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> free markets > externalities are untaxed. ?? Free markets are utterly and demonstrably unable to solve climate change.

saagarjha 6y ago
I believe the point was that fossil fuels operate in a market where they are subsidized, which is not really free.
- monadic2 6y ago
  Yea well "really" free markets don't actually exist so that distinction seems a little silly. I mean obviously the subsidies are bad but removing them isn't going to solve much of anything by itself.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    If you suddenly make using fossil fuels 10x more expensive people will switch off of them ASAP.
    - monadic2 6y ago
      > If you suddenly make using fossil fuels 10x more expensive people will switch off of them ASAP. Yea, this just isn't true. Rich people will just pay more for the same thing. Poor people will just have to pay more to even get to their jobs. It's pure laziness to put this on dogma rather than actually come up with decent policy to shape the market.
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        Rich people have money, but they aren't stupid: why would they throw their money away on nonrenewable energy when they can just switch to something cheaper?
        monadic2 6y ago
        > Rich people have money, but they aren't stupid: why would they throw their money away on nonrenewable energy when they can just switch to something cheaper? What alternative is there to a private jet or a yacht? No, you have to get the fear of prison (or worse) in them to get them to act in a socially rational manner.
        AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        To begin with, private jets and yachts are a trivial proportion of carbon emissions, so they're not really what matters. But to actually answer your question, battery-electric yachts or aviation powered by biofuels.
        monadic2 6y ago
        Sure, but it's rather indicative of larger use of carbon emitting technology. Neither of your suggested replacements actually exist in any meaningful way, and virtually every investment comes with significant CO2 emissions.
        AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        Battery-electric yachts and biofuels aren't popular because they're more expensive, not because there is any technological barrier to their existence. Make them the less expensive option and market demand for them increases.
        monadic2 6y ago
        Or, we could just make yachts illegal.
- klyrs 6y ago
  Politicians and legislation are purchased on the free market through lobbying. And then subsidies are merely a return on a smart investment. I'm not actually sure if what I just wrote is parody or not. Arguments about "free markets" are always weird like that, since everybody seems to work with a different definition and they don't really seem to exist
matthewmacleod 6y ago
I think the exact point that was energy production is a massively skewed, un-free market.
colinmhayes 6y ago
Not true. If we neutralize externalities the free market will make progress in climate change. Especially because solar and wind are already cheaper than fossil fuels. Probably won't be fast enough, but I don't think that is the same as utterly and demonstrably unable to solve climate change.
- specialist 6y ago
  You're conflating (dis)incentives with price discovery.
francisofascii 6y ago
"fair market" might be a better phrase.
p1mrx 6y ago
Free markets are good at minimizing cost. Currently, emitting CO₂ has no cost, so the market has no incentive to solve climate change.
dahfizz 6y ago
A lot of people seem to think free markets -> anarchy, which is a complete straw man. Prominent Libertarian economists such as Friedman[1] support governments dealing with externalities generally, and the carbon tax specifically. If all you know about X is the totemic version reverberating through anti-X echo chambers, you probably don't understand X. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2014/10/12/what-would-milton-friedman-do-about-climate-change-tax-carbon/#586d2e826928 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2014/10/12/what-wou...
- panopticon 6y ago
  > A lot of people seem to think free markets -> anarchy, which is a complete straw man. In American political discourse, this is exactly how the "free market" is defined by the political establishment. Taxing externalities is very unpopular among Republican and Libertarian politicians (Gary Johnson flirted with the idea of a carbon tax, but quickly withdrew support) and is relatively popular among Democrats and the Green Party. Which parties are the ones people associate with free markets? You can hem and haw about appropriate use of the term "free market" all you want, but calling colloquial usage a "straw man" is disingenuous.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    You're confusing the terms with the politics. There is a party which is anti-regulation because its constituents are business owners who incur the cost of it. But they incur the cost of both inefficient wasteful regulation and any legitimate pricing of externalities, so they oppose both. One is free markets and the other one isn't. Just because politicians representing oil producers support both "free markets" and subsidies for oil companies doesn't mean subsidies for oil companies are a component of free markets. It just means that politicians are hypocrites.
    - panopticon 6y ago
      I don't see how I'm confusing the terms. Republican and Libertarian politicians will tell you that the carbon tax (and other forms of taxing externalities) is antithetical to the "free market", and my point was you can't, in good faith, claim "straw man" when someone uses the term that most non-economists in America use. I also never claimed that subsidies were a component of the free market nor did I claim any politicians think so. I believe that's an actual straw man :)
samatman 6y ago
Spherical frictionless cows in a vacuum are unable to move. There's always thumbs on the scale. Grandparent is proposing to remove some thumbs (fossil fuel subsidies). Pigovian taxes are fairly popular among people who consider free markets to be valuable. This is because they retain $free = "can discover prices and conduct trade freely", a more valuable property than $free = "utterly free of any and all governance", which, like real communism, has never been tried.
rapind 6y ago
I think GP is saying that if companies had to cover the cost of externalities (impractical, how do you measure and price this?) a free market model could work. This is the basis for the carbon tax as I understand it.

