your schedule to let you go off for weeks/months to wage these legal campaigns?
The EPA exists to protect citizens for whom collectively pooled their resources to pay them to ensure they never have damages in the first place. Businesses in exchange are provided a uniform and known standard that permits them to operate with confidence provided they adhere to that standard.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
What are you talking about? A government that raises funds by providing a service wouldn't be any more or less privatized than a government that raises money by force. It would be less immoral though.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Can you pay for the proof of that destruction in court?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
If this is pigs blood, why is this a problem?
Animal cruelty aside, it's a public health hazard. Blood is one of the best substrates available for growing pathogens.
I think you may be confusing libertarianism with anarchism. Libertarian philosophy recognizes the need for a government to provide courts and police. The main purpose of these is to protect you liberty and property rights.
You could sue for anything but you have to prove damages. I may not be a handsome man but if you sue me in court you would have to prove damages to a jury.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Like I mentioned before. I've been a party to lawsuits against many multinational companies. They were all class action lawsuits. A team of lawyers figured out that a big company was screwing a bunch of consumers and figured they could make a lot of money suing the company.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Right. Because you couldn't, of course, hire an agent to work on your behalf in these matters. No, you, of course, spend all your time planting food, husbanding animals, raising barns, and knitting clothes. Because you need stuff to eat, storage, and stuff that'll protect you from the weather to survive. No time to go to the office and hammer out code, or design some new gadget. That's frivolous stuff and anyway, if you wanted a computer you'd mine up all the various ores and minerals you'd need, build all the machinery by hand yourself, and then assemble the finished computer. Because.. yeah.. none of this stuff can be farmed out to other people.
I did a little looking around and can't find any instance of anyone pumping antifreeze up from their well. Perhaps you could provide a citation. When I read the panicked articles about hydraulic fracturing and its possible side affects I notice lots rhetoric and very few facts. If you know anything about geology you will recognize that it would be almost impossible for contamination to reach the ground water being consumed by humans from the depths that gas companies are working at. Their have been instances of faulty drilling techniques being employed (bad casing cement seals) that have allowed drilling fluids to leak up the well bore and into surface waters. On the other hand, there has never been a documented case of fraccing causing contamination to consumable ground water to my knowledge. As for methane in the wells, the gas of any individual well is easily 'fingerprinted' with a gas chromatograph. If the gas coming out of a water well has the same makeup as the gas coming out of a nearby gas well then contamination is a given (doesn't happen very often, can only find about 15 cases out of 10s of thousands of gas and oil wells and it is usually pinned on faulty cement around well casing not fraccing). Methane is a naturally occurring substance (from decomposition) and is present to some extent in almost all water wells. Sometimes people aren't even aware of its presence until something makes them think to look (such as a gas company deciding to drill a well near their home).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
what's your point? it's hard, it's not perfect, so let's not even try? do you have the faintest idea how many ways there are to kill, steal or defraud?
Well in all disasters you mention there already were regulations in place that you claim "prevent" disasters and yet they didn't. The question can equally well be asked the other way, how does the government regulation solve that problem?
To effectively prevent those disasters laws have to be written regulating just about every aspect of every industry. Even with enough environmental regulation to fill a large building that we have now, I can easily find a dozen ways to pollute that are perfectly legal and another dozen ways that are not but nobody would know that since nobody can really understand the enormous maze of complex regulations that are nevertheless very far from complete.
Like I said in another thread, what exactly is the fine for a company that dumps blood into a river? If there is such a thing, then is there one for coffee? How about soda? Is the fine more for dumping a hundred tons of Coke into a river than a hundred tons of blood, or a hundred liters of sulfuric acid?
