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Do libertarians not believe in externalities? There is a free lunch! It's the other costs of fossil-fuels (political instability, pollution, global warming, r

by chwahoo 16y ago

Do libertarians not believe in externalities? There is a free lunch! It's the other costs of fossil-fuels (political instability, pollution, global warming, risks of environmental disaster) that are not reflected in the price of oil and so are unable to influence development of energy alternatives!

eru 16y ago
How about taxing follil-fuels to internalize those externalities? Seems better to me than picking winners by subsidizing certain sexy technologies.
- chwahoo 16y ago
  I think there is a place for both! The latter is certainly more politically tenable ;). But seriously, funding research doesn't need to be thought of as "picking winners." For example, I think the NSF does an admirable job of funding longer-term research using peer review to decide which ideas are funded. Some wild ideas are funded when proposal authors can make a good case for their research, others are not. Many ideas fail, but the externalities of the research process are positive - Ph.D. students learn to be effective researchers and many will contribute later in industry. But I agree with much of your statement: 1. Governments shouldn't pick the winners, particularly too early in the process. (but I don't have a problem with funding promising ideas to promote their development) 2. I also agree that a fossil-fuel tax would be a good way of enlisting the power of private industry to find good solutions to the problem. But in the short term, it would surely draw the ire of those unaccustomed to paying for these externalities.
  - eru 16y ago
    Just propose to pay out the proceeds of the tax equally among all citizens. That should be popular.
  - sprout 16y ago
    >1. Governments shouldn't pick the winners, particularly too early in the process. If we do that, we only end up with things that can reasonably be expected to work. And things that can reasonably be expected to work rarely change the world.
    - kiba 16y ago
      It does not follow that no government research equals no research into the imaginative. There isn't anything preventing millionaires and billionaires from funding their own space agencies or space programs.
      - eru 16y ago
        You may have misunderstood the sprout's comment.
      - stretchwithme 16y ago
        No, it just means less imaginative research. And more research by people good at filling out paperwork and kissing ass. These are not the iconoclasts for the most part.
    - brg 16y ago
      This is incorrect, and as a counter-example I point the fact that millions of dollars every year are "invested" towards perpetual motion machines. There are three large organizations with enough funding to construct, say, a super-collider; government, church, and corporations in order of influence and funding. So since the pot is bigger, it is simpler for someone to apply to NSF for funding than petition MegaCorp. But yet many large corporations fund ongoing basic research. New directions are been explored in networking theory, mineral exploration, and medicine every day. Perhaps the main difference is that governments spend significantly towards weapons development, and as a corollary protection from new weapons. This has produced innovations such as nuclear power, biological engineering, ARPANET, and rocketry. Corporations are generally excluded from weapons research unless granted specific permission from a government, and hence were excluded from first developing these innovations.
kiba 16y ago
Do libertarians not believe in externalities? Some libertarians like to cry rivers about our roads today because of the traffic cogging that happens since congestions are not priced. So you want to tell me that libertarians do not believe in externalities?
- chwahoo 16y ago
  I meant the question seriously and your answer was informative. However I suspect your example really stems from an argument that "common property" like roads should be minimized and that a private owner would better price road use. I think libertarians would not argue that the government should create a fancy new road-taxing system. Correct me if I'm wrong. Many other externalities are harder to privatize. For example social costs/benefits of hiring or firing employees, of providing employees with insurance or not, of destroying local businesses with everyday low prices and shipping the proceeds to China, of promoting education and/or research, of taking advantage of peoples' poor choices in credit use, of selling highly-addictive drugs, of polluting, of destroying the Gulf's tourism and fishing industries, of global warming, etc. I doubt libertarians advocate private ownership of the atmosphere. I certainly don't like the idea of the government micromanaging every conceivable, nebulous externality, but I think there is a time and a place for regulation, taxes, government investment, government subsidies, etc. as tools for dealing with the most troublesome systemic problems.
  - stretchwithme 16y ago
    The time and place for government action is when individual rights are being violated. A right is something that authorizes the use of force to defend it. You have the right to live, to breath and to own property. You're free to buy insurance, promote education, bargain with people who are dumber than you, use substances or sell them to others. You have the right to hire and fire, and capriciously change where you buy your gasoline. But you don't have the right to force others to fund your pet projects or make their decisions for them if you think they're being dumb. And we gain no special right to do so just because a group of us get together and decide to do so. Our system is stronger specifically when individuals are free to disagree and to try many competing ideas without a central approving authority. But, yes, some things are inescapably shared like the atmosphere and we must cooperate on protecting it.
stretchwithme 16y ago
There is no free lunch. Unless of course the government is providing it. It is the government spends hundreds of billions keeping oil cheap and stable. And its doubtful that its efforts to do so actually work and may actually make things worse. We're fighting 2 wars over this right now. I say let the market work and stop subsidizing oil. And we should also stop subsidizing the automobile as well. If we paid the real costs of roads directly, we'd have made much better, less wasteful choices. Regarding pollution, it is the proper function of government to protect individual rights, including the right to breath and not have pollution dumped on your property. And it is the proper role of government to keep people from destroying our ability to live on this planet. Its just another form of self defense, which is your right. It is not, however, our right to shift the costs of our individual choices to other people. And that is what our government has been doing in so many areas. Doing it even more is not the answer.

