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: Environmentalists and private property custodians commonly clash when it comes to enacting environmentally-safe economic measures. Environmental protection usually leads to an increase in regulations, which in turn is seen as a direct ault on private property rights. The question is, can there exist environmentally-responsible policies that respect private property rights and free-market capitalism? The following paragraphs describe in depth a number of alternate economic models that attempt to respond to this question with a “yes” answer. Not only are these following models and reforms more ecologically safe than today’s policies, but they are logical as well. The three models that will be covered in this writing will be the Incorporate Liability, Superprivatization, and True-Cost market economies. : The Incorporate Liability Economy (ILE) – A quick defining of an ILE, outlined by Kalle Lasn in his book Culture Jam, makes one ponder why it wasn’t implemented in the first place. In no way does an ILE require any more government restrictions nor does it eliminate any property rights; an ILE deems each shareholder of a business enterprise personally responsible for any damage caused by the corporation. “Why shouldn’t it be so?” asks Lasn, “If you’re a shareholder, a part-owner of a corporation, and you reap the rewards when the going is good, why shouldn’t you be held responsible for that company hen it becomes criminally liable?” Some scholars believe that such liability should be extended to banks, investors, and even insurance providers. Crimes committed against the environment, the government, or people, would be inherited by those who contribute and administer that corporation. : In today’s world, if an individual acting by him or herself commits a crime, he is arrested, has his offense doented and filed, and if his crime is serious enough, faces prison time or even death. Felonies committed by an individual drags behind him throughout the rest of his life, thus causing work places think twice before employing him. Obviously this policy is not implemented onto corporations; how often are newspapers littered with articles that speak of corporate owners being jailed for environmental crimes and things of the sort? David C. Korten states that : Market players are attracted to the corporation as a form of business organization specifically because the legal nature and structure of the corporation tends to exempt both the corporation and its decision makers from accountability for many of the costs of their activities. Actual shareholders… bear no personal liability beyond the value of their investments. : Never do corporations lose their political and legal rights to continue commerce, and almost never are corporate executives or stockholders jailed. Korten continues by saying that : Top managers… are rarely prosecuted for the acts of the corporation. Acts that would bring stiff prison sentences or even death for individuals result – at worst – in small fines for corporations that are generally inconsequential in relation to corporate ets. : As seen in the way corporations and individuals are punished according to the law, in is unarguable to say that the two are unequal. This is why William M. Dugger calls corporations “organized irresponsibility”. : This sharply contrasts the results of Santa Clara Country v. Southern Pacific Railroad, a dispute heard by the United States Supreme Court in 1886 over a railbed route that ruled that corporation was a “natural person” under the U.S. Constitution. Corporations to this day enjoy all of these rights, including those granted by the Bill of Rights, even though corporations are not mentioned in the Constitution. This decision was later backed up by Yick Wo v. Hopkins in 1886 and Allgeyer v. Louisiana in 1897. Legally, corporations enjoy the full rights claimed by individual citizens, but they are exempt from the responsibilities and liabilities of citizenship. If a corporation wields the same power as an individual when it comes to rights, then one think that it would be only logical to punish them accordingly and equally. Obviously they are not, and an ILE attempts fix this irregularity. : As you see, nothing is being pushed onto the corporate body; they are not forced to follow more or even different operational or environmental policies – their shareholders are only asked to take up responsibility for their actions. Modern businesses and those who invest in them, will go about doing whatever they wish, for they know that after fines are paid and safety procedures are juiced up, they go along like normal. An ILE model would force businesses to clean up their acts and think twice about their policies in order to continue to attract potential shareholders. “Poor environmental performance may result in significantly higher insurance premiums or… the inability to obtain any insurance at all,” says Howard Beim. : Companies with good records would benefit from an ILE thus promoting fair play in the corporate community. An ILE seems as if it would be easy to implement, for any businesses or investors who would publicly oppose this reform would only succeed in staining their reputations. “We, the people,” states Lasn, “created the corporate charter and the rules for buying stocks and shares, and now, we the people must change those rules.” : Superprivatization Economy (SPE) – The SPE is a concept raised by agronomist Wes Jackson in his book Becoming Native to this Place. “We European conquerors and settlers were amused at the Native Americans who could not quite comprehend how land could be sold,” states Jackson, “Now we can empathize with them, for many of us have a difficult time comprehending the serious proposal to sell much of what is left of the global commons, such as air.” The privatization and the capitalization of air is exactly what Jackson is suggesting, a concept that was taken serious by Nobel Prize winning Dr. Ronald Coase and George Mason University professor Jerome Ellig. If the ownership of resources such as air were privatized and each homeowner owned the air and space around and above his property, then factories would be forced to pay them if they wanted to pollute. A certain amount of soot would be tolerated for a price, but sooner or later, it would be cheaper for a factory to implement pollution controls than to buy the right to pollute. : Air is only one example of the privatization process could be carried out in various other areas – resources that are universally treated as public goods - in order to increase industries’ responsibility of their pollution habits. Companies are not told not to pollute, and their private property rights are fully respected, but an SPE only asks corporations to respect the private property rights of everybody else. This is a perfect theorem for explaining how markets can be utilized to resolve externalities like pollution. The privatization of natural commodities such air is a process that might not be endorsed by liberals and environmentalists, but it does succeed in creating a responsibly approach to pollution. : : True-cost Market (TCM) – To implement a TCM, in the words of Hawaiian Mayoral candidate Keiko Bonk, “means we must eliminate the hidden subsidies and include the full cost of development in the market place, rather than hiding certain waste-costs and then relying on expensive after-market (social & environmental) clean up programs which must be funded by tax payers.” An example of this can be cigarettes and alcohol: the prices of tobacco or alcohol products do not reflect the true cost in damage inflicted on health. Another example is the car, where the price of purchasing and maintaining one does not amount to the true cost of accident clean ups, highway policing, air polluting, and deforestation in the name of street paving. Taxpayers, some of which do not even drive cars or smoke cigarettes, commonly pick up the tab for these expensive health-care and cleanup programs. Not only the cost of production, but also those of use, pollution, waste, and other costs must be incorporated into the market. : In a TCM, a government’s role is limited to calculating the true-cost of products, for services such as health-care will be paid for through the purchase of unhealthy foods, cigarettes, and harmful goods, while things such as roads, bridges, and tunnels are funded by purchasing and maintaining vehicles. “Rather than micro-managing the economy the governments role is to set minimal standards of social and environmental responsibility and maintain a small workforce of trained professionals to monitor the standards.” This type of planning has resulted in some of the most vibrant and sustainable economies in the world, as seen in New Zealand and the Netherlands. The price of products in a TCM, would tell the “ecological truth”, as Lasn states. : In no way are private property rights and capitalism in jeopardy through a TCM. Governments would not tell businessmen how to meet standards, for they are more than free to utilize their entrepreneurial skills to furnish cost-effective and profitable solutions to the problem. Enterprises are not being asked to cease the production of harmful products, but only to regulate their market cost in accordance to their true social and economic costs. The government’s main responsibility is to insure that these costs are not artificially held back from the market. : It has been seen through each of these proposed economic models that yes, economically conscious and responsible policies can be implemented while at the same time not only respecting private property rights, but enhancing them. The problem is that most of these systems have not been put into practice, and those who have, have been implemented in slow stages that still have not achieved the wide-spread attention they deserve.

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