In addition to enormous complexity, regulating every industry introduces a whole bunch of other problems:
Since the legislators cannot possibly understand all these issues, typical procedure is that industry groups themselves write anti-pollution legislation which then they lobby to pass into law. Industry writes legislation specifically to reduce potential tort liability which otherwise might give them greater incentive to behave than the regulation itself. The regulation gets written by the large players with the most lobbying power in order to increase costs to their smaller competitors (for example 2 bathrooms being mandatory for any food production, unnecessarily introducing 1000s of dollars extra costs for any say small marmalade maker in a normal small warehouse with one bathroom). Also, the regulation incentivizes companies to just barely meet the minimum standards, which they themselves set. Also, it impedes innovation, often goes too far and introduces unnecessary extra costs to business which reduces competitiveness internationally (in China they don't give a shit about pollution), harms job creation etc etc.
It is a difficult problem and it is not at all clear that your solution is any better than mine and yet you act as it obviously is.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Why is America becoming more and more like a 3rd world nation?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If this is pigs blood, why is this a problem? This is wholly natural material; indeed normally you'd make fertilizer out of this so it would be destined to end up on the landscape anyway. What effect does this have beyond making the downstream waters more nutrient rich for fish and plant life?
Most things are fine in moderation, but at the point where you're dumping enough of it into the river to be seen from a few hundred feet up, you've gone well past "minor issue" into "this is probably causing major problems".
Local concentrations of anything that aren't a normal part of the environment (pigs generally don't bleed themselves into the river, especially not a few hundred at a time) is problematic for the species that live in that environment.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
The exact word he used was "socialism". Chinese heavy industry is typically state owned. Actually, a lot of countries are quite socialist, they just don't say it.
And his point was, state owned industries can be quite environmentally unfriendly, which is true. Just look at what happened to the Aral Sea in the former USSR.
Animal cruelty aside
We all know where delicious bacon comes from, and have to live with that or not.
it's a public health hazard. Blood is one of the best substrates available for growing pathogens.
It's in a stream out in nature. Not in rusting barrels dumped in a ditch somehwere. As I said moving water is inherently cleansing - in fact I'm not sure there's anything that would be better to do with it.
I am totally open to it being a problem. I just would like to see proof, but all I see here in this whole set of responses is the assumption it is bad.
It would not take much blood to color the water to look awful either, so we don't even know what concentration we are talking about here.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There is a good horror/sci-fi/suspense movie here somewhere.
Most things are fine in moderation, but at the point where you're dumping enough of it into the river to be seen from a few hundred feet up, you've gone well past "minor issue" into "this is probably causing major problems".
Man I sure am gad you know exactly what the concentration of blood is!
Have you never seen how much even a drop of blood can color water? What I am wondering is, how much blood are we really talking about here?
I also have seen nothing that states categorically what problems this would cause outside the immediate area outside the plant. I'm not even saying there are none; I just want to see some proof there are any to be had. Way to easy to get freaked out over colored water without all the pertinent information.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Bullwinkle, that trick never works.
How do you know?
We know practical communism does not work, because it's been tried enough times and in enough ways we know failure is the end state every time.
By practical libertarianism - well where has that even been attempted? I am not aware of anywhere in particular that makes that claim.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Privately owned air? Are you stupid, or do you just enjoy pretending that anyone who disagrees with you is stupid? I could see how that would make it easy to dismiss their arguments and pat yourself on the back when you're through.
You can't own an ocean, or the air. Various Libertarian theories of property exist, but none I'm aware of could ever be stretched to such a tyrannical abuse. I personally favor the Mutualist scheme of property, which would actually release vast amounts of officially (as in governmentally) sanctioned private property as patently illegitimate; it certainly would not lock up the fucking air.
The correct Libertarian solution to this sort of problem involves removing the government-imposed limits on liability for incidental and environmental damage, which create the perverse incentives to ignore the damage you're doing in the first place. (This is the opposite of the "tort reform" bullshit that conservatives are fed by their corporate-sponsored talking heads.) Well, if your company can be utterly cleaned out by lawsuits from the townsfolk the very minute they prove you're dumping shit in their water, you damn well better not do it in the first place, huh?
What's more, you'll need insurance out the ass to safeguard yourself if the townsfolk so much as think you're dumping shit in their water. Do you know what the difference is between government inspectors and insurance company inspectors? Government inspectors don't lose their jobs if they're corrupt and let you pollute, in large part because their higher-ups don't have to dig into their own pockets to pay out a colossal sum of money if you do. Insurance companies hate paying out when they don't have to, and so they make sure they hire inspectors who don't play that nicey-nice bullshit that permitted that oil spill to coat the Gulf of Mexico.
