Dirty Money

Here’s a little joint from FA Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom:

Nor can certain harmful effects of deforestation, or of some methods of farming, or of the smoke and noise of factories, be confined to the owner of the property in question or to those who are willing to submit to the damage for an agreed compensation. In such instances we must find some substitute for the regulation by the price mechanism. But the fact that we have to resort to the substitution of direct regulation by authority where the conditions for the proper working of competition cannot be created, does not prove that we should suppress competition where it can be made to function.

This is why we have a Clean Air Act establishing an Environmental Protection Agency charged with regulating the sources of harmful pollution. One would hardly think that Hayek is a frothing at the mouth socialist, or that defenders of the free enterprise system would be running around the country denouncing this Hayekian scheme as a threat to liberty. And yet you find that nearly every Republican Party elected official, combined with nearly ever right-of-center think tank in Washington DC, and nearly every right-of-center magazine, and nearly every right-of-center talk radio host, and nearly every Fox News commentator wants to partially repeal the Clean Air Act and order the EPA to avoid regulating greenhouse gas pollution.

It’s a strange turn of events.

Meanwhile, every single right-of-center friend I have likes to make fun of the left’s obsession with the Koch brothers. For example, today’s Los Angeles Times has an article by Tom Hamburger, Kathleen Hennessey and Neela Banerjee headlined “Koch Brothers Now at Heart of GOP Power: The billionaire brothers’ influence is most visible in the makeup of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where members have vowed to undo restrictions on greenhouse gases.” It’s sad, really, that Hayek lacks the kind of commitment to human liberty found among billionaire fossil fuel barons.