saagarjha 6y ago

I believe the point was that fossil fuels operate in a market where they are subsidized, which is not really free.

monadic2 6y ago
Yea well "really" free markets don't actually exist so that distinction seems a little silly. I mean obviously the subsidies are bad but removing them isn't going to solve much of anything by itself.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  If you suddenly make using fossil fuels 10x more expensive people will switch off of them ASAP.
  - monadic2 6y ago
    > If you suddenly make using fossil fuels 10x more expensive people will switch off of them ASAP. Yea, this just isn't true. Rich people will just pay more for the same thing. Poor people will just have to pay more to even get to their jobs. It's pure laziness to put this on dogma rather than actually come up with decent policy to shape the market.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Rich people have money, but they aren't stupid: why would they throw their money away on nonrenewable energy when they can just switch to something cheaper?
      - monadic2 6y ago
        > Rich people have money, but they aren't stupid: why would they throw their money away on nonrenewable energy when they can just switch to something cheaper? What alternative is there to a private jet or a yacht? No, you have to get the fear of prison (or worse) in them to get them to act in a socially rational manner.
        AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        To begin with, private jets and yachts are a trivial proportion of carbon emissions, so they're not really what matters. But to actually answer your question, battery-electric yachts or aviation powered by biofuels.
        monadic2 6y ago
        Sure, but it's rather indicative of larger use of carbon emitting technology. Neither of your suggested replacements actually exist in any meaningful way, and virtually every investment comes with significant CO2 emissions.
        AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        Battery-electric yachts and biofuels aren't popular because they're more expensive, not because there is any technological barrier to their existence. Make them the less expensive option and market demand for them increases.
        monadic2 6y ago
        Or, we could just make yachts illegal.
klyrs 6y ago
Politicians and legislation are purchased on the free market through lobbying. And then subsidies are merely a return on a smart investment. I'm not actually sure if what I just wrote is parody or not. Arguments about "free markets" are always weird like that, since everybody seems to work with a different definition and they don't really seem to exist

matthewmacleod 6y ago

I think the exact point that was energy production is a massively skewed, un-free market.

colinmhayes 6y ago

Not true. If we neutralize externalities the free market will make progress in climate change. Especially because solar and wind are already cheaper than fossil fuels. Probably won't be fast enough, but I don't think that is the same as utterly and demonstrably unable to solve climate change.

specialist 6y ago
You're conflating (dis)incentives with price discovery.

francisofascii 6y ago

"fair market" might be a better phrase.

p1mrx 6y ago

Free markets are good at minimizing cost. Currently, emitting CO₂ has no cost, so the market has no incentive to solve climate change.

dahfizz 6y ago

A lot of people seem to think free markets -> anarchy, which is a complete straw man. Prominent Libertarian economists such as Friedman[1] support governments dealing with externalities generally, and the carbon tax specifically. If all you know about X is the totemic version reverberating through anti-X echo chambers, you probably don't understand X. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2014/10/12/what-would-milton-friedman-do-about-climate-change-tax-carbon/#586d2e826928 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2014/10/12/what-wou...

panopticon 6y ago
> A lot of people seem to think free markets -> anarchy, which is a complete straw man. In American political discourse, this is exactly how the "free market" is defined by the political establishment. Taxing externalities is very unpopular among Republican and Libertarian politicians (Gary Johnson flirted with the idea of a carbon tax, but quickly withdrew support) and is relatively popular among Democrats and the Green Party. Which parties are the ones people associate with free markets? You can hem and haw about appropriate use of the term "free market" all you want, but calling colloquial usage a "straw man" is disingenuous.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  You're confusing the terms with the politics. There is a party which is anti-regulation because its constituents are business owners who incur the cost of it. But they incur the cost of both inefficient wasteful regulation and any legitimate pricing of externalities, so they oppose both. One is free markets and the other one isn't. Just because politicians representing oil producers support both "free markets" and subsidies for oil companies doesn't mean subsidies for oil companies are a component of free markets. It just means that politicians are hypocrites.
  - panopticon 6y ago
    I don't see how I'm confusing the terms. Republican and Libertarian politicians will tell you that the carbon tax (and other forms of taxing externalities) is antithetical to the "free market", and my point was you can't, in good faith, claim "straw man" when someone uses the term that most non-economists in America use. I also never claimed that subsidies were a component of the free market nor did I claim any politicians think so. I believe that's an actual straw man :)

samatman 6y ago

Spherical frictionless cows in a vacuum are unable to move. There's always thumbs on the scale. Grandparent is proposing to remove some thumbs (fossil fuel subsidies). Pigovian taxes are fairly popular among people who consider free markets to be valuable. This is because they retain $free = "can discover prices and conduct trade freely", a more valuable property than $free = "utterly free of any and all governance", which, like real communism, has never been tried.

rapind 6y ago

I think GP is saying that if companies had to cover the cost of externalities (impractical, how do you measure and price this?) a free market model could work. This is the basis for the carbon tax as I understand it.