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Christian Kleineidam's avatar

To have lawsuit about enviromental pollution you need laws. Those laws come from other humans. Either a parliament, the executive or a judge who makes case law. 

As recently as last year the US Republican advocated that US fims should be able to poision more people with mercury than the EPA advocated. You have a real conflict about how much is too much. Solving those conflicts through lawfare isn't efficient. 

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Jonathan G. Bastiat's avatar

 If we are in a purely free market, such a firm is going to be overwhelm by lawsuits (because there's no monopolies of the State on the river a free marketer) which make dumping mercury in the water very counter productive for the firm in the first place (opportunity cost of dumping the mercury in the river versus disposing of it properly).

When you think in term of free market, you can't project your current paradigm.

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