Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Who Protects Us From Government Polluters?
Who Protects Us From Government Polluters?
Apr 2, 2025 9:37 PM

“The rules don’t apply to me,” is a favorite maxim of toddlers, narcissists, and government officials. This is especially true of the legislative branch, which frequently exempts itself—and its 30,000 employees—from federal laws that apply to the rest of us.

But just as often government at all levels simply ignores laws it finds too burdensome ply with. A recent study published last month in the American Journal of Political Science titled “When Governments Regulate Governments” found that pared with private firms, governments violate [the U.S. Clean Air Act and Safe Drinking Water Act] significantly more frequently and are less likely to be penalized for violations.”

Researchers David Konisky and Manny Teodoro viewed records of more than 3,000 power plants, 1,000 hospitals and 4,200 water utilities. Some of their findings include:

Public power plants and hospitals were on average 9 percent morelikelyto be out pliance with Clean Air Act regulations and 20 percent morelikelyto mitted high-priority violations;Public water utilities had on average 14 percent more Safe Drinking Water Act health violations and were 29 percent mit monitoring violations;Public power plants and hospitals that violated the Clean Air Act were 1 percentlesslikelythan private-sector violators to receive a punitive sanction and 20 percentlesslikelyto be fined;Public water utilities that violated Safe Drinking Water Act standards were 3 percentlesslikelythan investor-owned utilities to receive formal enforcement actions.

Why do government entities pollute our water and air more often than private entities? Because, as they researchers point out, government has both the incentive to ignore regulations and the ability to get away with it:

We argue that government agencies have greater incentives than profit-maximizing firms to shirk regulation and/or seek regulatory relief through political channels. The result is a political theory of regulation, in which the ultimate effect of regulatory policy turns not on the regulator’s carrots and sticks, but rather on the regulated agency’s political costs pliance with or appeal against the regulator, and the regulator’s political costs of penalizing another government. One implication of this theory is that public agencies are less likely than similarly situated private firms ply with regulations. Another implication is that regulators are likely to enforce regulations less vigorously against public agencies than against private firms because such enforcement is both less effective and more costly to the regulator.

Despite clearly documenting these failures of government, the solution the researchers propose is more government—more power to help the government force their regulations and more money to help them pay for it.

But this has already been tried and found to be ineffective. A better approach would be to simply level the playing field between public and private entities. If panies in a particular industry do ply with regulations or pay fines then private should also be given this same tacit exemption. For example, if a state-run government hospital refuses to paytheir fines then no other private hospital in the state should be required to pay similar fines.If we take the rule of law seriously then we should apply it equally to all.

That would also level the playing field and make privatization both more attractive and more functional. The result would even be a cleaner environment. After all, if we have regulations to protect us from polluters, then we should allow those entities less likely to pollute (i.e., private firms) to provide more of our goods and services.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
The Great Gaetano Rebecchini: Italy’s hero succumbs to the coronavirus
Gaetano Rebecchini was a great Italian, an extraordinary witness to our traditional national values, while challenging politically correctness and representing the best of our country. Today, Italy lost a good, honest, courageous person, an example for present and future generations e. Read More… Today was the first time I learned of someone I know and respect who lost his battle to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). He was a 95 year-old political warrior and defender of freedom: Gaetano Rebecchini. He returned...
April Fools’ Day: Italians are not joking around anymore as civil unrest builds
Culturally the first of April – April Fools’ Day – is the same in Italy as in America. It’s a day of practical jokes and laughs. Only here it’s called April Fish Day, because it is related to the ancient end of the Pisces or Fish sign in the zodiac. It also the day of jokes which Italians inherited from the ancient Roman feast of Hilaria (hilarious in English) celebrated around the spring equinox. During the Hilaria celebrations Romans would...
‘They want to punish the Church’: Italian priest fined for procession to fight coronavirus
The following translation is an exclusive interview that appeared in the weekend edition of the northern Italian daily La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, which has fiercely defended Italy’s religious freedom throughout the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Correspondent Andrea Zambrano interviewed a Roman Catholic parish priest, Rev. Domenico Cirigliano, who was slapped with a €400 fine by local police for processing with a “miraculous” crucifix. Rev. Cirigliano said he was performing essential “work” by blessing the town of Rocca Imperiale in order to...
13,000 children are being denied an education over a funding fight
Millions of schoolchildren are currently out of school under state orders intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus. However, in Oregon, at least 13,000 students are being unnecessarily denied an education to benefit traditional public schools’ monopoly over education. Earlier this month, Gov. Kate Brown ordered all Oregon’s public schools closed until the end of March. She then extended that deadline to April 28. This would be unexceptional if not for the fact that she also closed online public...
Coronavirus shows us how work impacts civilization
Many Americans are already struggling due to the ripple effects of the COVID-19 lockdown. Just last week, more than 6.6 million Americans filed unemployment claims. Some economists predict that total job losses could reach 47 million. In turn, much of our focus is rightly set on the material devastation—lost salaries, declining assets, and so on. Yet the economic lockdown brings significant social costs as well, reminding us that our economic activity has social value to our civilization that goes well...
Acton Line podcast: How to talk about rights in our polarized age
Today, our most contentious controversies are about morality. We disagree about questions of efficiency and democracy, but across political aisles, we also disagree about what’s right to do and who we’re ing as a people. How can we have productive debates with people whose worldviews are very different from ours? Adam MacLeod, professor of law at Faulkner University, addresses this question in his new book titled “The Age of Selfies: Reasoning About Rights When the Stakes Are Personal.” In this...
Three core principles to evaluate the coronavirus stimulus
As epidemiologists scramble to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on public health, economists are evaluating its impact on the global economy. Experts in both fields absorb the flurry of data, interpret it through their scientific training and the lens of similar historical events, and endeavor to mend a path forward. Yet everyone knows that ultimately we are in unchartered waters, and possible es vary widely. As an economist, I am stunned by the nearly 10 million jobless claims...
No one knows what a return to ‘normalcy’ after COVID-19 will look like
At some point, not today but perhaps in the next few weeks, we will be having more conversations about getting people back to work and restoring the $21 trillion U.S. economy. Some signs indicate the coronavirus pandemic may turn soon in the United States. Even if the entire nation makes an all-out effort to restrict contact, coronavirus deaths will peak in the next two weeks, with patients overwhelming hospitals in most states, according to a University of Washington study. The...
Creativity will kill COVID-19
It is in the most desperate of times that we must not forget our principles. Globally, we are facing desperate times. In the United States, unemployment rolls doubled in just one week, climbing to 6.6 million unemployment claims for the week ending March 28, 2020. As more Americans are asked to stay at home, many have e unemployed. Additionally, the potential death toll scares us, and we beg for scientists to expedite new tests, anti-viral drugs, and vaccines. These are...
Service is love for our God and our clients
For the Italian Nuova Bussola Quotidiana media outlet, I am publishing a series of short reflections on economics, virtue and spirituality during Lent entitled Lentenomics(go here for the first reflection on “sacrifice”). In the second of these six essays I turned my attention to the virtue of “service.” In summary, I write that “service has a supremely essential role within the economy, and not just in the so-called ‘service industries.’ Markets simply cannot function without services. They are the fundamental...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved