Well, if the "pure" libertarians are to be believed the media and a new class of conscious consumer will browbeat and/or fiscally starve the offenders into taking responsibility for their mess. They make a good case for it but I'm not sure I buy it.

Personally, I see that as an area where the government has an important role to play, provided they are limited to enforcing a reasonable, uniform effluent tax or something. Just as long as they don't have a proactive regulatory mega-bureaucracy or the means to ever build one.

Yep, that looks pretty nasty. Then again, a lot of developing economies that rely on heavy industry produce scenes like that, regs or no. When you're poor you don't get a choice.

What I see in these scenes is a very good reason to create a more business-friendly environment in the US. We used to have a manufacturing economy, but we don't now because nobody wants to buy our expensive stuff. Even if we cut most of the environmental regs out, we still wouldn't be building factories. Drive enough business away, though, and the standard of living in this country might just drop low enough that we could go back to those days.

One point about this. They may have lax or non-existent environmental regulations but embarrassing the government (like when such pictures are posted) can result in execution for the polluter. That's about the toughest government "regulation" I've ever heard of.

Well you did provide a good example of applying legislation where it shouildn't be applied rather than a silly and contradictory set of examples.
In case you didn't notice GRs first gripe was unrelated to the issue he was moaning about and what he was moaning about isn't really related to the government agency he wants to moan about.
The EPA closure complaint was about Occupational Health and Safety and his issue with the child proof container is down to the Consumer Protection Agency.
It is why his posts made no sense as safety in the workplace is a very important function of the government as ultimately they pick up the bill when things go wrong, and the CPA legislation is a result of the public lobbying politicians to protect children.
In short his arguement amounted to encouraging government waste and getting politicians to ignore the electorate.

Once there were two guys, Al and Bob, who set themselves on fire by pouring gas into a lawn mower while smoking cigars. Now, both Al and Bob lived in Census Tract 13 of Fairfax County, Virginia. Conservative estimates indicate that there are at least 2 Als and 2 Bobs in every Census Tract. There are 257 Census Tracts in Fairfax County. Consequently, there are likely, at a minimum, 1,028 Als and Bobs in Fairfax County. As there are 95 counties (and 39 independent cities) in Virginia, there are mostly likely 137,752 Als and Bobs in Virginia. Of course, there are 49 other states besides Virginia, so it's safe to assume that there at at the very least 6,887,600 Als and Bobs living in the United States. Moreover, that's just Als and Bobs, once we take into account male names beginning with the other 24 letters of the alphabet, we can estimate that no less than 165,302,400 persons may potentially fall victim to insufficiently regulated gas cans, many of them mere children!!!

And so on....

Indeed.

Sufficient regulation in that case is some writing on the can, you will see it on the can just like you can see it at the gas station.

Damn silly regulations eh,
So ....
blimey all that writing just because the public can have a tendancy to be very stupid.
Whoda thunk something as harmless as petrol could be dangerous and need regulations.