It’s sort of common sense, right?

Since there are limits to how high we can get the cost of illegal dumping, we also need to lower the cost of legal dumping. (Then raise the costs of production of toxic waste, if you like.)

It’s the same argument that says extremely harsh penalties for minor crimes are counterproductive, because they mean there is no additional penalty for e.g. killing someone in the course of a robbery.

It’s the same argument that makes needle exchanges a good idea even if you would also like to reduce heroin use.

It’s the same argument that leads to the distribution of condoms in prison even though prisoners aren’t supposed to be having sex.

It’s the same argument that leads to giving drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants, and not asking about immigration status when people call the police or the fire department, even if you would rather eliminate illegal immigration.

When the alternative to one antisocial act is another much more harmful one, it often makes sense to encourage the less harmful alternative.

I can’t for the life of me understand why you’re so resistant to this.

1. We want less toxic waste produced.

2. What toxic waste is produced, we want disposed of safely (i.e. legally).

3. Goals 1 and 2 can be achieved through various mixes of legal requirements and price incentives.

Lowering the price of of disposing of toxic waste helps with goal 2, but undermines goal 1. On the other hand, preventing unsafe disposal of toxic waste purely through regulation may require impractically intense surveillance and/or heavy penalties. So the optimal policy is going to involve some mix of criminal penalties for unsafe disposal (Engels) and cost incentives/subsidies for safe disposal (Tracy).

The funny thing is, I bet if the two of them were on a committee that actually had to draw up a toxic-waste disposal policy for a local government, they would have no trouble reaching agreement.

Because “he who asserts must prove”. You claimed that—
the fundamental problem is that toxic waste is far more expensive to dispose of legally than illegally. This argues for government subsidy of waste disposal

I merely pointed out that you haven’t given any real reason why anybody else should believe it.

As for more legitimate factories – you say “you don’t often have to shut factories down”, what I am skeptical about is whether the regulators can shut down any factory in practice.

Engels, I’m consciously using rhetoric to recast what people see as “buying off criminals” into “thinking of the children”. My object is to persuade people to switch away from kneejerk “polluter pays” reactions to consider what best protects people, including children.

Whether I will succeed is an empirical question, but I’ve seen rhetorical arguments work in the past. I don’t think that rhetoric is futile. And if we can’t get empirical estimates like what you want, then what do we have but rhetoric?

is wrong. It all depends on (a) the cost of the subsidy and (b) the costs (including intangible costs) of each of the behaviours in question. Unfortunately Tracy doesn’t seem interested in providing such details

I note that you also don’t seem interested in providing such details. I don’t provide any details because I don’t have the numbers. I assume this is why you don’t provide any details either. I think this is a case of the fridge calling the freezer white.

The problem with the sort of comprehensive study you apparently want someone else to carry out is that monitoring illegal dumping of toxic waste is incredibly difficult. People often fail to report illegal activity, even when the government passes a law obliging them to do so. Sometimes illegal dumping of toxic waste only comes to light years afterwards. I don’t think we will ever get the information to do a full comparison of the costs and benefits that you want to do.

In the absence of definitive knowledge, I do worry about small children being exposed to illegally-dumped toxic waste. I get the impression you think such worries are merely so much hot air, but I know what my worries are based on, and they are based on harms to real, living people. Calling them “hot air” will not suddenly make illegally-dumped toxic waste a non-problem.

I am not sure what your point here is. Are you arguing that Roberto Saviano’s book is wrong, and the Camorra don’t murder people?

I am not an Italian. I am not an expert on Italy. I have assumed that the newspaper reports of judges being murdered and people being beaten up and the like were genuine. I am well aware I may be misinformed – I have never seen the Mafia or the Camorra murder or torture someone with my own eyes. But I have been told about so many crimes by the Mafia and Camorra by so many different people I am willing to give some credence to their statements.

As long as it is disposed of legally toxic waste is g-r-r-eat!

One source of toxic waste comes from medical facilities. Do you intend to reduce the number of blood samples doctors take, times bandages are changed, use of drains to remove pus, etc, in order to reduce the amount of toxic waste produced?

I’m not sure what you think my ‘position’ is, since I haven’t stated it, but I don’t see how this can be true. For example, it would be reasonable to argue that we should reduce our production of toxic waste by a certain amount if doing so would incur a smaller disutility than the ‘safe’ disposal of the same amount of toxic waste. Not “very, very” much smaller and certainly not “in every case”. This smaller disutility is obviously not just a matter of financial cost (“cheaper”).

At any rate, the point of the analogy is clear. Like the two types of mugging, both types of behaviour (illegal dumping and legal disposal) are undesirable. Subsidising people to change from the first to the second is not necessarily a good idea—especially if a one effect of doing so is to increase additional incentives for the second—and Tracy’s implication to the contrary:

I would say that the fundamental problem is that toxic waste is far more expensive to dispose of legally than illegally. This argues for government subsidy of waste disposal

is wrong. It all depends on (a) the cost of the subsidy and (b) the costs (including intangible costs) of each of the behaviours in question. Unfortunately Tracy doesn’t seem interested in providing such details, preferring to rhetoricise about “children’s lives being put at risk” by illegal dumping, but without them her ‘argument’, and yours, remains so much hot air.