Hey Robert thanks for the reply. I think you’ve misunderstood ‘negative externalities’- I’ll try and explain with an example.

If I buy a car, and petrol, and drive that car, I pay a free market price (in an ideal, clean capitalist world). That price represents the scarcity of resources, and the sellers time and effort in creating the products, and getting them to me.

However, when I use the car (and petrol) I cause a significant negative impact on lots of other people. There are the pedestrians, who’s lives are incrementally shortened by the particulates in the exhaust that I release for each mile that I drive, and there are the people nearby who I disturb with my noise every time I drive by. There are the cyclist, who I will statistically hit every x-many million miles I drive — and there are other people far away, who’ll lose their homes in the next 100 years due to rising sea levels; again, cause incrementally by each mile I drive. How does free market capitalism factor that into the price I pay for petrol? Should there be an open market where all those effected negatively by my purchases and actions can ‘bid’ to stop me doing them, in a sense determining a free market price for ‘not polluting in their neighbourhood’?

I hope a specific example is easier to talk about.