How can private-property rights help solve environmental problems? The environmental problem that I will talk about is pollution. Now there are many types of pollution. There’s just throwing trash on the ground (which is what most people think about when they hear the word pollution), there’s air pollution, noise pollution, hunting pollution, and many more. How can private-property rights help with pollution though? I’ll explain hunting pollution, because it’s the most understandable.  Imagine that there’s a forest that nobody owns with lots of animals. A lot of people are going to take their guns and go shoot all those animals, because nobody owns the property so no one owns the animals. But there’s this one person that thinks “If I only shoot a little bit of animals this year and leave enough animals to reproduce, then there will be enough animals for hunting next year.” That guys an idiot. Any animals that he doesn’t shoot, someone else will. But what if that guy owns the forest. He can make a number of animals that everyone can shoot, then there will be enough for next year. 

What have been some of the problems with the federal prohibition on certain drugs? Prohibition is a law that makes it illegal to sell certain drugs. What’s the problem? According to DocsTeach, “Prohibition was enacted to protect individuals and families from the “scourge of drunkenness.” However, it had unintended consequences including: a rise in organized crime associated with the illegal production and sale of alcohol, an increase in smuggling, and a decline in tax revenue.” So it was a complete failure.