Now, provided you're the owner and sole occupant of all the land affected by your pollution, and it never spreads elsewhere, then you won't have to worry about the locals suing you, but your property's resale value will be fucked, and your employees may get sick (lawsuits!), and your insurance company will likely jack up your rates pretty bad unless you clean your shit up, in order to cover the eventuality that your sloppy practices do spread the pollution beyond your property line, so it's still a fairly bad idea. Government oversight doesn't help you here, though, since not only are the inspectors likely to be lazy and/or corrupt, but there's no pressure on the government when there are no voters shouting into phones that their river just caught fire.
It's a big and complicated job that's near impossible to not make a mistake so lets not try. Lets leave the peasants to fend for themselves with corporations free to hurt whoever they feel like because a peasant would have a snowball's chance in hell of being able to afford justice in court. Brilliant, simply brilliant.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
That might be move believable if we didn't have countless counterexamples of towns with most of their businesses with "NO COLOUREDS" in their windows.
Of course, if it wern't a concern, the legislation wouldn't be necessary and would be just like a law saying that people need to breathe. :)
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
What if a team of lawyers doesn't figure they can make a lot of money? Not every offender can be matched in such an easy straight line to specific damages to specific parties. Link a specific polluter of the drinking water to a person's cancer that showed up 10, 20 years later. Even if you could, perhaps the company is no longer in business. But why should they have to be exposed in the first place why not regulate and enforce those standards to prevent the pollution that led to the person's cancer. Even if the person wins a major settlement, (while battling cancer) that money isn't going to make things right. They still have cancer.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
In general legally obtained evidence provided by someone not acting as an agent of the government is admissible without a warrant. Think tv footage of an incident or cctv footage. If your neighbor can view it from their property without violating any laws then them reporting it to the police is a ok. The police will generally use that information to obtain a warrant to seize further physical evidence but that isn't strictly necessary if they can prove their case without it.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Oceans are pretty big, and an ocean wouldn't be owned by a single entity, any more than a whole continent is (I'm not counting governments, I mean property owners). Furthermore, certain aspects of areas might be owned: shipping rights, fishing rights, mining rights. If an adjoiner's polluted water is killing fish in the area where I have fishing rights, I sue him.
Food is valuable, and fish is high quality food. The economic power of a large, well-organized fishing company should be enough to force a polluter to behave better.
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Well, two of those disasters I mentioned, Love Canal and Valley of the Drums, were what led to the Superfund bill that gave the EPA the authority to deal with those issues. Prior to that it was pretty much up in the air, and the severity of those disasters and the problems in dealing with those issues were the driving motivations for that bill. The third, Times Beach, was an ongoing case that occurred before the Superfund bill but was not dealt with until after.
At any rate, it seems to me that there have not been any disasters near the scope of the three cases I mentioned since that time (outside of some oil spills, but there are regulations in place dealing with cleanup). Not to say that there hasn't been pollution or environmental issues, obviously, but most companies aren't throwing drums of toxic waste around, either. Maybe they're related, maybe they're not.
I'll grant that regulating industry isn't as easy as allowing the justice system to just react on a case by case basis individually, but that solution has it's problems as well. For instance, what about people of limited means that can't necessarily afford to shoulder the burden of suing a multibillion dollar company in civil court? It's not like we're talking one homeowner suing his neighbor. Simply being a large enough company and having the resources to drag a court case out for years and years would mean that the average Joe is going to have a hard time fighting this case. After all, it's a civil matter, so you've pretty much got to hope there's a lawyer out there willing to take your case for a cut of the potential settlement. Depending on the resources of the Defendant, many lawyers would probably elect not to take the case at all based purely on the fact that they do not want to invest the time and energy into a case that they may possibly lose. It seems to me that this would ultimately have a sort of chilling effect on these lawsuits being brought to court at all.
