That Which Has Costs Often Has Benefits

Here's a letter to the Washington Post:

Deborah Hahn writes: "Until the damaged BP well in the Gulf of Mexico is capped, please publish daily a front-page picture of wildlife covered in oil, in misery, dying, unable to be cleaned" (Letters, June 26).  Ms. Hahn believes that "such pictures are needed to educate the public" about the "horrors of what oil accidents do to our fellow creatures."

Oil accidents are indeed horrible.  But they are the very visible downside of a product with an enormous...