Picture two businesses. Business A produces a product whose waste byproducts get tossed into the public reservoir at lower price compared to Business B, which doesn’t pollute the public reservoir. Also, business A owns 2.5 of the three branches of government and pollution is the big free lunch they’re handing out for free.
Business A argues that free enterprise will collapse without the fiction that its wastes have no costs. Actually, the opposite is true. Free enterprise absolutely rests on a foundation of costs being known and accounted for. What throws sand into the gears of an economy is phony accounting employed to hide costs.