Free-marketeer

Sometimes I can still be really surprised. After reading an interview with Robert Kennedy Jr, on the Property and Environmental Research Center web site, I am surprised. To wit:

Kennedy: The best thing that could happen to the environment is free-market capitalism. In a true free-market economy, you can’t make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community. In a true free-market economy, you get efficiencies and efficiency means the elimination of waste. Waste is pollution. So in true free-market capitalism, you eliminate pollution and you properly value our natural resources so you won’t cut them down. What polluters do is escape the discipline of the free market. You show me a polluter, I’ll show you a subsidy—a fat cat who’s using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market.

[PERC]: So you’re saying free-market economies have to be controlled by regulations and strong central government?

Kennedy: Laissez-faire capitalism does not work, particularly in the commons. Individuals pursuing their own self-interest will devour the commons very quickly. That’s the economic law—the tragedy of the commons. You have to force companies to internalize costs. All of the federal environmental laws are designed to restore free-market capitalism in America in this regard.

[PERC]: So you consider yourself a crusader for the free market first and an environmentalist second?

Kennedy: I don’t even consider myself an environmentalist anymore. I’m a free-marketeer. I go out into the marketplace and I catch the polluters who are cheating the free market and I say, “We are going to force you to internalize your costs the same way you are internalizing your profit.” That’s what the federal environmental laws allow us to do: restore real property rights in America. You cannot get sustained environmental protection under any system but a democracy. There’s a direct correlation around the planet between the level of tyranny in various countries and the level of environmental degradation.

A free-marketer Kennedy? Wow. I’ll have to think about this.

BTW, on Thursday, October 21st, PERC has called a press conference at the National Press Club to present their 2004 Report Card on Dubya’s environmental policies/activities. He won’t even garner his gentleman’s Cs on this one.