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Dictator? I simply said the market/and economists can't price in damage to our environment and won't. If you feel any regulation on a corporation is being a dic

Dictator? I simply said the market/and economists can't price in damage to our environment and won't. If you feel any regulation on a corporation is being a dictator than maybe the answer is yes in your context. We've had to dictate the direction many times in the past when industry has become to exploitative of either labor or resources.

ThomPete 7y ago
The latest major scale dictation was Chinas 1 child policy and that lead to a bunch of different problems. And what businesses are being exploitative? 95% of what you take for granted is made by using fossil fuels whether, tires, medicine, food, concrete, cement, steel manufactoring, computers, machines, contact lenses, textiles, pesticides, plumbing, housing, damns, solar cells, windmills, the internet and I could go on. What are you suggesting we dictate and what price are you ready to pay for this? Are you also going to go to war with china when they won't stop pulling their population out of poverty. You speak as if the environment was this perfect non-hostile place before we came along, but reality is it's the other way around. Nature is hostile and dangerous and we've used fossil fuels to make it less dangerous. The positive externalities if fossil fuels far outweigh the negative. That doesn't mean we should continue using fossil fuels but we better have a realistic alterantive IMO.
radicalbyte 7y ago
The market certainly can be regulated in such a way as to effectively price in the costs. If we can have companies following constructs such as Sarbanes-Oxley then they can most certainly follow the constraints of environmental constructs. Unless you mean that certain vested interests will bankroll politicians to cut regulation? Then yes, that is a very big problems (see: Koch industries buying their way out of environmental legislation) but not insurmountable.
- ianai 7y ago
  So I don’t have the answer here. I do like Jay Inslee’s argument for simply making mandates to cut emissions and carbon usage. Ie mandating ever increasingly efficient fuel ratings on vehicles. He says that’s an easier policy change than forcing costs on people through laws or created markets that can be undone in a following cycle. It’s all got to be on the table and considered though. The entire energy footprint of almost all of the industrial revolution through to current needs to be undone in some way. There’s an inherent requirement on the energy that must be expended in order to do that, by the laws of thermodynamics/physics.

ThomPete 7y ago

The latest major scale dictation was Chinas 1 child policy and that lead to a bunch of different problems. And what businesses are being exploitative? 95% of what you take for granted is made by using fossil fuels whether, tires, medicine, food, concrete, cement, steel manufactoring, computers, machines, contact lenses, textiles, pesticides, plumbing, housing, damns, solar cells, windmills, the internet and I could go on. What are you suggesting we dictate and what price are you ready to pay for this? Are you also going to go to war with china when they won't stop pulling their population out of poverty. You speak as if the environment was this perfect non-hostile place before we came along, but reality is it's the other way around. Nature is hostile and dangerous and we've used fossil fuels to make it less dangerous. The positive externalities if fossil fuels far outweigh the negative. That doesn't mean we should continue using fossil fuels but we better have a realistic alterantive IMO.

radicalbyte 7y ago

The market certainly can be regulated in such a way as to effectively price in the costs. If we can have companies following constructs such as Sarbanes-Oxley then they can most certainly follow the constraints of environmental constructs. Unless you mean that certain vested interests will bankroll politicians to cut regulation? Then yes, that is a very big problems (see: Koch industries buying their way out of environmental legislation) but not insurmountable.

ianai 7y ago
So I don’t have the answer here. I do like Jay Inslee’s argument for simply making mandates to cut emissions and carbon usage. Ie mandating ever increasingly efficient fuel ratings on vehicles. He says that’s an easier policy change than forcing costs on people through laws or created markets that can be undone in a following cycle. It’s all got to be on the table and considered though. The entire energy footprint of almost all of the industrial revolution through to current needs to be undone in some way. There’s an inherent requirement on the energy that must be expended in order to do that, by the laws of thermodynamics/physics.