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Idk how you go from free-market supporters think X to "free market supporters believe climate change isn't real". First, I'm a free market supporter. So are yo

Idk how you go from free-market supporters think X to "free market supporters believe climate change isn't real". First, I'm a free market supporter. So are you. You like buying stuff, and think companies should exist and all that right? And you believe in climate change, right? Second, most often the more zealous free market supporters don't tend to think that climate change isn't real but that the solution lies in market solutions instead of government intervention. Personally, I disagree, but I don't think it's fair to just assert that people like me don't "believe in climate change" by supporting free markets. You're typing this on HackerNews, a forum hosted by YCombinator which is the most capitalist and free-market type of organization that exists!

epistasis 5y ago
The comment you're replying to is talking about people who take free-market supremacy as a fundamental axiom that is used as the basis to reject empirical evidence. As in, somebody who would think along the lines "climate change can't actually be a problem, because if it were, the market would have recognized it and be adapting to the problem." Or, "these credit default swaps must be well founded, because it would be impossible for a free market of financial products to misvalue them." Or "The Dvorak keyboard layout must be worse otherwise the free market would have chosen it over QWERTY." These are all real opinions that many people encounter in the real world and have to fight against.
- ericmay 5y ago
  > they take the side of "VHS was better than Betamax", "Climate change isn't real" "Qwerty is better than Dvorak" etc. Which one of these is not like the other? The free-market isn't some entity with a plan. It can't say "well we're going to screw up the whole world if we don't reduce profits now". It also does optimize at times for inefficient local minimums in practice. I don't think what you and the OP I responded to are saying is really consistent at all and I will stand by and continue to criticize someone saying that free market supporters "don't believe climate change is real". That's nonsense. Again, some (not all) would simply argue the market can better handle it than government intervention. I disagree with this but you can't say people who believe in free markets don't believe that it's real. And furthermore, you believe in free markets and you believe it's real right? Or do you not? I'd love to hear a reconciliation of that. > "these credit default swaps must be well founded, because it would be impossible for a free market of financial products to misvalue them." Well if we throw aside government regulation of banks in general (before, during, after, the Fed, the whole shebang), the market would have worked itself out here. Those who took excess risk without understanding it would have failed. It's no different than any other risk taking. Unfortunately the government and banks are socializing losses and privatizing gains here. Many are suggesting in retrospect that we should have let the banks fail, because now that they know they will be bailed out they'll engage in even more risky behavior. The free market is further distorted here. I think it's a really interesting and long conversation to have, but you're oversimplifying it to defend an indefensible position. In other words, you don't get to double-blame the free market. The free market wouldn't have bailed out the banks. It might have created the risky behavior, but the government bailed them out, so we don't get to see the system correct itself. > These are all real opinions that many people encounter in the real world and have to fight against. Yep. I have to all the time talk about and defend things too. People say the second amendment should be abolished, or that we shouldn't have universal health care and they are real things that I have to fight against (I support UHC and 2ndA). Nobody here has some big burden fighting against opinions in the wild any more than anyone else does.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    I don't really understand what's going on here. That comment started with: > Some extreme free-market supporters I'm not asking you either embrace or defend these extreme, incorrect positions. Further, I'm especially not interested in discussing the merits of them, and I don't know why you should feel a need to defend these ridiculous positions, as a free-market supporter, unless you also hold these ridiculous views.
