Damnocrat vs. Repug - by Andy Rooney

[HolyWarrior]

Oh, Timber...I think you'll be interested in seeing this

CBS commentator Andy Rooney has led the way:

"I have not been a supporter of his. I did not vote for him. And I was very critical of what he did here," Rooney told radio host Don Imus Thursday morning. "And I must say that fortunately, he's president and I'm not," the former Stars and Stripes correspondent confessed. "It appears as though he did the right thing and I didn't think he was doing the right thing. "And, if he's listening ..." Rooney added, before trailing off into laughter.

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[Thorfinn]

I'll bite. Why is it any of the government's business what or how much I throw away?

I understand that the Constitution is worth little more than a roll of toilet paper these days, but we could at least pretend it has some bearing on government...

Contrary to what you hear from the media, or possibly in your high school civics class, government cannot do a single thing for the economy. Government produces nothing but bureaucracy, and there is precious little demand for that. It's not like people would head down to the grocery store to stock up on red tape or anything. If government operated with no overhead costs, i.e., no civil servant payroll, no buildings, no supplies, etc., they could still, at best, only decide which businesses or people will benefit at the expense of others. Economically speaking, the only function they serve is shifting money from one place to another.

No, government cannot help the economy, no matter what they do. Not even with well-intentioned Keynsian-style "pump priming". They have no accelerator pedal -- their only control over the economy is how hard they apply the brakes. It is not a question of how the government can help the economy, but how to best minimize the damage they do.

And as any economist would agree, (until you start citing specifics, like "the rich" or "the poor") the best way to foster capital growth and productivity increases is to take less from the people or businesses that are actually producing things, and let them invest in capital improvements.

[ 04-16-2003, 09:02 AM: Message edited by: Thorfinn ]

[Timber Loftis]

Holy Warrior, thanks for the sites.

Originally posted by Thorfinn: I'll bite. Why is it any of the government's business what or how much I throw away?

Because one of the few central roles of government is to keep you from harming your fellow citizens and stealing from them. How much you throw away = how much clean land/air you take from the rest of us. Just as you should pay for the gas to run your power plant or the metal to make your widgets, you should also pay for the clean air, water, and land you use in making a tidy profit. Real cost accounting. Asking us to ignore the fact you do not pay for some of your inputs is asking us to subsidize you - it is a form of corporate welfare. We respectfully refuse, and ask that you learn to be truly "efficient" or die in the market - is that not what you business-mongers preach? No one gets a free ride, least of all a fat cat.

I understand that the Constitution is worth little more than a roll of toilet paper these days, but we could at least pretend it has some bearing on government...

Don't see how this relates. [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img] What in it realtes to the government?

Contrary to what you hear from the media, or possibly in your high school civics class, government cannot do a single thing for the economy. Government produces nothing but bureaucracy, and there is precious little demand for that. It's not like people would head down to the grocery store to stock up on red tape or anything. If government operated with no overhead costs, i.e., no civil servant payroll, no buildings, no supplies, etc., they could still, at best, only decide which businesses or people will benefit at the expense of others. Economically speaking, the only function they serve is shifting money from one place to another.

Actually, the economic function government serves - and IMO the *only* one it should serve - is to address market externalities. If there were no central body collecting a buck from each of us to buy tanks, we would have no national defense. Our collective conscious wouldn't just cough it up. Same with roads. Classic externalities. The market model is not perfect - and any economist will admit it has externalities.

No, government cannot help the economy, no matter what they do. Not even with well-intentioned Keynsian-style "pump priming". They have no accelerator pedal -- their only control over the economy is how hard they apply the brakes. It is not a question of how the government can help the economy, but how to best minimize the damage they do.

Wrong, but also irrelevant. Look, the government's function is not to help the economy (IMO - not addressing reality here), it is to address the things we would not have if the raw marketplace was the only thing around. So, it's purpose is neither helping nor hurting the economy - this is a very important thing to realize.

