TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Matthew Yglesias quotes F.A. Hayek on environment regulation:

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.

Yglesias revels in this a bit, titling his post “FA Hayek, Statist,” but I’m not sure why he’s so surprised. Environmental regulations, generally, are perfectly justified under a classical liberal view of society—my poisoning a river certainly impacts other people’s rights, and thus forbidding me from doing so is justified.