by Paul
Craig Roberts
Few, if any,
corporations absorb the full cost of their operations. Corporations
shove many of their costs onto the environment, the public sector,
and distant third parties. For example, currently 3 million gallons
of toxic waste water from a Colorado mine has escaped and is working
its way down two rivers into Utah and Lake Powell. At least seven
city water systems dependent on the rivers have been shut down. The
waste was left by private enterprise, and the waste was accidentally
released by the Environmental Protection Agency, which might be true
or might be a coverup for the mine. If the Lake Powell reservoir
ends up polluted, it is likely that the cost of the mine imposed on
third parties exceeds the total value of the mine’s output over its
entire life.
Economists
call these costs “external costs” or “social costs.” The mine
made its profits by creating pollutants, the cost of which is born by
those who had no share in the profits.
As this is
the way regulated capitalism works, you can imagine how bad
unregulated capitalism would be. Just think about the unregulated
financial system, the consequences we are still suffering with more
to come.
Despite
massive evidence to the contrary, libertarians hold tight to their
romantic concept of capitalism, which, freed from government
interference, serves the consumer with the best products at the
lowest prices.
If only.
Progressives
have their own counterpart to the libertarians’ romanticism.
Progressives regard government as the white knight that protects the
public from the greed of capitalists.
If only.
Everyone,
and most certainly libertarians and progressives, should read Jeffrey
St. Clair’s bubsbook, Born Under A Bad Sky (2008). St. Clair is an
engaging writer, and his book is rewarding on many levels. If you
have never floated the Western rivers or met the challenge of
treacherous rapids or camped among mosquitoes and rattlesnakes, you
can experience these facets of life vicariously with St. Clair, while
simultaneously learning how corruption in the Park Service, the
Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management results in timber
companies, mining companies, and cattle ranchers making money by
plundering national forests and public lands.
The public
subsidies provided to miners, loggers, and ranchers are as
extravagant and as harmful to the public interest as the subsidies
that the Federal Reserve and Treasury provide to the “banks too big
to fail.”
Progressives
and libertarians need to read St. Clair’s accounts of how the
Forest Service creates roads into trackless forests in order to
subsidize timber companies’ felling of old growth forest and
habitat destruction for endangered and rare species. Our
romanticists need to learn how less valuable lands are traded for
more valuable public lands in order to transfer wealth from the
public to private hands. They need to learn that allowing ranchers
to utilize public lands results in habitat destruction and the
destruction of stream banks and aquatic life. They need to
understand that the heads of the federal protective agencies
themselves are timber, mining, and ranching operatives who work for
private companies and not for the public. Americans of all
persuasions need to understand that just as senators and
representatives are bought and paid for by the military/security
complex, Wall Street, and the Israel Lobby, they are owned also by
mining, timber and ranching interests.
The public
interest is nowhere in the picture.
The two
largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are at 39% and 52% of
capacity. The massive lakes on which the Western United States is
dependent are drying up. And now Lake Powell is faced with receiving
3 million gallons of waste water containing arsenic, lead, copper,
aluminum and cadmium. Wells in the flood plains of the polluted
rivers are also endangered.
The
pollutants, which turned the rivers orange, flowed down the Animas
River from Silverton, Colorado through Durango into the San Juan
River in Farmington, New Mexico, a river that flows into the Colorado
River that feeds Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
All of this
damage from one capitalist mine.
In November
of last year, US Rep. Chris Stewart (R.Utah) got his bill passed by
the House.
Stewart is a
hit man for capitalism. His bill “is designed to prevent
qualified, independent scientists from advising the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA). They will be replaced with industry
affiliated choices, who may or may not have relevant scientific
expertise, but whose paychecks benefit from telling the EPA what
their employers want to hear.”
Rep. Steward
says it is a matter of balancing scientific facts with industry
interests.
And there
you have it.
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