Quote Originally Posted by Fisherking View Post
As to regulation: If it is a good idea, why must people be forced into it? Wouldn’t they naturally take it upon themselves to do like wise and protect what they have? Farmers don’t put salt on their fields to make them unusable. If people can agree that something needs preserved or looked after can they not care for it? Does it have to be government which intervenes and prohibits anyone from doing anything?
Because as a rule, people have limited intelligence, limited insight and place their own gain over that of others - including their future selves. Hence why there is a regulation to drive a car to reduce bystanders getting killed and car insurance for a system of recompense should a collision occur.

Everyone might think that the environment should be protected. But clearly there was not the interest in doing so that the living hell of the 1800s didn't occur; in many parts of the world where there are few regulations we would have to take people choose to live in a war torn wasteland since otherwise they'd all spontaneously become Switzerland... except for the mass exodus of people to countries that are massively regulated when surely the opposite should be true.