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If the market decided, these small towns with all their centralized services wouldn't last. Either people would move from rural to urban areas or private, decen

If the market decided, these small towns with all their centralized services wouldn't last. Either people would move from rural to urban areas or private, decentralized, and economically viable services would develop.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
If the market decided, the planet wouldn't last, because markets are absolutely incapable of long-term strategic planning - long-term meaning half-century or more. When your accounting system includes biases that specifically exclude certain kinds of value - i.e. anything currently labelled an externality - there's going to be a hard limit on the rationality and foresight of any decisions that rely on it.
- orthecreedence 7y ago
  So my question is this, then: are there ways of meeting demands and distributing goods that a) price in externalities b) are not centally-planned? Anarcho-capitalists will tell you that by privatizing everything, you eliminate externalities. But taking their logic further, the only way to prevent pollution or climate change is essentially millions of people suing each other. I don't think I've heard many ideas that are quite as stupid. The thing is, I'm not a fan of markets and I'm not a fan central planning. I like the Marxian ideas of building/distributing things for-use (aka, at-cost as opposed to at market value), but then that still doesn't account for externalities. Even in a system where banking is socialized and allocations are made democratically, you still can't easily price in externalities. So what would a system look like that priced pollution, carbon output, and cost of disposal/recycling of each product into the product itself? The only thing I can think of is government regulation, but even that seems to work via disincentives vs incentives, so you're constantly having to police people to do the right thing. Is this the only way?
- g_langenderfer 7y ago
  Markets are incapable of optimizing against externalities. For example, no one owns the air, so no one pays for the exhaust produced by their cars as they drive to work. If there were air rights-say every property owner gets rights to the air one mile up from their property-, the holders could sue polluters for the damage they cause.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

If the market decided, the planet wouldn't last, because markets are absolutely incapable of long-term strategic planning - long-term meaning half-century or more. When your accounting system includes biases that specifically exclude certain kinds of value - i.e. anything currently labelled an externality - there's going to be a hard limit on the rationality and foresight of any decisions that rely on it.

orthecreedence 7y ago
So my question is this, then: are there ways of meeting demands and distributing goods that a) price in externalities b) are not centally-planned? Anarcho-capitalists will tell you that by privatizing everything, you eliminate externalities. But taking their logic further, the only way to prevent pollution or climate change is essentially millions of people suing each other. I don't think I've heard many ideas that are quite as stupid. The thing is, I'm not a fan of markets and I'm not a fan central planning. I like the Marxian ideas of building/distributing things for-use (aka, at-cost as opposed to at market value), but then that still doesn't account for externalities. Even in a system where banking is socialized and allocations are made democratically, you still can't easily price in externalities. So what would a system look like that priced pollution, carbon output, and cost of disposal/recycling of each product into the product itself? The only thing I can think of is government regulation, but even that seems to work via disincentives vs incentives, so you're constantly having to police people to do the right thing. Is this the only way?
g_langenderfer 7y ago
Markets are incapable of optimizing against externalities. For example, no one owns the air, so no one pays for the exhaust produced by their cars as they drive to work. If there were air rights-say every property owner gets rights to the air one mile up from their property-, the holders could sue polluters for the damage they cause.