Quote:
Originally Posted by CountryBoy1981
You have too much faith/love for the government. How do you ever make it out of your front door without asking the government's permission?
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No, I realize that environmental regulations are necessary. I don't understand why you feel the need to make a straw man argument and characterize everyone who realizes that as "government lovers." Besides, who else is going to protect us from these sorts of things? The industry? No, polluting is cheaper for them than making sure everything is clean. So if there are no regulations, they WILL pollute. This is exactly what is happening in countries like China, Mexico, and Indonesia right now. What do these countries all have in common? A lack of proper regulation, of course. Regulation is here to protect us, and I don't think you get that.
You seem to think that the free market is the solution to everything. Yes, the free market is a very efficient system (and probably the best we have right now), but it has really deep flaws of it. The problem of externalities such as pollution is probably one of those biggest problems. An externality is a good or bad (usually bad) side effect that arises from market transactions (i.e. a chemical plant that dumps their waste into a river may pollute the drinking water of a town downstream). And regulations are here to deal with that. The [relatively] clean and healthy environment of the United States that we all take for granted was brought to you by environmental regulations. I'm not sure why it's so difficult for you to wrap your head around that.