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So you disagree with solar energy subsidies, then? Nations have other motives than economic efficiency. The state should lead the market to meet national goals
by programmarchy 8y ago
So you disagree with solar energy subsidies, then?
Nations have other motives than economic efficiency. The state should lead the market to meet national goals like clean energy infrastructure.
Coal subsidies are a way to increase military strength, or at least they used to be. War needs steel needs coal. That may no longer be the case with more advanced ways of creating steel without coal.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoI deny you the right to put words in my mouth. I also despise the "You said X, so you must support/oppose Y, then" argument schtick. In a parallel comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736465), I said that giving money to those unable to compete "seems almost certain to be wasteful". I chose those words very carefully. I was thinking about food security rather than steel for war, but I was very deliberately leaving an escape hatch that, yes, sometimes you actually do want the inefficiency for other reasons.
- programmarchy 8y agoTo overgeneralize that subsidies make the "economy as a whole... most people" less better off is to make a false statement. Market efficiency is too narrow a view to constitute coherent policy. In the face of an existential threat, it's inconsequential.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoAnd how much of policy is determined by an existential threat? I would assert: not much. Food/agriculture, defense, energy, but not much else. And therefore as a generalization, yes, "subsidies make the economy as a whole, and most people, less well off" is in fact a reasonable statement.