Photos taken by the EPA reveal America before pollution was regulated
> None of the 35 photos are pretty (other than the film-photo haze), but it's worth remembering what US cities used to be like before we cared what we put into the air, soil, and water.<p>IMO, this is disingenuous. I think that there's a very good argument made against federal agencies that are run by bureaucrats with zero skin in the game. These kinds of sytems are also ripe for corruption. The counter-claim that there's no way local governments could come together and offer a comparable solution is dubious. Fun fact: the EPA spends ~16 million tax dollars a <i>day</i>.<p>As a side note, it's also interesting how HN has sort of politically migrated from moderate-center-libertarianism (when I first started reading it) to left-leaning-federalism.