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Capitalism has no problem with pricing the environment. It is governments which have prevented it from doing so. Privatize the skies, oceans and lands and you w

by ancap 10y ago

Capitalism has no problem with pricing the environment. It is governments which have prevented it from doing so. Privatize the skies, oceans and lands and you would clearly see the prices come into play. Now we could argue about the merits of doing such, but claiming a man tied to a chair is incapable of walking is incorrect.

CWuestefeld 10y ago
This is correct. The problem isn't capitalism, except in that we don't have enough of it. Our framework for private property won't recognize rights in air or running water, and so they become an easy sink for externalities. If someone contaminates your land (say, by spilling heating oil), there's a well-defined path for recovering the damages. But since we don't recognize an owner of air or water, when those are contaminated, there's nobody who can claim damages. By not fully recognizing property rights, we lose the ability to prevent polluters from externalizing their costs. EDIT: s/Or/Our/
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  The reason we don't recognize ownership of the air above your land is because we have no way to precisely track its flow and pollution. Land is easy to track, it doesn't go anywhere. It's a technical problem. Capitalism can't value something if it isn't capable of measuring it.
jwatte 10y ago
First: "captitalism" means "the ability of private property owners to gate access to their property to others." What you're talking about is "market economy," which is not the same thing. Second: For a market economy to lead to the optimal outcome, it requires that rational actors make decisions based on perfect information. We have large swathes of society set up to reduce the access to "perfect information," under the guises of "trade secrets" and "privacy" and a host of other values. In fact, as soon as there is any information assymetry, there is a very strong incentive to slant the market to favor the information holder, which leads to much less efficiency. We can fight that either by regulating, or by making it a crime to hide any information. Until now, we have chosen the former. I doubt that you are arguing that the latter would be better. That's the reality of the world we live in today. Third: For the market economy to work, we also need "rational actors." We know from psychology that humans are nowhere near rational, and often act counter to their own self-interest. We also know from sociology that humans in larger groups are often easily misled from their own best-benefit path.

by ancap 10y ago

CWuestefeld 10y ago

This is correct. The problem isn't capitalism, except in that we don't have enough of it. Our framework for private property won't recognize rights in air or running water, and so they become an easy sink for externalities. If someone contaminates your land (say, by spilling heating oil), there's a well-defined path for recovering the damages. But since we don't recognize an owner of air or water, when those are contaminated, there's nobody who can claim damages. By not fully recognizing property rights, we lose the ability to prevent polluters from externalizing their costs. EDIT: s/Or/Our/

sliverstorm 10y ago
The reason we don't recognize ownership of the air above your land is because we have no way to precisely track its flow and pollution. Land is easy to track, it doesn't go anywhere. It's a technical problem. Capitalism can't value something if it isn't capable of measuring it.

jwatte 10y ago

First: "captitalism" means "the ability of private property owners to gate access to their property to others." What you're talking about is "market economy," which is not the same thing. Second: For a market economy to lead to the optimal outcome, it requires that rational actors make decisions based on perfect information. We have large swathes of society set up to reduce the access to "perfect information," under the guises of "trade secrets" and "privacy" and a host of other values. In fact, as soon as there is any information assymetry, there is a very strong incentive to slant the market to favor the information holder, which leads to much less efficiency. We can fight that either by regulating, or by making it a crime to hide any information. Until now, we have chosen the former. I doubt that you are arguing that the latter would be better. That's the reality of the world we live in today. Third: For the market economy to work, we also need "rational actors." We know from psychology that humans are nowhere near rational, and often act counter to their own self-interest. We also know from sociology that humans in larger groups are often easily misled from their own best-benefit path.