Cristian Merola

I speak Spanish and can tell you this is a very malicious mistranslation. He’s not advocating polluting rivers. He’s describing a scenario to demonstrate why a company can be incentivized to pollute a river because there is no immediate economic cost to doing so (this is what he means by “where is the harm?”—literally, how can the harm be located and measured). He then explains how this changes if property rights for the river are clearly defined and free market pricing changes water from being priced at $0 to being treated like a scare resource. He ends by describing a free market solution to polluting. This “translation” is akin to you making an argument describing a hypothetical person’s incentives by saying: “A psychopath can act without guilt. ‘I live by my own rules’ because why not, he’s better than everyone” and some rando claims “Did you hear that? He said you shouldn’t feel guilty for committing murder because you’re better than everyone!”