Here’s a link to a story - Mafia 'sank ships of toxic waste' - reported on the BBC, that I found amazing. It clearly demonstrates why the free market in goods and services really shouldn’t be allowed to be totally free. Before food safety legislation got strict, Victorian spice merchants used to adulterate their spices with lead powder to make more money, thereby poisoning people. In a similar way, it now appears as if the Calabrian Mafia got into the highly lucrative toxic waste disposal business and DUMPED RADIOACTIVE WASTE INTO THE MEDITERRANEAN by scuttling ships full of the stuff!!
Next time you hear some ideologically driven free marketeer whingeing about government red tape cramping his business, just imagine what the world would be like without red tape…
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Of course, the biggest companies sometimes also act as if they are above the law and the video below is a trailer to a new film about the environmental impact of the oil industry in Amazonia. Chevron and Texaco are in the firing line. As peak oil starts to grab hold of the world economy, there will be increasingly desperate and damaging attempts made by the oil industry to exploit ever less suitable oil fields in areas they would never have touched before. Just another reason for the world to go green ASAP.
