Blog 6- At the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima or Why Political Questions Are Not All Economic

It is impossible to place economic values on physical well-being. In this selection, Mark Sagoff challenges that the true values of all things can be judged by what people are willing to pay for them in the marketplace. The concept is the limitations of economics in making environmental policies.

In Lake Ontario, the government disposed of the residues of the Manhattan Project. The New York State and local corporations replied "People who smoke, take greater risks than the people who live close to waste disposal sites.

If you take the Military Highway, from Buffalo to Lewiston, you will pass through wasteland. In all directions enormous trucks deposit sludge then bury in into the ground, there are no birds, no scavengers. It is where factories have fled, leaving their remains to decay.

This selection is concerned with the economic decisions we make about the environment, it also concerns political decisions about the environment. According to this there is only an environmental problem when some resource is not allocated in equitable and efficient ways at the level of the consumer. According to this view, the only values we have, are those that a market can price. "In principle, the utimate measure of environmental quality is the value people place on these services or their willingness to pay." We act as consumers to get what we want for ourselves, we act as citizens to achieve what we think is right or best for the community.

Mark Sagoff says he speeds on the highway, yet he wants police to enfore laws against speeding. He loves his car, and hates the bus. Yet he encourages the taxation of gasoline for public transportation. He encourages Endangered Species Act yet has no use for the Squawfish or the Indiana bat.

The cost-benefit analysis establishing that the benefits of the regulation to society outweigh its costs. These standards may conflict witht he goal of efficiency and still express and still express our political will as a nation. The policies may reflect ot on the personal choices of self-interested individuals, but the collective judgments we make on historical, cultural, aestethic, moral, and ideological grounds.
The Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970. Exposure level for benzene was then reduced in 1977. The American Petroleum Institute argued, with much evidence, that the benefits to workers standard did not equal the costs to the industry.
The analyst ask workers, environmentalits, and others how much they are willing to pay for what they believe is right.
The cost-benefit approach treats people as of equal worth because it treats them as of no worth, but only as places or channels at which willingness to pay is found.
In the modern world, opposed to the ancient, emphasizes on political liberties, rights of privacy and property over those of community and participation. Here the values we wish to protect are- cultural, historical, aesthetic, and moral- and public ones which is right for the community. Hazards are regulated as a matter of right, not a commodity.
Oppositions and arguments against the cost-benefit analyst are value judgments that are nothing but espressions of personal preference, or personal gain.
The analyst is able then to base policy on preferences that exist in society and are not necessarily his own.
The corporations are "just people serving people," is consistent with particular view of power. The is the view that identifies power with the ability to get one what one wants as an individual, that is, to satisfy one's personal preferences. When government officials put aside their personal interests, they then put aside their power as well. The cost-benefit analyst is not enough to make positive changes in environmental laws.