4 ms·

I don't really get this libertarian-like argument (no idea if you are libertarian or not, it just sounds like what I would hear from them). You are relying on t

I don't really get this libertarian-like argument (no idea if you are libertarian or not, it just sounds like what I would hear from them). You are relying on the society for everything. Do you also make your own car? build your own roads? Go to harvest coffee beans to make your own coffee? Do you get water from the city or from your own means? And what about petrol and gas? > Identifying a bug in a system isn't an argument for that bug to persist. It's not a bug, concentration makes economy of scale possible, that's why everything is like this. Spread-out cities have traffic issues, small factories create more expensive products, small farms struggle to negotiate selling prices, small shops cannot afford to buy in bulk... Concentration is what makes everything cheaper.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
I can choose who I buy my car from. I have governance over politicians who manage my roads through voting and the political process. I can pick where I buy my coffee from. With rooftop solar, I can pick clean energy over the natural gas fired generation my city picked for local residents instead of the slightly more expensive clean nuclear the local utility was previously providing (Illinois allows local government to aggregate citizens into a bundle and obtain power from an independent generator, and they typically only care about cost, not externalities). I agree with you that concentration and scale does drive down costs; but it's myopic to look at only the raw cost alone (similar to how we don't price carbon into fossil generation costs). We subsidize food production in the US. Why? National security of our food supply, not being behold to other countries for our food. We should never be enabling the creation of monopolies (to your point about the necessity of centralization), but the distribution of power with citizens. In scenarios where centralization is unavoidable, rigorous governance must be implemented (which does not occur with for profit natural monopolies).

toomuchtodo 8y ago

I can choose who I buy my car from. I have governance over politicians who manage my roads through voting and the political process. I can pick where I buy my coffee from. With rooftop solar, I can pick clean energy over the natural gas fired generation my city picked for local residents instead of the slightly more expensive clean nuclear the local utility was previously providing (Illinois allows local government to aggregate citizens into a bundle and obtain power from an independent generator, and they typically only care about cost, not externalities). I agree with you that concentration and scale does drive down costs; but it's myopic to look at only the raw cost alone (similar to how we don't price carbon into fossil generation costs). We subsidize food production in the US. Why? National security of our food supply, not being behold to other countries for our food. We should never be enabling the creation of monopolies (to your point about the necessity of centralization), but the distribution of power with citizens. In scenarios where centralization is unavoidable, rigorous governance must be implemented (which does not occur with for profit natural monopolies).