What about the resultant complexity of 50 different states worth of legal precedent in lieu of a federal regulation? If I win a case in Florida against a company that polluted the groundwater with benzene, does that mean that a company in Texas can technically dump benzene since the precedent only applies in Florida state law? Are we going to have to basically litigate every possible type of pollution in all 50 states to replace the EPA? And how does that deal with pollutants that cross state lines? Say in Texas you can dump benzene, benzene travels down river and ends up in Oklahoma, where dumping benzene is illegal. Am I going to jail? Am I liable for the pollution in Oklahoma if it originated in Texas where the law hadn't gotten around to ruling on whether dumping benzene was a liability to me? Or is Oklahoma going to have to sue Texas itself, who in turn will then have to sue me?
As for encouraging lobbying, I consider that a non-issue as I think that direct lobbying should be totally prohibited anyway. It's nothing but bribery with another name. Yeah, I know, anyone can petition the government, yadda yadda yadda....I don't believe that our Founding Father's would have intended for the law to allow people to give our representatives cash rewards in exchange for voting a certain way. It certainly doesn't seem like an idea they would have supported based on what I've read of some of their writings, but I admit that I do not know for certain, obviously. Either way, I find it abhorrent.
I also consider the China argument a non-issue as well. If they wish to live in a polluted hell-hole that is their right (although I suspect the vast majority of Chinese citizens aren't given the choice in the first place, so there's that), but it seems to me that most people here don't want that, and we have a choice. Is the economy more important than clean air, water, and earth? I admit, there may be some regulations that are considered a little extreme, and I fully support going through regulations line by line and getting rid of the stupid shi
No, that's not the only way, it might even not be the best way. Another way is an angry mob lynching the offender and burning down his business. Another way is buying surrounding property and preventing access to the offending business. Another way is to buy out the offending business and run it properly. Another way is to identify everyone who works at the offending company, ostracize them and insult them at every opportunity, refuse to sell them food. Another way is to provide similar pressures to their customers or suppliers. Another way is to get the local power company to shut off power. Another way is to provide superior competition to the business, and run them into bankruptcy. Another way is to write them lot's of letters saying "Pollution is wasteful. Here's a better way to run your business." Another way is to get hired by the business and fix it from within.
See? Lot's of other ways.
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Which means those lawyers aren't going to be interested in cleaning up your neighborhood. But that's okay, because the market has spoken.
Small claims court is where the individual gains an advantage. Lawyers are to some degree forbidden and "loser pays legal fees" doesn't apply and couldn't be overwhelming if it did. A thousand people each suing in small claims court inflicts "death by 1000 cuts" on the violator. And if you can't drum up a flurry of people to sue the violator, then perhaps the seriousness of the problem exists only between your ears.
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Small claims is just that "small" as in usually capped somewhere around $5000. How is that going to pay for medical bills, replace a house, etc.. But beyond that and even if you could round up a thousand others. You're still talking in the low millions and hardly anything that would make a dent in profits let along hurt the company enough to make them care to spend the money necessary to mend their ways. Either way, why should remediation be where things are addressed? Why should we not be trying to prevent the harm in the first place? You know "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" type thing... Personally I'd rather my rivers not smell of refuse and burn in flames. I'd rather not get cancer from my drinking water, and asthma from the air I breath even if I can win millions in court.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
All of that doesn't matter if it takes 10 years for the problem to be detected, proven, and lain at your door. By that time you can make out like a bandit, and wind up living off an untouchable multi-million dollar bank account sunning yourself in the Caymans or Barbados.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Really, you know that many well-organized fishing companies with deep-enough pockets to take on BP in a decade-long lawsuit with multi-million dollar lawyer's fees when their source of income just got wiped out?
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
In any case, isn't it a bit late, after you've got cancer and your kids were born with only one eye?
But no, prevention just sounds so ... unfree, doesn't it...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Maybe I could buy the space that the planet is going to pass through..? Then I'd temporarily own everything on the planet, or at least be due some rent.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I'm willing to bet its a boost to the local eco system than a pollutant.