by chwahoo 16y ago

eru 16y ago

How about taxing follil-fuels to internalize those externalities? Seems better to me than picking winners by subsidizing certain sexy technologies.

chwahoo 16y ago
I think there is a place for both! The latter is certainly more politically tenable ;). But seriously, funding research doesn't need to be thought of as "picking winners." For example, I think the NSF does an admirable job of funding longer-term research using peer review to decide which ideas are funded. Some wild ideas are funded when proposal authors can make a good case for their research, others are not. Many ideas fail, but the externalities of the research process are positive - Ph.D. students learn to be effective researchers and many will contribute later in industry. But I agree with much of your statement: 1. Governments shouldn't pick the winners, particularly too early in the process. (but I don't have a problem with funding promising ideas to promote their development) 2. I also agree that a fossil-fuel tax would be a good way of enlisting the power of private industry to find good solutions to the problem. But in the short term, it would surely draw the ire of those unaccustomed to paying for these externalities.
- eru 16y ago
  Just propose to pay out the proceeds of the tax equally among all citizens. That should be popular.
- sprout 16y ago
  >1. Governments shouldn't pick the winners, particularly too early in the process. If we do that, we only end up with things that can reasonably be expected to work. And things that can reasonably be expected to work rarely change the world.
  - kiba 16y ago
    It does not follow that no government research equals no research into the imaginative. There isn't anything preventing millionaires and billionaires from funding their own space agencies or space programs.
    - eru 16y ago
      You may have misunderstood the sprout's comment.
    - stretchwithme 16y ago
      No, it just means less imaginative research. And more research by people good at filling out paperwork and kissing ass. These are not the iconoclasts for the most part.
  - brg 16y ago
    This is incorrect, and as a counter-example I point the fact that millions of dollars every year are "invested" towards perpetual motion machines. There are three large organizations with enough funding to construct, say, a super-collider; government, church, and corporations in order of influence and funding. So since the pot is bigger, it is simpler for someone to apply to NSF for funding than petition MegaCorp. But yet many large corporations fund ongoing basic research. New directions are been explored in networking theory, mineral exploration, and medicine every day. Perhaps the main difference is that governments spend significantly towards weapons development, and as a corollary protection from new weapons. This has produced innovations such as nuclear power, biological engineering, ARPANET, and rocketry. Corporations are generally excluded from weapons research unless granted specific permission from a government, and hence were excluded from first developing these innovations.

kiba 16y ago

Do libertarians not believe in externalities? Some libertarians like to cry rivers about our roads today because of the traffic cogging that happens since congestions are not priced. So you want to tell me that libertarians do not believe in externalities?

chwahoo 16y ago
I meant the question seriously and your answer was informative. However I suspect your example really stems from an argument that "common property" like roads should be minimized and that a private owner would better price road use. I think libertarians would not argue that the government should create a fancy new road-taxing system. Correct me if I'm wrong. Many other externalities are harder to privatize. For example social costs/benefits of hiring or firing employees, of providing employees with insurance or not, of destroying local businesses with everyday low prices and shipping the proceeds to China, of promoting education and/or research, of taking advantage of peoples' poor choices in credit use, of selling highly-addictive drugs, of polluting, of destroying the Gulf's tourism and fishing industries, of global warming, etc. I doubt libertarians advocate private ownership of the atmosphere. I certainly don't like the idea of the government micromanaging every conceivable, nebulous externality, but I think there is a time and a place for regulation, taxes, government investment, government subsidies, etc. as tools for dealing with the most troublesome systemic problems.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  The time and place for government action is when individual rights are being violated. A right is something that authorizes the use of force to defend it. You have the right to live, to breath and to own property. You're free to buy insurance, promote education, bargain with people who are dumber than you, use substances or sell them to others. You have the right to hire and fire, and capriciously change where you buy your gasoline. But you don't have the right to force others to fund your pet projects or make their decisions for them if you think they're being dumb. And we gain no special right to do so just because a group of us get together and decide to do so. Our system is stronger specifically when individuals are free to disagree and to try many competing ideas without a central approving authority. But, yes, some things are inescapably shared like the atmosphere and we must cooperate on protecting it.

stretchwithme 16y ago

There is no free lunch. Unless of course the government is providing it. It is the government spends hundreds of billions keeping oil cheap and stable. And its doubtful that its efforts to do so actually work and may actually make things worse. We're fighting 2 wars over this right now. I say let the market work and stop subsidizing oil. And we should also stop subsidizing the automobile as well. If we paid the real costs of roads directly, we'd have made much better, less wasteful choices. Regarding pollution, it is the proper function of government to protect individual rights, including the right to breath and not have pollution dumped on your property. And it is the proper role of government to keep people from destroying our ability to live on this planet. Its just another form of self defense, which is your right. It is not, however, our right to shift the costs of our individual choices to other people. And that is what our government has been doing in so many areas. Doing it even more is not the answer.