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>> you don't want expensive peaker plants to stop getting paid It never ceases to amaze me just how absurd capitalism can be. It's the best system we know of s
by CraigJPerry 5y ago
>> you don't want expensive peaker plants to stop getting paid
It never ceases to amaze me just how absurd capitalism can be. It's the best system we know of so far but it falls massively short of good enough in its current form.
What you've said follows perfect capitalist logic. And yet, what you've said incentivises those plant operators to ensure there's more outages. Nothing they can do - whether that be to make their operation leaner or make their generation more efficient or whatever else, nothing can compare to a 350x increase in pay per megawatt hour produced for $0 investment.
- dotancohen 5y ago> best system we know of so far Best by what measure? I know many people who disagree that a social system that objectively benefits those with capital (it's even in the name) is best.
- throwaway6734 5y agoEmpirical results? Global poverty has plummeted over the last 80 years and innovation is through the roof
- pessimizer 5y agoNext time leave China out of the calculation.
- kylebyproxy 5y agoThe issue is we don't have anything useful to compare those results against. Any other system in place over the same period in history could have just as easily yielded the same net result.
- philwelch 5y agoCompare the standard of living in East vs West Germany or North vs South Korea.
- throwaway6734 5y agoWould this happen to be the same philwelch of Tuesday?
- philwelch 5y agoI’m the same philwelch every day of the week.
- DanHulton 5y agoI get your point, but I think a true reckoning of capitalism is going to have to include a longer time frame. Specifically, our utter inability to adapt to climate change due to the demands of the market to be ever-growing is doing to have to be factored in, not to mention it's built-in wealth-concentrating tendencies. It's hard to look at the trajectory of society and the world right now and expect the prosperity boom of capitalism to continue. A lot of people just don't see that boom at all. They're living objectively miserable lives under capitalism, and there's no capitalist incentive to change that.
- throwaway6734 5y ago>utter inability to adapt to climate change due to the demands of the market to be ever-growing is doing to have to be factored in Market based capitalism can handle the negative effects of climate change if producers are forced to pay for the negative impacts they produce. >it's built-in wealth-concentrating tendencies. Which economic system doesn't have this? >A lot of people just don't see that boom at all. They're living objectively miserable lives under capitalism, and there's no capitalist incentive to change that. >A lot of people just don't see that boom at all. Who do you have in mind here?
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Market based capitalism can handle the negative effects of climate change if producers are forced to pay for the negative impacts they produce. Market-based capitalism could have handled climate change if we had perfect advance information about the infinite horizon adverse effects before it started, and had priced that into actions by pigovian taxes from the beginning of the industrial revolution. We don't have that information now, and the people against whom such costs would be assessed have incentive to (and actively expend resources) preventing consensus based on the information we do have to prevent the information we do have from being applied that way.
- DanHulton 5y ago> Which economic system doesn't have this? I mean, there are many branches of socialism devoted quite strongly to this. You could call them a core tenet. > Who do you have in mind here? You have to have a serious failure of imagination to believe that everyone's just having a party under capitalism. To pick just one example out of thousands, have you heard of the homeless? Your incredulity is painfully inauthentic and detracts from whatever argument you think you're making.