All those crazy bacteria that kill people probably die off relatively quick.
Thoughts?
Blood my friend is a bio-hazard. If those pigs had accidentally been infected with something (and if the handling of these animals is reflected by the way their wastes are being handled the sky really is the limit here), then that pathogenic waste just hit a couple million people. The reason that the laws are not being enforced is that corporations have lobbied our representatives to GUT agencies involved with regulation and a means to cut government spending, so now we have supermarkets selling rotten food because theirs only one government inspector for an entire national region. You may be right about people being clever about polluting, to that I would simply say, take the economic incentive to pollute out of the equation. Make the cost of poisoning air, water or employees so gawd aweful that no sane executive would even consider doing it.
People from the US, even in the south, don't know how to prepare, cook and eat a cow. /That's not blood. That's wasted Morcilla. //http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pudding ///It's absolutely delicious, and would have never been wasted like that in here (Argentina)
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
It's still not a fair comparison. China is currently going through its industrial revolution - it's polluting in the same way western capitalist countries polluted during their industrial revolutions (okay it's magnified by the larger population and the fact that industry can now do this on a much bigger scale, but neither of those things are due to their type of government). A fairer comparison would be, say, one of the socialist European countries (e.g. France for the time being, I guess) and capitalist USA, where the USA is hands down the worst polluter.
By that definition there's no such thing as a free market. Every nation on earth has at least some tricks up their sleeves to give their own native companies an edge over countries from competing nations.
We see in practice that this sort of damage is extremely difficult to prove, takes years to resolve in court, and is too easily written off as part of the 'cost of doing business' in most cases. In the meantime the damage is still being done to the environment and to the health of the people living in it. In West Virginia, many people affected by the coal industry are dying before they see any resolution in court. If you have acid rain falling on your head, how do you know which of the thousands of factories are responsible? Does everyone affected by the acid rain have to sew every factory operator. In such a system, the only people who win are the lawyers.
What's needed is a system that prevents the damage from being done in the first place. You could certainly argue that court awarded damages could be made high enough to deter bad practices, but that would just encourage frivolous lawsuits and every more acrimony about "environmental activists" undermining profits.
Just to play devil's advocate, if Libertarians really believe the courts could address environmental abuse, why aren't they supporting reforms to the existing court system? It seems to me that every time an issue like this comes up they're almost invariably on the side of pollutersm railing against 'activist judges' and 'environMENTALists.' They give me little hope that such a system would work any better in the great Libertarian utopia.
I'd like to offer an example of responsible environmental protection. I went on a whale watching cruise out of Boston a couple years back and they mentioned that shipping lanes had recently been rerouted to bypass whale feeding areas. Research showed that the whales only gather in certain areas. Rerouting the shipping lanes is yet another case of 'big' government and environmentalists interfering in business, but the fact is that fewer ships hitting whales means less damage to vessels and fewer disruptions to shipping. It's a win-win: safer whales and smoother more effective business operations. This sort of win-win arrangement could never have happened if someone had to go to the courts and try to prove damage. Who's the victim that could even present the lawsuit in this case? Businesses would never make the change on their own - even if the shipping lanes were managed privately - because no company or trade association would ever justify the cost of an "environmental study" to determine the best routes. Maybe they'd do it to pay lip service to good stewardships or as part of a "green" pr campaign, but never because they actually intend to do it properly or take the results seriously.
The fact is that for many years the US had a very Libertarian approach to the environment and many other areas. Regulation and other government interferance only came about because under those laissez-faire policies we had the biggest abuse of the environment the Nation has ever seen. The existing systems have done far better and the question should be how to make them better, not whether or not we should return to an era of policies that clearly didn't work. In some cases, the current system has motivated individual landowners to implement environmental solutions themselves. There was a case a while back of ranchers setting up turtle crossings under roads to keep the government from stepping in and marking the lands as protected. If individuals can solve the problem better than the government - show what they've done and allow independent confirmation of the results - then so much the better for everyone. You can't tell me though that the same results would have been acheived with a glut of lawsuits and fines.
