From: utzoo!watmath!pcmcgeer Newsgroups: net.followup Title: Re: Computers \\& Society - (nf) Article-I.D.: watmath.3553 Posted: Tue Sep 28 02:39:01 1982 Received: Tue Sep 28 02:38:55 1982 References: whuxlb.592 Hmm. I'm not sure you even NEED a new court system, though I'll admit that the current court system hasn't done a whole bunch to convince us of it's worth. All legal questions have some technical aspects to them. I suspect that the major question in the pollution argument is less technical than political and social: the problem in metering the damage done to the environ- ment due to someone's activities is fundamentally the problem of defining every individual's property rights to common property - in this case, the air. Put more bluntly, I should be able to take a civil action in court against a polluter for fouling my property - that property being the air I breathe. Philosophically, there is no difference between polluting the air and smashing my car. In either case, you have damaged something that belongs to me - and under the law, I get compensation. There are two difficulties: first, placing a dollar value on my property, and, second, ensuring that I have a convenient way to collect for damage. The former is undefined; the second does not exist. Rick.