HOwever, because it collects and pools our money, it is a market force. So, how this thing we use to address externalities (the Gov.) *affects* the market should be considered when running this thing (the Gov.). As Keynes pointed out, if the "money collector" stops collecting as much, or even re-injects some of the previously-collected money back into the economy, it will spur growth a bit -- that's your postulate quoted below, which is correct. This is why the "money collector" is in fact a throttle and a brake.

However, the problem with Keynes is that while FDR sold the country on the first half of his model (government spending - which *did* in fact eventually drag us out of the depression), our government became so enamoured with spending that it could not act the flip-side other-half theorem of Keynes - to wit, bringing that money back in during the times of prosperity so as to even our keel back out. This is my biggest problem with the government.

I must say that *cough* Clinton is the only president in my lifetime who actually tried to do this - evidenced by the fact he ran the country "in the black" for at least one year. Now, this is a pathetic attempt at evening our keel back out given the 8 years of prosperity he enjoyed, but before him no president had even tried to curtail spending and truly balance the budget. Now, to truly follow Keynes second thesis, the government would pay off ALL debts and get us back to the $0 mark on government expenditures. But, they never will, because they like taking and spending our money. You can't well stop a kid in a candy store.

And as any economist would agree, (until you start citing specifics, like "the rich" or "the poor") the best way to foster capital growth and productivity increases is to take less from the people or businesses that are actually producing things, and let them invest in capital improvements.

We agree here. Believe me, I just coughed up a $4K hairball yesterday. But paying to pollute is NOT having the government take something from you. It's keeping you from taking something from me. Until the government intervened and mandated clean air through command-and-control, one living in LA could not SEE the mountains in the distance. Now you can. There is a clear visible tangible harm that a polluter does to other people - which is steal from them the resources for them to spend *their* money producing *their* things.

Good thoughts. Hope I addressed them. I officially note that nothing in this post addresses Repug/Dam issues, only the polluter pays theory I proposed.

[ 04-16-2003, 10:47 AM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

Well TL, if your gonna go [img]graemlins/offtopic.gif[/img] where better to do it than your own thread oh and thanks for the lesson there..I learned athing or three [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Thorfinn]

How much you throw away = how much clean land/air you take from the rest of us.

Wrong. I took nothing from you. I forced nothing on you. There was a contractual agreement between my trash company and a privately owned landfill. I pay the trash service for some small fraction of the agreement they have with that landfill operator. If the landfill is not done "properly" of course there can be externalities, but that has nothing to do with my use of disposables, but with the landfill owner's choice of disposal technologies.

As for those externalities, that is the job of lawyers -- to keep the government honest. (Actually, that is only part of their job. The role of lawyers is to protect people from government, and protect the people from other lawyers.) As I said before, Coase got his Nobel for his work in showing that in a system with recognized property rights eliminates externalities -- the fat cats have to pay for whatever they "use", and can't just force others to live with whatever level of pollution they have bribed the gov't (i.e., purchased a permit).

Don't see how this relates. What in it realtes to the government?

I'm going to assume that "it" means the trash tax, not the Constitution, since the Constitution should be at least partially relevant to government.

As I read Article I, Section 8, the enumerated powers of Congress, I see no mention of a trash tax. On the other hand, I see no mention of at least 95% of what the government now does. The point is that the Constitution no longer binds the government in chains, as Jefferson explained was the intent. The Constitution anymore is just an anachronism, referred to by the taskmasters occasionally to give the serfs a false sense of control. Though at least the liberals are honest about it -- calling it a "living Constitution" and all...

Actually, the economic function government serves - and IMO the *only* one it should serve - is to address market externalities. If there were no central body collecting a buck from each of us to buy tanks, we would have no national defense. Our collective conscious wouldn't just cough it up. Same with roads. Classic externalities. The market model is not perfect - and any economist will admit it has externalities.

Actually these are called "public goods", not market externalities, two entirely different concepts. And while the argument for public goods seems pretty solid, it is mere conjecture, and is refuted by history in many times and in many cultures.

In Greece, for instance, wealthy citizens would pay for a year's worth of the costs of a trireme. Some of the more middle class people would join together to pay for one, as well. The people with the most property obviously have a higher vested interest in keeping invaders away.

