[lettergram]

Sure an HOA can easily hire someone, a building manager can and often does buy a service to monitor building detectors. That’s kind of my point, we already have these scenarios where people not government solve problems.

> I could see that becoming a large burden on the few people in each community that care enough to collect environmental data.

What you’re saying is not enough people care. So the people that do care are taking money from people who don’t care to get what they want. That’s called stealing when the government isn’t doing it…

That’s my point from above, we’re taught to need government. We don’t. Never did.

[uoaei]

> we’re taught to need government

That's an uncharitable way to cast GP's comment, and not really true. We do understand by now that the state is just a better solution than private entities relying on "market forces" for certain desired outcomes.

Back to the original point: the problem is scalability. If everyone goes through the same process, running into the same roadblocks and suffering the same pitfalls, independently and disconnectedly, that is by definition wasted effort, ie, unproductive for the economy. If we want such things to succeed, ie, be productive and contribute to the commonwealth, we need to share knowledge, which requires some level of centralization at this time (decentralized knowledge management techniques are still in their infancy and IMO require architectural changes in our telecommunications infrastructure to properly support).

[lettergram]

> We do understand by now that the state is just a better solution than private entities relying on "market forces" for certain desired outcomes.

I’d say the opposite is true actually. I don’t understand how any mandated entity is better. I’ve formed plenty of organizations, governments aren’t necessary. It’s supposed to help mediate force. Instead people use the governments monopoly on force to get what they want.

In terms of scale, we have planned parenthood, Churches, habitat for humanity, and so many others that work at scale. If pollution was an issue as described people would care. HOAs would hire organizations to monitor pollution and then HOAs would sue for damages. Almost exactly what the EPA does btw. Except the government gets the money and people in the country fund pollution research like this.

[uoaei]

> I’ve formed plenty of organizations

Have you run a country? Do you know how that goes? No? Ok then.

> In terms of scale, we have planned parenthood, Churches, habitat for humanity, and so many others that work at scale.

Would you like to know how much each of these groups get in tax writeoffs, subsidies, and aid from the government?

> Almost exactly what the EPA does btw.

A comment about how we don't need government, and the argument is that government is already doing the job. Amazing.