In the libertarian theory unused property comes into ownership through homesteading which basically mean you have to start using unused land. The same theory exists with air/water pollution, noise, and radio waves.
So let me get this straight, if I use ALL of the available radio spectrum before anyone else has a chance, by default I will have the right to use it as I see fit and no one can do anything about it?
And you don't see any problems with this "first come, first serve, fuck everyone else" philosophy?
Eat the rich.
Its obvious we are more than willing to create it for them. Ratting out people who offend you is a story as old as history, the problem being is that you can find someone who will take offense for any action you can imagine.
Evolution in Action
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I like stories like these. They remind me of why we need the FDA and other regulatory bodies to keep corporations and companies from polluting our water and food (if they let the blood drain like that, who the fuck knows what they do with the pork products they make there?) This sorta reminds me of that story a few months back where McDonalds got rid of their egg producer after finding out that a whistleblower shot all of those videos of the facilities that produce the eggs. Either way, who knows how long this has been happening at that place? Maybe their storage been sprung a leak, but I seriously doubt it. ps, remind me not to eat any pork products from Texas in the next few months :D
How did they take money out if the companies didn't do anything out of line? If it's a frivolous lawsuit without real grounds doesn't the person who instigates get stuck with the costs? If you think you have a real case (i.e. the loss of $600) then my understanding is that you can always opt out of the class action and bring your own private action.
If songbirds and bats can't afford to hire lawyers individually, they'd have to get together and raise a class action, obviously.
It's kind of a side note, but according to TFA...
So, people were there within 20 minutes, but it took two months to investigate. What exactly took two months? Red tape?
I'm not sure how winding that creek is, but I could see it possibly taking two hours, not two months.
Yes. If you managed to set up transmitters that were used for something that covered the entire country in every frequency before anyone else one else was able to do it you could own it all. Or more likely you would set up a transmitter in a city to provide a service such as a radio station and you would own that frequency for the range of your signal. It would protect you fom someone operating on the same frequency where it would interfere with your transmitter.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
What a brilliant idea! We could all get together and pay a small fee for a group of people to go after those polluters. It needs a good name though... How about the Environmental Protection Agency? That sounds like a good name. And we could pay for it out of our tax dollars so there are no free riders! Perfect!
It depends on what you mean by "isn't very communist." In the 90s they were calling it "communism with Chinese characteristics." I'd say, based on my time there and my continuing reading on China, that it's much more communist than not. But "communist" and "socialist" are thrown around so much in English-language media that they have almost no meaning anymore.
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For a better view, search Columbia Packing Company using Bing Maps in "Bird's Eye View". It shows the creek in better detail than Google, but no visible blood.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
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The EPA exists to protect businesses from lawsuits.
No. Environmental services companies exist to protect businesses from lawsuits caused by EPA noncompliance. In addition, the EPA is yet another underfunded government regulatory agency, so they don't have the resources to patrol the discharges of every industrial and commercial company in the area (but they did sell them the permit, if they have one).
The legal limit just protects them from the EPA. If someone suffered harm from the discharge, the harmed could sue. I would expect a reasonable judge would get the company for all they're worth. Most people avoid doing things that would be obviously bad for them so people swimming in concentrated industrial discharge are few or already earned a darwin award.
So if libertarians had their way, Gamber's ruin would cause a greater imbalance in the distribution of wealth: the people with fewer resources would not have the government (EPA) to protect them, and the people with more resources could buy people that can fix their problems.
...but there's no pressure on the government when there are no voters shouting into phones that their river just caught fire.
though it may take a few occurrences before people take notice ... e.g. the Cuyahoga River ...
So if I use my control over the radio waves to broadcast nothing but random gibberish and nothing of any value whatsoever, that's perfectly fine? (Not that different from radio stations today, I admit)
So if I happen to cause interference to something susceptible to radio waves, that's perfectly fine if I was there first? And there would be nothing anyone could do about it except leave?
And you don't see how this favors the rich and wealthy to a ridiculous degree?