In more recent history, until about the time of the Civil War, American businesses would regularly put up the money for shares in a privateer vessel, and wealthy merchants paid the bulk of the financial costs of the Revolution, to the point of leaving several of them in financial ruin. John Hancock's heavily armed vessels often had a large following of lesser ships, because no sane pirate would dare go after a Hancock ship, and all the rest got the benefit of following in his wake.

Stadia have been traditionally a city's job, since no one would build a stadium for the pleasure of others. Yet more and more, they are being heavily funded by private corporations, just for the right to have their corporate logo 100 feet tall emblazoned on the side of the arena, or have their name on the scoreboard, or for a handful of the skyboxes.

Roads have existed for millenia, and only recently have become the sole duty of government. Private turnpikes still exist, though they suffer under a heavy competitive disadvantage, since the people who travel the turnpikes have to pay not only the toll, but also the federal and state gas taxes, in effect subsidizing the public road system.

And look at charities. The logic of "public good" should apply here, too, right? So these charities should never receive a single contribution?

Clearly there is something wrong with accepting the "public good" argument as fact. Evidently the free rider problem is not as extreme as we have been led to believe...

Tfin: No, government cannot help the economy, no matter what they do. Not even with well-intentioned Keynsian-style "pump priming". They have no accelerator pedal -- their only control over the economy is how hard they apply the brakes. It is not a question of how the government can help the economy, but how to best minimize the damage they do. TL: Wrong, but also irrelevant.

What's that? What exactly can gov't do to improve the economy? What tools does it have at its disposal other than confiscation of profits of businesses that are too efficient? How does it help the economy for gov't to bail out an inefficient business? By definition, they are not providing a product the consuming public wants at a price they are willing to pay. How does it help the economy to in effect veto the conscious decisions people make about what goods and services they want?

Look, the government's function is not to help the economy (IMO - not addressing reality here), it is to address the things we would not have if the raw marketplace was the only thing around.

It seems to me that a fellow Jeffersonian might review the second paragraph of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

Jefferson did not consider the role of government to be to address the things that we would not have if the raw market were the only thing around, but to secure basic rights. Government's role is not to supply things, but to guarantee rights. For starters, they might want to start guaranteeing the rights names in the first 10 Amendments...

Keynes' notion was that you can clip off the tops and bottoms of the so-called "business cycle" by a regimen of deficit spending during the busts and inflation during the booms. You don't cut spending -- you just hold it stable so as not to further disturb the economy, then inflate the dollar enough to pay for the deficit spending through stealth tax effect.

The Japanese tried what you are suggesting -- alternatively cutting spending, then increasing spending to try to balance out the cycles. The problem was that people could predict when the easy money was coming, and when to have a low cash position, or to have cash in foreign markets, and were able to in effect eliminate most of the anticipated "benefits". As a result, the wild swings in spending increased the severity of the crash, and we see where the Japanese are today.

Incidentally the spending idea did not work with FDR. In fact, with the exception of flacks like Krugman, you will be hardpressed to find an economist who thinks that the spending helped at all -- in fact, most are pretty convinced that the spending programs and new taxes actually both deepened the depression and delayed the recovery. The US economy did not recover as a result of FDR, but more in spite of it.

[Timber Loftis]

Thorfinn, I think on most of the things we both stated our positions. I'm sticking to mine generally, though I appreciate the insight into Japanese market practices - it has been a while since I read my Lester Thurow, and so much has happened (or, more precisely, *not* happened) with the Japanese economy since then.

However, I want to narrow the topics, as neither you nor I have time in the day to keep expanding this argument at the rate it's going.

First, the I didn't see the constitution as relative to the discussion at hand, of course it is relevant to the government generally. The constitution is obviously a living document, and if you are going to challenge governments power to tax, spend, or regulate at base, then you are throwing away so much jurisprudence that it is not a worthwhile discussion without a revolution. In short, the commerce clause has been the bootstrap to 90% of governmental action. You may not like it, but there it is.

I said: Because one of the few central roles of government is to keep you from harming your fellow citizens and stealing from them. -and- Look, the government's function is not to help the economy (IMO - not addressing reality here), it is to address the things we would not have if the raw marketplace was the only thing around.

