Midgley is perhaps among the most damaging engineers the world has known: he is responsible for both tetraethyl lead additives to gasoline (the subject of this article) and chloroflorcarbons, responsible for damaging the Earth's ozone layer:
This story is also a very strong argument toward both regulation of markets due to externalities (lead in gasoline and paint were defended vigorously by their respective industries for decades), and of the argument that there are some products and services which, despite being profitable to those dealing in them directly, impose a net negative cost to society as a whole.
Such activities are often difficult to recognize strictly because of the nature of externalities: they're diffuse, affecting many individuals, often incrementally in a small way, often indirectly and, in the case of environmental lead, with impacts lagging cause by decades.
This is also a very powerful case of negative impacts accruing largely due to socioeconomic circumstances not ascribable to the conscious and voluntary decisions of those directly affected: neither the infants and children exposed to lead, nor the victims of the criminal acts they transacted on a probabilistically greater scale, had entered into any sort of voluntary or legally recognized agreement with the manufacturers of leaded gas and paint. Punches a bit of a hole in that whole libertarian argument which promptly ... sinks like a lead balloon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr.
This story is also a very strong argument toward both regulation of markets due to externalities (lead in gasoline and paint were defended vigorously by their respective industries for decades), and of the argument that there are some products and services which, despite being profitable to those dealing in them directly, impose a net negative cost to society as a whole.
Such activities are often difficult to recognize strictly because of the nature of externalities: they're diffuse, affecting many individuals, often incrementally in a small way, often indirectly and, in the case of environmental lead, with impacts lagging cause by decades.
This is also a very powerful case of negative impacts accruing largely due to socioeconomic circumstances not ascribable to the conscious and voluntary decisions of those directly affected: neither the infants and children exposed to lead, nor the victims of the criminal acts they transacted on a probabilistically greater scale, had entered into any sort of voluntary or legally recognized agreement with the manufacturers of leaded gas and paint. Punches a bit of a hole in that whole libertarian argument which promptly ... sinks like a lead balloon.