Never mind radio waves, let's say I set up a factory that pollutes to an insane degree, but creates all the fancy technological gubbins that people crave, iPhones and flat screen televisions and whatnot. Products which I sell at half the price of the competition because I don't have to worry about regulations or the environment.
Who's going to fight for the animals and the environment? Can birds band together and form class-action lawsuits?
Eat the rich.
The monied and powerful would just hang abusive contracts on everything. You'd need to sign a multipage contract in very small print just to walk into a grocery store or buy gasoline. By the time they got done, anybody who isn't rich and powerful will have had to sign most their ability to seek recourse away just to go about everyday life.
1) Somebody owns it, if it's the company itself you may not be allowed to fish there anyway.
2) Lower fish population everywhere makes it more peoples' problem, you can form a class.
3) Lack of corporate protection means that liability extends to the owners
4) All polluters are liable, no damage caps and no allowable levels like we have now
5) I don't agree with it, it's just how the libertarians want to handle it.
6) Libertarians (honest ones) like lawsuits, though most libertarian identified people do not, I think it's interesting.
The legal system is supposed to take-up where regulation does not exist (in libertarianism), I think that is even less efficient than government regulation (slower, prevention is the best medicine, and even people have limits to their liability in accumulated wealth.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
So the libertarians would entitle the victim to "compensation?" What about regulation to prevent the crap in the first place?
I want a government that will protect me from noxious substances.
Thanks, and notice i got modded down for daring to go against libertarian groupthink that "the free hand will save us!" but if any of them would bother to read their history they would know that the Chinese leadership looked upon Stalin as one of the greatest "leaders" you could possibly have and when he died and they had De-Stalinization and the cutting down of his cult of personality that was a large reason for the Sino/Soviet split since the leaders of China modeled themselves after Comrade Stalin. This is also why traditionally the NK government and China has gotten along because they too in "dear leader' modeled themselves after Stalin, and Stalin was about as far from worker control as one could possibly get and in fact executed anybody who dared to point out that Stalinism was nothing like Leninism/Marxism as envisioned by those two groups.
While I agree that a lot of what is happening to China, India, and the entire BRIC block can be seen as simply catching up to the west there are sadly those that still believe the Cold War propaganda that these countries are communist when nothing could be further from the truth. They are totalitarian regimes no different than any other dictator run country, some are run "well" as far as output like China, some are run poorly like Zimbabwe under Mugabe, but they have more in common with each other than the worker controlled system dreamed of by Marx and Lenin. No intention to Godwin but it would be like saying Germany in the 40s was socialist since they had that in their name, or that NK right now is democratic since that is in the countries title. Just because a country calls themself something doesn't make that true, anymore than the USA is capitalist when i'd say its more of an oligarchy.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Dude, are you reading what you are writing? The result of what you are describing would be anything BUT a clenaer environment. "Poluting is OK until somebody notices" is a terrible idea, many contaminates aren't noticable without testing equipment yet can still cause harm to humans. The point of the EPA is to protect people BEFORE they get hurt. Most individuals don't have the means to go around testing the environment to see if a company is screwing with the air/water/food/etc, hense we have an agency that does this for us before it ever becomes a problem. The only thing you would be doing with that kind of thinking is teaching companies to hide their garbage.
Most Eastern US states use some form of riparian law, which is what you are referring to. Groundwater is public property and may not be owned by individuals, although ownership and regulatory powers are split by the high and low water marks (local cops have police rights between those two points in some cases, go figure). In my state I personally can own the land under my creek because it's not a navigable watercourse, my property line extends completely past it, and I'm living in one of the original 13 colonies. I cannot own the water itself and I cannot appreciably change the character of the water except by using it to nourish animals living physically on my land or by harnessing it for industrial power (which changes the speed and temperature by withdrawing energy). I can dump blood in it if I want, but not enough to turn it red or make it taste funny on anyone else's property.
However, most Western US states are decidedly NOT using Eastern-style riparian law, and people literally murder each other over ownership of "water rights" - which are assigned on a first-come first-serve basis by the government, in a way that is intended to favor wealthy landowners and large corporations, because in the USA capital investment is required to efficiently exploit scarce resources, and water is a scarce resource in the western US. In the West you absolutely can withdraw water and use it up if you own the right to do so by "prior apportionment".