You replied by quoting the Decl. of Ind.: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

Seems to me we generally agree.

Oh, if you don't mind, please explain to one who is not as knowledgable as you on the topic what the difference is exactly between a public good and an externality. Not to be too much like an essay crafter, but can I ask you to cite examples for me?

I said: How much you throw away = how much clean land/air you take from the rest of us.

You said: Wrong. I took nothing from you. I forced nothing on you. There was a contractual agreement between my trash company and a privately owned landfill. I pay the trash service for some small fraction of the agreement they have with that landfill operator. If the landfill is not done "properly" of course there can be externalities, but that has nothing to do with my use of disposables, but with the landfill owner's choice of disposal technologies.

Well, I'm talking pollution generally. You addressed land, only land, and only in the instance of a properly-disposed of amount of trash that NEVER hurts anyone. Okay - fine. Who tells us what is proper, incidently? Do you simply trust every businessperson to know the proper way to dispose of batteries, for instance? What about used oil? (I do know that before it was illegal to do so, the mines in KY would dump it all over the 3-mile entrance roads to keep dust down. And so would I and my dad on our gravel road at home.) And the only rememdy you provide is a lawsuit. Can we not address problems on the front end? Must we always be asses-and-elbows trying to fix problems after the fact?

But, let's look to larger issues, like air quality. You don't own the air, and no one does. Or the water. Or groundwater. All of which are express routes on the list of pathways of pollution. What you throw away there certainly concerns us all.

But, you asked why is it the government's business. Simple transitive properties: It's my business (if it harms me), and the government secures my rights (including the right to be let alone by you), therefore it's the government's business.

I'm just trying to figure out what your point is. You certainly don't advocate an end to the government - and you define its function. If it has any functions at all, it must collect money to perform those functions (however small or large the amount may be - which we can haggle over). Heck, you give my profession so much of the burden to do a lot of what the government does, but that requires courts and judges - which cost money last time I checked.

I proposed an alternative basis on which to collect money - and you tried to shoot it to hell. Since money must be collected in some way, how do we do it? I like the tax waste model because it is a way to fix an externality - the use of a public resource by a private individual for private profit.

Do you agree with my real cost accounting idea? Do you agree that if you must pay for the things you use to make your widget, that it includes the "normal" resource inputs (metal, fuel, etc) as well as the clean air you use up in the process?

[Thorfinn]

You are correct. This is spreading out well beyond the topic. I'll try to limit myself to just responding to the topics you mentioned.

I am well aware of the widespread use of the commerce clause and the elastic clause to justify anything under the sun. Jefferson and Adams both penned essays on the limits of such clauses, though they thought the general welfare clause would be the most abused. In short, their argument was why bother with the rest of the Constitution if the intent was that something peripherally related to general welfare could give the legislature such widespread powers? Why even bother listing out power to spell out bankruptcy rules or weights and measures, which are so intimately related to commerce, if the intent of the commerce clause was broad enough to include it in the first place?

As for the "living Constitution" thing, I assume there is also nothing wrong with having a "living rental lease" or a "living mortgage"? That I may feel free to unilaterally reinterpret them as I see fit? I can't find the quote from O.W. Holmes, but Scalia rather laconically restated Holmes' opposition to the idea of a "living Constitution" as

A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless. -- Justice Antonin Scalia

Market externalities exists anytime the effects of a given transaction are not limited to the transactors. So, for instance, if I do some expensive landscaping to my home, it helps out property values in the neighborhood. This is a market externality, in that my neighbors benefit from my action, yet paid nothing for it. "Public goods" are another type of market externality -- the idea that these goods would be undersupplied without government coersion. Yet considering that volunteer firefighter units and charities exist, and do thir tasks quite well, one should consider carefully the validity of the central premise of the "public good" argument. Pollution is another market externality. Windfalls in general result in market externalities -- if I suddenly come into wealth, I drive up the prices in things I buy, at least locally, and later transactors are forced to pay more or go without. There are several other types of market externalities, but those are the major types I recall off-hand. Anyway, the upshot is that it is unreasonable to single out some externalities and claim that they are unresolvable without government coersion while ignoring the fact that we see hundreds of examples of positive externalities on a daily basis.

