[Borodog]

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borodog

yes it is reactionary. furthermore is creates economic inefficiencies.

don't you believe in specialization and outsourcing jobs you don't have a comparative advantage in? making individuals police their property for damages related to external costs creates huge costs! people don't know how to identify such costs, nor do people have the know-how regarding how to use the court system to litigate the responsible parties (which they likely can not themselves identify).

why not have a specialist do this. my policy has that. your policy doesn't. of course you will say the market will provide these services, of course it will. but my policy directly provides them immediately through the market.

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Dude, I haven't even read "your policy". I've been responding to the OP. Furthermore, I have no "policy." Furtherfurthermore, your inability to imagine how the free market would provide for a solution to a problem does not imply that no one could think of one. For example, professional class action litigators could profitably specialize in identifying potential class actions where transaction costs for individual suits would overwhelm the damages they are owed and create class actions that would make the damaged whole for even small damages, but more importantly, internalize the costs that are currently being externalized. Poof. Problem solved. In fact, this exact scenario happens now. I see the commercials on the TV all the time.

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it seems like sometimes you just use your rallying cry "let the market figure it out" without even thinking of the implications.

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Like when? Obviously this instance does not qualify, since it is you who haven't thought of the implications of my position before attacking it.

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yes your system might work. yes my system might work. of course that is pretty much irrelevant. there is an infinite number of policy options. your suggestion that 'you don't have to do it that way" adds nothing. you need to make the decision based on some metric.

my solution doesn't involve people compromising their rights. my solution is proactive. my solution is severely weakened by asymmetries of information, though it doesn't suffer nearly as bad as your system where every individual on the planet has to incur at the minimum the initial research costs to find someone to manage their externalities. which also implies your system has huge opportunity costs.

the net effect of those costs equates to a market failure. there will be over pollution because there won't be an equilibrium amount of litigation because of frictional costs.

actually, after a little reflection, all i needed to post was "asymmetrical information." it absolutely crushes your policy

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All of this is already rebutted, so I'll just leave it at that.