    - ericmay 5y ago
      > I'm not asking you either embrace or defend these extreme, incorrect positions Are there multiple incorrect positions to defend? What I've said is that you can't assume someone who is an "extreme free-market supporter" (what even is this? Maybe they mean even average free market supporters. Idk.) doesn't believe in climate change. More likely, at least based on my own experience and the literature I've read from serious "extreme" free-market thinkers is that they think the market is in a better position than the government to solve the problem. Again I personally disagree, but I don't think that they necessarily hold incorrect, immoral, or irrational views either.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
I explicitly didn't claim to know what they believed. I said they said whatever they were paid to say. In many ways, this makes it worse. You might randomly not trust the science on cigarettes, or fossil fuels, or lead in petrol, etc. etc. But when you consistently show up to defend people who know they are ruining lives for their own private profit because they dont want to face the inconvenience of the competition that the truth would cause, then they're basically bad people. I'm a fan of markets and Adam Smith, but not a fan of the fascism that passes for libertarian thought in the US.
- ericmay 5y ago
  > I’m a fan of markets and Adam Smith, but not a fan of the fascism that passes for libertarian thought in the US. Idk what you’re trying to say here with the rest of your post “they’re paid to say that!” But maybe if you could clear up who you’re talking about when you mention these fascist libertarians that would help. That’s a bit of an oxymoron to me so maybe you are thinking of a different group? > But when you consistently show up to defend people who know they are ruining lives for their own private profit I mean I think that could be the case with many groups, I’m not sure how that’s a libertarian thing? And even so it’s not like many of them don’t truly believe that the market can solve global warming better. Like I think commies genuinely believe that what they espouse is for good, though I know it’s certainly not. I don’t think they’re lying. Do you assume everyone is lying about their motives or just the group you currently disagree with?
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    To be clear up front, I think American libertarianism is just another face of the Republican party and the two work hand in hand and can both be fairly, objectively, factually, and usefully classed as Fascist. (It's not a coincidence that the novel "It can't happen here" called it's American fascism Corporatism.) It's hard to tell how much they believe it themselves, but lots of American Libertarians seem to have grown up in Republican households, logically rejected the more obviously evil and stupid parts of the platform and publicly distance themselves from it but have been unable to shake many of the subconscious beliefs they picked up and so those get expressed through the lens of Libertarianism. This is hard to see when it comes to e.g. welfare as (conveniently) the moral framework has been set up to favour the people who already have the property, which provides a lot of overlap with conservatism, which similarly has a lot of "theory" but also comes down to "protect the wealth and power of the wealthy and powerful". Where they most obviously break their own rules is environmentalism and climate change, where people are reducing the value of other people's property via pollution without getting a contract to allow that. This leads to obvious hypocrisy and some flat out denial. As I mentioned, I like free markets and agree with Adam Smith (though not the Adam Smith Institute, who are exactly the kind of people I'm calling out here), I agree with many of the arguments that Libertarians make when that stuff agrees with their basic purpose. But I continue to agree with what they claim to believe in when it gets awkward for them to do so. So it's annoying to see one get on their high-horse about principles while still supporting mainstream libertarian thought, which is generally going in the opposite direction and reducing competition and entrenching the existing aristocracy at the expense of utility, efficiency and progress.

