The mitigating factor here is that "absolute" rights have a price tag associated with their establishment and enforcement, and Rothbard is not advocating state subsidies for bearing such costs. One would expect that negative externalities would continue to exist under a Rothbardian system to the extent that the cost of curbing them exceed the benefits of using the justice system to go after polluters, etc. Rights enforcement exists only to the extent that harm-prevention/-mitigation is worth the cost.
On the other hand, conceiving of one's right to be free from the harms of pollution as being less than absolute in a legal sense raises troubling scenarios where Rothbardian absolutism is replaced by arbitrary legislative or regulatory discretion. Certain well-heeled special interests will bribe those who exercise such discretion to obtain immunity from liability for whatever pollution-related harms to others they cause, thereby expanding the scope of negative externalities beyond the optimum associated with the "absolutist" conception of rights.
One the other hand, other special interests might seek the aid of the state to subsidize a more rigorous anti-pollution enforcement than is optimal, or even to redefine "pollution" to deter emissions that don't entail any detectable harm to any rights-holder at all at taxpayer expense. Either way, substituting state discretion for Rothbardian absolutism in defining rights leads to bad outcomes.
Rothbard strikes me as both a genius and an idiot. One of his books defended deducting state and local sales taxes from federal taxes, and almost gloated that he deserved such a deduction for choosing to live in New York City. I don't remember now what book or article it was in, but it made no sense to me from a libertarian standpoint.
I remember reading one of his screeds about pollution and wondering what had made him so absolutist and irrational and deluded about trusting government to define what level of pollution was acceptable. There was a famous Georgia Supreme Court case, Holman v Athens Empire Laundry Co., 1919, which stated "The pollution of the air, so far as reasonably necessary to the enjoyment of life and indispensable to the progress of society, is not actionable". Some book I read, which might be The Big Oyster by Mark Kulansky, described sniffer squads which traced pollution back to its sources so victims could sue, and was so successful that the government shut them down.
My own opinion is that if pollution is harmful, it is measurable; and if it is measurable, then it can be traced to a source. It doesn't matter whether the harm is measured individually or statistically; harm is harm, and can be prosecuted by victims if individual, or by groups of potential victims if statistical. And if it can't be measured or is nor harmful, then it isn't pollution. The sniffer squads and the Georgia case are all the proof I need that victim prosecution can keep polluters accountable without government regulation.
On a free society, who could enforce a complete ban? I don’t think rothbard wanted a complete ban, I think he thought that was the most likely outcome in a free society.
But on many occasions he said that predicting the norms and customs of a truly free society is at most a good guess. Since we don’t live in one.
The mitigating factor here is that "absolute" rights have a price tag associated with their establishment and enforcement, and Rothbard is not advocating state subsidies for bearing such costs. One would expect that negative externalities would continue to exist under a Rothbardian system to the extent that the cost of curbing them exceed the benefits of using the justice system to go after polluters, etc. Rights enforcement exists only to the extent that harm-prevention/-mitigation is worth the cost.
On the other hand, conceiving of one's right to be free from the harms of pollution as being less than absolute in a legal sense raises troubling scenarios where Rothbardian absolutism is replaced by arbitrary legislative or regulatory discretion. Certain well-heeled special interests will bribe those who exercise such discretion to obtain immunity from liability for whatever pollution-related harms to others they cause, thereby expanding the scope of negative externalities beyond the optimum associated with the "absolutist" conception of rights.
One the other hand, other special interests might seek the aid of the state to subsidize a more rigorous anti-pollution enforcement than is optimal, or even to redefine "pollution" to deter emissions that don't entail any detectable harm to any rights-holder at all at taxpayer expense. Either way, substituting state discretion for Rothbardian absolutism in defining rights leads to bad outcomes.
Rothbard strikes me as both a genius and an idiot. One of his books defended deducting state and local sales taxes from federal taxes, and almost gloated that he deserved such a deduction for choosing to live in New York City. I don't remember now what book or article it was in, but it made no sense to me from a libertarian standpoint.
I remember reading one of his screeds about pollution and wondering what had made him so absolutist and irrational and deluded about trusting government to define what level of pollution was acceptable. There was a famous Georgia Supreme Court case, Holman v Athens Empire Laundry Co., 1919, which stated "The pollution of the air, so far as reasonably necessary to the enjoyment of life and indispensable to the progress of society, is not actionable". Some book I read, which might be The Big Oyster by Mark Kulansky, described sniffer squads which traced pollution back to its sources so victims could sue, and was so successful that the government shut them down.
My own opinion is that if pollution is harmful, it is measurable; and if it is measurable, then it can be traced to a source. It doesn't matter whether the harm is measured individually or statistically; harm is harm, and can be prosecuted by victims if individual, or by groups of potential victims if statistical. And if it can't be measured or is nor harmful, then it isn't pollution. The sniffer squads and the Georgia case are all the proof I need that victim prosecution can keep polluters accountable without government regulation.
I’m with him on noise pollution.
On a free society, who could enforce a complete ban? I don’t think rothbard wanted a complete ban, I think he thought that was the most likely outcome in a free society.
But on many occasions he said that predicting the norms and customs of a truly free society is at most a good guess. Since we don’t live in one.