And darned right I recommend the lawsuit as a remedy. As I understand it, a large part of the justice system is deterrence -- to make the penalty large enough to keep people from considering harming another or his property. The reason for punitive damages is not simply to redress the wrong, but to prevent one from considering doing it in the future, and to serve as a warning to others who may be considering the same thing. If you know that regardless of how expensive a lawyer you hire, if you pollute my land, you are going to make me whole, you are not going to pollute. It would cost you more to pay for depriving me of the use of my property while you pay for the cleanup and subsequent disposal than it would have to dispose of it in the first place. The fact that fat-cats can hire large attorney firms gives them little fear that they cannot outlast the little guy in court. A large company (or the government, for that matter) can drag a case out forever, until the plaintiff is destitute, and forced to accept some pennies on the dollar settlement. Did you catch that? Lawyers are a source of both postitive and negative market externalities, since the implications of the cases impose costs or grant boons on people outside the transaction.

And as for who decides what is acceptable pollution, each person does. As soon as something leaves his property and enters the property of another, he has infringed upon another's rights to use his own propery as he wants, and if that infringement was unwanted, he will have to make restitution. If a baker goes around to all the neighbors, and they don't mind the smell of bread baking, it is not pollution, since it in no way affects the way the people use their property. If one changes his mind later, the baker may have to change practices to either install scrubbers, run only on days when the complainant is not downwind, put the complainant on the payroll or otherwise compensate him, or even buy him out.

Now, the problem with a waste tax is that you are necessarily going to have some arbitrary determination of the value of any given waste. That is inherently skewed in favor of those fat-cats who can afford to bribe/lobby the most bureaucrats. The simple fact is that a waste tax, while in theory sounding appealing, will be a nightmare to implement and will not have the intended effect. Every April 15, consumers will have to fill out forms revealing how many plastic bags they used that year, how many glass bottles they threw in the trash, with a credit for how much they tossed into the recycling bin. He will have to account for how much junk mail he tossed in the circular file vs. how much he sends out to a recycling facility. And, of course, it will almost certainly still have the exceptions for the wealthy -- emitting megatons of CO2 will get a price break over those emitting mere tons, whether through "buying in bulk" or through fixed costs associated with the paperwork involved in compliance.

You certainly don't advocate an end to the government - and you define its function. If it has any functions at all, it must collect money to perform those functions (however small or large the amount may be - which we can haggle over). Heck, you give my profession so much of the burden to do a lot of what the government does, but that requires courts and judges - which cost money last time I checked.

Let's not be hasty here. I think that 10 men in sheets and carrying guns harassing their non-melanin-challenged neighbors is little different than 10 men in flack-jackets kicking in doors in the dark of night in Miami to drag a frightened 6-year old kid out at gunpoint. I oppose the initiation of force, whether that is purely unilateral, or with the blessing of the voting community. As for why gov't has to provide courts, why? There are private arbitration courts now. They exist even at a significant competitive disadvantage -- government supplied courts are available at well-below cost, i.e., gov't supplied courts are a negative externality, and, as such will be over-utilized, particularly by the wealthy and/or powerful.

Reading the debate surrounding the drafting and adoption of the Constitution, I think there is a reason that the founding fathers did not define the judicial system within the Constitution, with the exception of the Supreme Court. It is clear from the argumentation that many were in favor of non-governmentally-controlled courts, and wanted to leave the decision of exactly how to handle jurisprudence an easy one to change. If the fears of the anti-federalists proved justified, Congress could easily eliminate the whole system, either replacing it, or seeing if the market developed an appropriate system. Congress could change it with a simple majority vote, and not have to go through the hassle of going through the supermajority amendment process.

Sorry. Hope this didn't spread the debate more. I tried hard to keep the same core arguments, expanding the scope only with examples, not new arguments, as far as I can tell.

[EDIT]
Yes, I do agree with your idea of total cost accounting. I just disagree with the implementation.
[/EDIT]

[ 04-17-2003, 01:45 PM: Message edited by: Thorfinn ]

[Timber Loftis]

I don't see how private courts would exist. Nor how they would help anyone but the fat cats. Sorry. Private arbitration courts exist now AS AN ALTERNATIVE to the government courts (expensive litigation) and would not exist without the presence of the government courts.

