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.
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.