epistasis 5y ago

The comment you're replying to is talking about people who take free-market supremacy as a fundamental axiom that is used as the basis to reject empirical evidence. As in, somebody who would think along the lines "climate change can't actually be a problem, because if it were, the market would have recognized it and be adapting to the problem." Or, "these credit default swaps must be well founded, because it would be impossible for a free market of financial products to misvalue them." Or "The Dvorak keyboard layout must be worse otherwise the free market would have chosen it over QWERTY." These are all real opinions that many people encounter in the real world and have to fight against.

ericmay 5y ago
> they take the side of "VHS was better than Betamax", "Climate change isn't real" "Qwerty is better than Dvorak" etc. Which one of these is not like the other? The free-market isn't some entity with a plan. It can't say "well we're going to screw up the whole world if we don't reduce profits now". It also does optimize at times for inefficient local minimums in practice. I don't think what you and the OP I responded to are saying is really consistent at all and I will stand by and continue to criticize someone saying that free market supporters "don't believe climate change is real". That's nonsense. Again, some (not all) would simply argue the market can better handle it than government intervention. I disagree with this but you can't say people who believe in free markets don't believe that it's real. And furthermore, you believe in free markets and you believe it's real right? Or do you not? I'd love to hear a reconciliation of that. > "these credit default swaps must be well founded, because it would be impossible for a free market of financial products to misvalue them." Well if we throw aside government regulation of banks in general (before, during, after, the Fed, the whole shebang), the market would have worked itself out here. Those who took excess risk without understanding it would have failed. It's no different than any other risk taking. Unfortunately the government and banks are socializing losses and privatizing gains here. Many are suggesting in retrospect that we should have let the banks fail, because now that they know they will be bailed out they'll engage in even more risky behavior. The free market is further distorted here. I think it's a really interesting and long conversation to have, but you're oversimplifying it to defend an indefensible position. In other words, you don't get to double-blame the free market. The free market wouldn't have bailed out the banks. It might have created the risky behavior, but the government bailed them out, so we don't get to see the system correct itself. > These are all real opinions that many people encounter in the real world and have to fight against. Yep. I have to all the time talk about and defend things too. People say the second amendment should be abolished, or that we shouldn't have universal health care and they are real things that I have to fight against (I support UHC and 2ndA). Nobody here has some big burden fighting against opinions in the wild any more than anyone else does.
- epistasis 5y ago
  I don't really understand what's going on here. That comment started with: > Some extreme free-market supporters I'm not asking you either embrace or defend these extreme, incorrect positions. Further, I'm especially not interested in discussing the merits of them, and I don't know why you should feel a need to defend these ridiculous positions, as a free-market supporter, unless you also hold these ridiculous views.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    > I'm not asking you either embrace or defend these extreme, incorrect positions Are there multiple incorrect positions to defend? What I've said is that you can't assume someone who is an "extreme free-market supporter" (what even is this? Maybe they mean even average free market supporters. Idk.) doesn't believe in climate change. More likely, at least based on my own experience and the literature I've read from serious "extreme" free-market thinkers is that they think the market is in a better position than the government to solve the problem. Again I personally disagree, but I don't think that they necessarily hold incorrect, immoral, or irrational views either.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

I explicitly didn't claim to know what they believed. I said they said whatever they were paid to say. In many ways, this makes it worse. You might randomly not trust the science on cigarettes, or fossil fuels, or lead in petrol, etc. etc. But when you consistently show up to defend people who know they are ruining lives for their own private profit because they dont want to face the inconvenience of the competition that the truth would cause, then they're basically bad people. I'm a fan of markets and Adam Smith, but not a fan of the fascism that passes for libertarian thought in the US.

ericmay 5y ago
> I’m a fan of markets and Adam Smith, but not a fan of the fascism that passes for libertarian thought in the US. Idk what you’re trying to say here with the rest of your post “they’re paid to say that!” But maybe if you could clear up who you’re talking about when you mention these fascist libertarians that would help. That’s a bit of an oxymoron to me so maybe you are thinking of a different group? > But when you consistently show up to defend people who know they are ruining lives for their own private profit I mean I think that could be the case with many groups, I’m not sure how that’s a libertarian thing? And even so it’s not like many of them don’t truly believe that the market can solve global warming better. Like I think commies genuinely believe that what they espouse is for good, though I know it’s certainly not. I don’t think they’re lying. Do you assume everyone is lying about their motives or just the group you currently disagree with?
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  To be clear up front, I think American libertarianism is just another face of the Republican party and the two work hand in hand and can both be fairly, objectively, factually, and usefully classed as Fascist. (It's not a coincidence that the novel "It can't happen here" called it's American fascism Corporatism.) It's hard to tell how much they believe it themselves, but lots of American Libertarians seem to have grown up in Republican households, logically rejected the more obviously evil and stupid parts of the platform and publicly distance themselves from it but have been unable to shake many of the subconscious beliefs they picked up and so those get expressed through the lens of Libertarianism. This is hard to see when it comes to e.g. welfare as (conveniently) the moral framework has been set up to favour the people who already have the property, which provides a lot of overlap with conservatism, which similarly has a lot of "theory" but also comes down to "protect the wealth and power of the wealthy and powerful". Where they most obviously break their own rules is environmentalism and climate change, where people are reducing the value of other people's property via pollution without getting a contract to allow that. This leads to obvious hypocrisy and some flat out denial. As I mentioned, I like free markets and agree with Adam Smith (though not the Adam Smith Institute, who are exactly the kind of people I'm calling out here), I agree with many of the arguments that Libertarians make when that stuff agrees with their basic purpose. But I continue to agree with what they claim to believe in when it gets awkward for them to do so. So it's annoying to see one get on their high-horse about principles while still supporting mainstream libertarian thought, which is generally going in the opposite direction and reducing competition and entrenching the existing aristocracy at the expense of utility, efficiency and progress.