Fracking - where is it headed ?

[richlevy]

It's not a matter of 'supply and demand', it's a matter of ethics, law, and public policy.

Fracking affecting public lands can be blamed on the 'tragedy of the commons' and the failure of government to act as a steward of public resources. The affect of fracking on private lands is also a failure of government to protect individual property rights in the face of economic development. Losing access to clean water, risking exposure to natural gas seepage, and the lowering of property values consist of a 'taking'. It's even worse than eminent domain because at least with eminent domain there is compensation.

Conservatives talk about smaller government and then go on to talk about personal responsibility. The failure to effectively government- or self-regulate fracking demonstrates the fallacy of applying the concept of 'personal responsibility' or 'self-regulation' to corporations. The system is at least partly broken even with government oversight involved. Weakening further or removing oversight will obviously make issues worse. At some point there would even be a weakening of tort to further shield businesses from responsibility for their actions.

We can point to many civilized cultures that practiced human sacrifice. In, some ways, hyper-capitalism (my term for it?), the concept of corporate socialism where the government operates under the assumption that in all cases the success of corporations are an automatic social plus, ignoring all negative factors, is a form of human sacrifice. Sickness, death, loss of property rights - all are considered acceptable sacrifice in the face of the perceived social good of business success if such losses are small enough to impact only a small group of citizens or communities. In theory, capitalism would provide a method for compensation, but in hyper-capitalism the risks are socialized and the benefits are not. Citizens impacted are considered 'collateral damage' and not accounted into the benefit/loss calculation.