Libertarians

Good joke here.

Moving our society’s functions into the private sector is an appealing notion …until we begin to think about its consequences. And in no arena is this more apparent than the environment, where unregulated businesses happily use our atmosphere and waterways as their own private sewers.

“Capitalists abhor waste,” a spokesperson for the libertarian CATO Institute said in an interview, attempting to convince me that for-profit enterprises have a compelling motivation to regulate themselves.

No, they abhor wasting money.  If by “waste” you’re talking about things like toxic waste streams that result from their manufacturing processes, in general, they are fine with directing that poison in the direction that costs them the least, regardless of the damage it does to the surrounding world.