I won't get into the minutiae and definitions - that can go on for decades. I look at things from the standpoint of "what's the right thing to do" in a given situation. The things you define as "commons" - I'm supposing clean air & water, safe work places, etc. - I believe are the right of all people. IMO, one could write/legislate enough rules & laws to make a volume about 12 miles thick - when a few common sense laws might cover the bases. To me, it boils down to common courtesy toward one's fellow citizens - I won't burn garbage so my neighbors have to breathe in the stench, I won't pour dirty motor oil or chemicals on my land to possibly poison your well water, I won't expect another person to work in an unsafe situation when I wouldn't do it myself, or allow my wife & sons to do so.
IMO, the existence of the EPA is necessary simply because too many individuals and businesses readily pollute our environment - mostly to save money on safe disposal / treatments. But in the end, that costs all of us more money as taxpayers to clean up the mess. Very seldom to polluters get tagged with the entire cost of cleaning up the messes they've made - taxpayers get stuck with bills for mitigations to messes they had no part in creating. Self-policing is an absolute joke. We need policing agencies simply because too many entities and individuals cut corners / ignore rules & laws ...... at the expense of many others "downstream."
Do unto others ........ as you would want done to you. Golden rule kind of thing.
I don't take offense to anything you posted. I dislike angry arguing ...... civil exchange of ideas & thoughts = OK to me.
The commons are natural resources that by their nature cannot be owned or controlled by any one individual. Air is a part of the commons, be it clean or dirty. The idea of a safe work spaces would definitely not be considered part of the commons. Other things that would are rivers, aquifers, other bodies of water not completely surrounded by a single piece of private land, wild animals and public land. Although, as stated previously, I struggle with that last one.
I'm still finding it difficult to pin down the true foundation of your political philosophy. You didn't explicitly agree with my greater good proposal. Instead you offered up vague and very subjective phrases like common sense and what is the right thing to do. These can vary greatly in interpretation from one person to another. For example, my boss recently got after me for not applying a different set of standards to some customer owned material than what we apply to company owned material, even though there has never been any kind of policy stating that we ought to. It also has not been a past practice at my level of operations. That didn't stop him from saying that I just need to use a little common sense, though he never described what he meant by common sense. When I asked him how do I determine if it's customer owned material with the resources at my disposal, he answered "I don't know, that's a good question." Still haven't gotten an answer. So can you see why the assertion of common sense is not informative enough to ever be a real answer? Similarly, the right thing to do is going to be very subjective in many cases and does not get us any closer to truth or a working philosophy.
I see the golden rule as more of an ethical consideration that I find more applicable in the realm of community or social interactions rather than government / legal interactions. Again, it can be quite vague and very greatly from one individual to another.
I can see a place for an EPA like agency, but limited to dealing with corporations and government, not private citizens. I also agree with Bill and others that it should not be a rule making body.
As far as chemicals that you once possessed ending up tainting another person's property, in this modern world it is an impossibility that this has not happened. With all the plastics that have passed through each of our possession, it is undeniable that at some point, some amount has ended up tainting another's property. On that level, we are all guilty.
The failure of government to hold corporations fully liable for the damages they are responsible for does not seem to necessitate an agency to regulate the individual in any logical sense. I understand that it is individuals that carry out actions, but in a legal sense, if the individual is acting under the corporation, it is the corporation commiting the act, not an individual.
I'm sure that I missed addressing some things, and I look forward to your response.
