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I'm a Musk fan, but not a fan of his desire to accelerate sustainability on the backs of the taxpayer. Malthus also predicted doom and gloom and we saw plenty o

by webXL 10y ago

I'm a Musk fan, but not a fan of his desire to accelerate sustainability on the backs of the taxpayer. Malthus also predicted doom and gloom and we saw plenty of market forces handle that. Government regulation has increased tremendously, so perhaps the days of leaving it up to the market are over, but from a public policy standpoint, it's incredibly risky leaving a "sustainable future" up to one company.

deleted 10y ago
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schiffern 10y ago
> Malthus also predicted doom and gloom and we saw plenty of market forces handle that. So far all I've seen is market forces switching from renewable food production (soil and in-situ biological generated fertility) to nonrenewable (fossil fertilizers trucked in from "somewhere else"), rampant soil loss, unsustainable acquifer pumping and salination, water eutrophication, wealth consolidation in food production, and soil erosion on a scale never seen before. Ironic that you should bring up subsidies, because globally industrial agriculture is almost entirely a subsidized (yet economically futile) endeavor. I know it's heresy to question Borlag et. al and the "green" revolution, but far from "handling i," market forces have merely enlarged and externalized the scale of the destruction.
- webXL 10y ago
  Most of those problems stem from the lack of property rights. If a company cannot sustain its business with what it owns, then it should go out of business. However, non-market forces prop up these unsustainable businesses or turn a blind eye to the destruction of the commons. They "steal" from the rest of us via subsidies or abuse of public resources. Those are not market failures, contrary to popular opinion.
  - schiffern 10y ago
    Things like the atmosphere, food web, water cycle etc. are fundamentally different than ownership of physical objects or even land. They are not confined to a particular place, and being fundamentally diffuse transactions and interactions with them are not obviously subject to singular control. Even if you break them down into components the bookkeeping and transaction cost is far too high. Saying that they're not market failures says more about the narrow definition of "market" than about the workings and evolution of capitalist systems (including both visible systems like farms and factories and invisible systems like laws and power structures).

by webXL 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

schiffern 10y ago

> Malthus also predicted doom and gloom and we saw plenty of market forces handle that. So far all I've seen is market forces switching from renewable food production (soil and in-situ biological generated fertility) to nonrenewable (fossil fertilizers trucked in from "somewhere else"), rampant soil loss, unsustainable acquifer pumping and salination, water eutrophication, wealth consolidation in food production, and soil erosion on a scale never seen before. Ironic that you should bring up subsidies, because globally industrial agriculture is almost entirely a subsidized (yet economically futile) endeavor. I know it's heresy to question Borlag et. al and the "green" revolution, but far from "handling i," market forces have merely enlarged and externalized the scale of the destruction.

webXL 10y ago
Most of those problems stem from the lack of property rights. If a company cannot sustain its business with what it owns, then it should go out of business. However, non-market forces prop up these unsustainable businesses or turn a blind eye to the destruction of the commons. They "steal" from the rest of us via subsidies or abuse of public resources. Those are not market failures, contrary to popular opinion.
- schiffern 10y ago
  Things like the atmosphere, food web, water cycle etc. are fundamentally different than ownership of physical objects or even land. They are not confined to a particular place, and being fundamentally diffuse transactions and interactions with them are not obviously subject to singular control. Even if you break them down into components the bookkeeping and transaction cost is far too high. Saying that they're not market failures says more about the narrow definition of "market" than about the workings and evolution of capitalist systems (including both visible systems like farms and factories and invisible systems like laws and power structures).