Article III of the constitution spells out the Supreme Court, AND gives the power to establish lesser courts. From the first days of America, the Circuit Courts were established, named as such because the judges actually "rode the circuit" in their area, holding court in different towns. As the nation grew, the need for more judges to address the needs for more people grew. A "tree" system tier had to be developed.

It seems I did understand externalities - and that public goods are actually a *type* of externality. Thanks for expanding my understanding, and I understand the notion that we may think twice before elevating the importance of one externality over another.

Sorry, but I don't get the reference to force, 10 men in sheets, or Janet Reno's poor execution of Elian's extraction (though under law he absolutely had to be returned to Cuba - they just should have done it before he ever set foot on US soil).

You only limit federal power when you talk about the constitution, btw. States have "general welfare" or "police" power - that is, the ability to make any law addressing the general health & welfare of the population. The limits the constitution places are on how far into that "general welfare" the Feds can venture - the drafters wanted limits on federalism. And, that notion is making a slight resurgance these days - Renqhuist is a hard-core anti-federalist, and is deciding many otherwise arguable issues these days on the notion that "it is up to the state."

But, in the end you're still facing the same problem - whether it's the state or the fed government you're dealing with, the government is still perfectly capable of controlling your life. If it's the state, check the state's constitution to check its limits. I'm not arguing this is a good thing, just stating the obvious.

I humbly ask you, please don't quote Scalia to me again. He is an abject idiot. He claims to be a hardcore textualist, but any case concerning the constitution inevitably comes down to interpreting the words therein - so a judicial interpretation of it is necessarily doing more than simply reading the words. Like any dispute over a document, if the meaning were clear there would be no dispute.

Anyway, I don't have time now, but one day may post 10 or 20 reasons Scalia is an idiot. I will say that, due to the obvious logic in the paragraph I mentioned above, our "textualist" Scalia inevitably writes his opinions this way: 1. Say you will simply read the text. 2. Spend 10 pages doing linguistic gymnastics to pretend you are not "interpreting," rather than simply writing a 1-page interpretation. 3. Decide how you feel like deciding.

As an example, see Smith V. Employment Division, wherein his "textual" interpretation of the "free exercise of religion" clause removed all meaning from the clause, required a constitutional case based on that clause be tied with another to be brought to court (where he read that in the contitution I don't know), and excepted 2 individual instances (those deciding in Yoder and Sherbert v. Verner) just so he could avoid overturning caselaw and get the justices who wrote those opinions on-board with his holding in Smith. Oh, and to beat it all, he created this arbitrary "tied to another right" test that THE VERY CASE HE WAS DECIDING WOULD HAVE PASSED ANYWAY. Like I said, he is an abject idiot.

Now, generally I respect S.Ct. justices, as I repsect my profession. But, I take exception with Scalia and, I'll note, Thomas (when he's wearing his "Scalia's #1 Sock Puppet" hat).

Final note: The beautiful thing about the Constitution is that it *is* a living document. It was drafted to mold to a changing world. It allows for amendments - and thank golly goodness, or blacks and other minorities would still not be "persons." Moreover, it is generally worded to adapt. The copyright provisions apply pretty well to software, but the founding fathers could not have foreseen that. The right to privacy, btw, is not *in* the constitution, but rather has developed through judicial cases finding it as a necessary underlying concept existing inherently in other rights listed in the constitution. Don't ask for just those rights spelled out, lest you find yourself in deep doo-doo.

[ 04-17-2003, 01:33 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

[Timber Loftis]

Dang - forgot to address the waste tax. it can be pay as you go, you wouldn't necessarily need to do an April 15 filing. When I took my garbage to the dump in VT, I could dispose of recycle materials for free, but it cost me $2 per bag I tossed. Businesses developed around this, many offering to pick up and dispose of your garbage for you for a flat monthly rate. In Wisconsin, you pay $2 for your bags, and the state only picks up the state-label bags.