Wikipedia has a somewhat half-assed discussion here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riparian_water_rights#United_States
Sorry about the run-on sentences.
I can't see much detail in that poor photograph. Need more images of this river of blood. There should be a large drain which spews shit and bones into a pink mire from which ghastly fumes and vapors emanate. Mordor looks like a nice vacation spot compared to a pig farm.
I know this may be falme bait but it is true. The "Free Market", if such a beast can ever exist[*] cannot solve this problem because there is no incentive to solve it. It's cheaper to flaunt the law, endanger people's health, and the health of the environment.
[*] There is debate among Economists on this topic.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Actually, it's worse than that. The government outsiders who know most about fighting abuse in any industry are the industry insiders themselves. Likewise, the industry outsiders who know most about working in an industry are the government regulatory insiders.
As a result, employees shift back and forth all the time between the two, especially between the worst offenders and the government. After that, crony capitalism becomes a natural result.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/et-tu-minnesota-another-law-proposes-making-factory-farm-photography-illegal.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/us/14video.html
http://animalrights.about.com/b/2011/03/23/bills-to-ban-undercover-factory-farming-videos-moving-ahead-in-iowa-and-florida.htm
http://www.dvafoto.com/2011/03/two-us-states-move-to-outlaw-unauthorized-photos-of-farming-operations/
http://www.silha.umn.edu/news/Summer2011/StatesConsiderBanningUndercoverRecordingatAgriculturalOperations.html
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/03/in-the-past-decade-modern/
Then you wake up and realize that Libertarianism is great in theory, but completely untenable in the real world.
Kind of like communism, democracy, socialism -- in truth, all 'styles' of government end up being a hybrid that can function In The Real World. Even in America, the bastion of democracy, we really live in a semi-socialist republic, but the basic ideals are /based/ on democracy.
LIbertarianism is no different -- it would not be a /pure/ libertarian government, but rather a government based on the tenant that the rules apply to everyone, and that individuals still have rights.
This is especially true of the SEC and Wall Street. They regularly trade people back and forth, and even hobnob socially, in the open. This would be akin to DEA agents and high ranking Cartel members getting together, but for some reason it's condoned at our highest levels. Well, I shouldn't say "for some reason" since we all know what the reason is, it's to rob us fucking blind.
Here is a great article that details the close relationships between the SEC and Wall Street. If you can read this and not want to go down there and get your pound of flesh out of these cocksuckers, you're a far better man than I...
even people have limits to their liability in accumulated wealth.
The core idea of libertarianism is that those with wealth have more rights. The more you have, the more any individual act may harm you, so you get to sue for more (in addition to having more resources to sue). And you have two classes of people in libertarian-land, those who own land and live on the land they own, and those who don't own land, and the rights of them differ greatly. Like you pointed out to libertariansm requiring lots of active lawsuits to keep the peace, but most self-identified libertarians being against that, I find that as well with the issue of rights being tied to wealth. They push ideas that give more rights to the rich land owners while claiming "more fair" and such.
Learn to love Alaska
No you're not. Your political interest is in it /not/ being a problem
Where did you get that from? I am not involved at all in the meat industry. I don't live near the plant.
I am truly open to finding out, is this a problem or not. But I am a REAL environmentalist. That means complaining about things that are REAL ISSUES. Why waste anger and shouting on something if it's not actually a problem? While you are yelling about this someone else is ACTUALLY polluting somewhere.
So either show me one way or the other this is an actual issue, or get off your high horse when all you are doing is expressing outrage to no end or purpose.
If you truly care for the environment try to learn what actually works to help as opposed to whining at everything that looks slightly wrong. Learn to think before you act, and you'll have far greater impact.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Our current system does by regulation, where regulation attempts to force internalization of external costs. But when we try for other things, like CO2, people rant about internalizing costs causing bad stuff.
Learn to love Alaska
and the courts aren't burdened enough?
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