Forgive me for failing to notice this comment until now Michael! Although this response might not be speaking directly to your idea of ‘robustly positive portfolios’, I do just want to point out that there is a fairly substantive sense in which in the Property Rights Theory as I have already described it, theory-agents ‘internalize negative (and positive) externalities.’ It’s just an instance of the Coase Theorem. Suppose that agent A is endowed with some decision right; some ways of exercising that decision right are regarded by agent B as harmful, whereas others are not; and B can pay A not to use the decision right in the ways that B regards as harmful. In this case, the opportunity cost to A of choosing to use the decision right in a way that B regards as harmful will include the cost of losing the side payment that A could have collected from B in return for using that decision right in a way that B does not regard as harmful. So, the negative externality is internalised.
Another potential issue with the approach you outline is extortion. Maybe B finds X extremely harmful, and A is (nearly) indifferent between it and another option Y, or even also somewhat prefers Y to X. A could threaten B with X to get resources from B (say to do much more of Y with). I don’t think we’d want to allow this, at least to a significant degree, e.g. A shouldn’t do (much) better than both X and Y this way, and B shouldn’t have to pay (much) more than the resource value of the difference between X and Y according to A.
Somehow I missed your reply, too, and I just came back here thinking to ask this question, forgetting that I already asked it. I was also thinking of B paying A, and I agree that works.
However, it seems like this can be unfair to B, because it imposes all the costs onto B. Basically, the polluters don’t pay for their pollution and are instead paid to pollute less or just polute freely, whichever the polluters prefer.
And suppose what A wants to do is very bad according to B, but there’s a second choice that’s nearly as good according to A, but neutral to B. B might not have enough to pay A for A’s second choice, but if we impose all of the costs (enough to completely offset the harms) onto A, then the harms will be prevented (or offset).
Or, you can imagine a fringe set of views whose most important goals are all harmful to the vast majority of views by credence. They can’t be paid off to not cause harm. And maybe it’s much cheaper to cause harm than to do good, so mitigating those harms could be costly. In such a case, I think you’d want to impose the externalities on the fringe views, or allow the supermajority to vote or pay to prevent the fringe views’ acts (perhaps mixing with a moral parliament, or something like a constitution).
On the other hand, maybe we should think of “not caring” as the default, and you don’t get to impose burdens on others to accommodate your concerns. And it seems like imposing the costs and benefits on those creating the externalities won’t work nicely, because it could give fringe views that find others’ top choices very harmful too many resources.
Forgive me for failing to notice this comment until now Michael! Although this response might not be speaking directly to your idea of ‘robustly positive portfolios’, I do just want to point out that there is a fairly substantive sense in which in the Property Rights Theory as I have already described it, theory-agents ‘internalize negative (and positive) externalities.’ It’s just an instance of the Coase Theorem. Suppose that agent A is endowed with some decision right; some ways of exercising that decision right are regarded by agent B as harmful, whereas others are not; and B can pay A not to use the decision right in the ways that B regards as harmful. In this case, the opportunity cost to A of choosing to use the decision right in a way that B regards as harmful will include the cost of losing the side payment that A could have collected from B in return for using that decision right in a way that B does not regard as harmful. So, the negative externality is internalised.
Another potential issue with the approach you outline is extortion. Maybe B finds X extremely harmful, and A is (nearly) indifferent between it and another option Y, or even also somewhat prefers Y to X. A could threaten B with X to get resources from B (say to do much more of Y with). I don’t think we’d want to allow this, at least to a significant degree, e.g. A shouldn’t do (much) better than both X and Y this way, and B shouldn’t have to pay (much) more than the resource value of the difference between X and Y according to A.
Somehow I missed your reply, too, and I just came back here thinking to ask this question, forgetting that I already asked it. I was also thinking of B paying A, and I agree that works.
However, it seems like this can be unfair to B, because it imposes all the costs onto B. Basically, the polluters don’t pay for their pollution and are instead paid to pollute less or just polute freely, whichever the polluters prefer.
And suppose what A wants to do is very bad according to B, but there’s a second choice that’s nearly as good according to A, but neutral to B. B might not have enough to pay A for A’s second choice, but if we impose all of the costs (enough to completely offset the harms) onto A, then the harms will be prevented (or offset).
Or, you can imagine a fringe set of views whose most important goals are all harmful to the vast majority of views by credence. They can’t be paid off to not cause harm. And maybe it’s much cheaper to cause harm than to do good, so mitigating those harms could be costly. In such a case, I think you’d want to impose the externalities on the fringe views, or allow the supermajority to vote or pay to prevent the fringe views’ acts (perhaps mixing with a moral parliament, or something like a constitution).
On the other hand, maybe we should think of “not caring” as the default, and you don’t get to impose burdens on others to accommodate your concerns. And it seems like imposing the costs and benefits on those creating the externalities won’t work nicely, because it could give fringe views that find others’ top choices very harmful too many resources.