For other types of pollution, tracking is already done. Clean Air Act requires monitoring of emissions for compliance - but that monitoring could be done to base a tax on. CAA requires a fee for tons per year (tpy) of pollutants, anyway, so this is nothing new. Because monitoring is expensive, the tpy is often calculated using an engineering method (usually AP-42) and plugging in the fuel and inputs used to calculate emissions output.

Clean Water Act and effluent discharges work basically the same way. Solid Waste Disposal Act, a/k/a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), requires cradle-to-grave monitoring, via "manifests" (similar to a "bill of lading" in trucking and shipping), of all hazardous substances, and regulates the standards for disposal sites of these substances.

What I'm saying is the systems are generally in place to use this kind of tax.

[Thorfinn]

Private arbitration courts exist now AS AN ALTERNATIVE to the government courts (expensive litigation) and would not exist without the presence of the government courts.

But merchant courts from the middle ages formed the basis for common law, and had nothing to do with the government at all. In fact, that was the appeal -- the decisions rendered in a merchant's court were not the whim of some new leader, or in whatever direction the political winds blew, but instead on commonly-held notions of fairness. They did not need a council of merchants to pass any laws. They just needed people both parties considered fair arbiters, well within the capability of the market, both then and now.

Re: court system, I know that the power was given to Congress to define the system, but my point was that they did not spell out that system. According to the debate of the day, that was because many wanted private courts to prevent the abuse of power that gov't courts had exercised within recent history, like Wm. Penn being arrested and tried for preaching a Quaker sermon instead of an Anglican sermon, and when the jury refused to convict, the jury was thrown in the clink. Others argued quite persuasively about consistent standards of justice, and in the end, the compromise was to allow Congress to implement a plan they could change at a moment's notice.

Yes, your understanding of market externality was correct, but has the same problem as using the term "square" instead of "rectangle", then proceeding from the notion that all sides are the same length. While you were correct so far as your argument went, it seemed to me you were in a grey zone in making a general statement about market externalities based on only a small subset of those externalities.

Actually my reference to the KKK and Elian's extraction was that both represent initiation of force upon innocents. And before you say Elian was not innocent in that he was in violation of the law, that is merely because the system of immigration defined him as an enemy, not through any action he did that harmed anyone else. As far as I know, Elian represented no threat to me or my property, so it seems to me that the government was not in fact acting to protect me at all, but merely enforcing some arbitrary rules they put into place about people who come onto private property without getting "proper" permission from the government. I am realizing the wisdom of men like Jefferson and Lord Acton on a daily basis -- that loosening the bonds on government is the greatest threat to life, liberty and property of citizens.

I agree with your discussion of federalism and the power of states to boss its people about, though Rehnquist could hardly be in the same category as the Anti-federalists of the time of the Constitutional Convention. I can cite several ways in which decisions he wrote or with which he conurred where he makes even strong central government Federalists like Hamilton seem like a rabid anti-Federalist. Rehnquist's stance is only anti-Federalist with respect to the current mega-state paradigm.

Scalia may or may not be an idiot, yet that says nothing about the validity of the statement. Are you arguing that Scalia's sentiment about the Bill of Rights was flawed?

We are kind of in agreement about the "living Constitution", but only because we have not addressed the crux -- that the Constitution spells out a procedure for amending it, not that the Constitution should be reinterpreted however the ruling class feels it should be read today. If it is a little vague, amend it. It's been done before, and in the cases you cite, was done properly. Contrast that with the "legislating from the bench" of which the right and left accuse each other on a daily basis...

And speaking of the Bill of Rights, of course Privacy wasn't spelled out. That is because the Constitution is a limit on the Federal Government, not on its citizens. I don't have the right to speak my piece because of the First Amendment. I had that right anyway. The First Amendment is a limitation on the government, preventing them from infringing on that right, not any kind of permission it is granting me. One of biggest advocates of strong central government was Hamilton, and in his scarily prescient Federalist Paper #84 wrote:

I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government.

His example was freedom of press, but how many politicians since then have contended that the Bill of Rights does not prevent the federal government from making "reasonable restrictions" upon the rights of the people?