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That is an incredibly naive way of looking at it. The way it usually goes is "everyone is +5, except the village that shares the watershed with the mine" On a

That is an incredibly naive way of looking at it. The way it usually goes is "everyone is +5, except the village that shares the watershed with the mine" On anything but the shortest timeline things like like wealth, health and productivity are fungible at the societal level. If the net cumulative effect of the externalities wasn't smaller than the benefits of the progress then the progress wouldn't happen because more people would be worse off and things would grind to a halt because the gains would be more than offset.

lern_too_spel 5y ago
Not only is it not naive, but avoiding these scenarios woth market regulation is one of the main purposes of modern government. Hence, vaccination policies and CFC regulation. Libertarians like to believe that negative externalities and other market failures don't exist, that the invisible hand is always benevolent, but examples abound for those who do not follow a religion that forbids them from noticing.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >Not only is it not naive, but avoiding these scenarios woth market regulation is one of the main purposes of modern government. Hence, vaccination policies and CFC regulation. Libertarians like to believe that negative externalities and other market failures don't exist, that the invisible hand is always benevolent, but examples abound for those who do not follow a religion that forbids them from noticing. It's still naive, or maybe obtuse. Repeating the "negative externality" buzzword doesn't give you a blank check to peddle your preferred ideology (government intervention/regulation) while crapping on the other team. Without regulation we get lithium batteries and a couple dozen poisoned watersheds. With regulation we get slightly more expensive batteries and fewer poisoned watersheds. Regardless of how you or I or anyone else feels about regulation it's somewhere between farcical and deceitful to pretend that the economic activity in both of those situations doesn't help more than it hurts. If it didn't work this way progress would grind to a halt because the increased material wealth of having the batteries would be more than cancelled out by the problems that poisoned watersheds create, to run with the existing example.
  - lern_too_spel 5y ago
    Examples where most people are worse off are easy to think of. I gave an example where everybody is worse off because it is an interesting scenario. I made no claim about how often that situation occurs. There is no reason for overall progress to grind to a halt — the Nash equilibria for a game can be arbitrarily bad. There is only the obvious conclusion that governments should get involved to fix these problems when they occur, including regulating lead use, given that we see plenty of governments that have not and have suffered the consequences.

lern_too_spel 5y ago

Not only is it not naive, but avoiding these scenarios woth market regulation is one of the main purposes of modern government. Hence, vaccination policies and CFC regulation. Libertarians like to believe that negative externalities and other market failures don't exist, that the invisible hand is always benevolent, but examples abound for those who do not follow a religion that forbids them from noticing.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>Not only is it not naive, but avoiding these scenarios woth market regulation is one of the main purposes of modern government. Hence, vaccination policies and CFC regulation. Libertarians like to believe that negative externalities and other market failures don't exist, that the invisible hand is always benevolent, but examples abound for those who do not follow a religion that forbids them from noticing. It's still naive, or maybe obtuse. Repeating the "negative externality" buzzword doesn't give you a blank check to peddle your preferred ideology (government intervention/regulation) while crapping on the other team. Without regulation we get lithium batteries and a couple dozen poisoned watersheds. With regulation we get slightly more expensive batteries and fewer poisoned watersheds. Regardless of how you or I or anyone else feels about regulation it's somewhere between farcical and deceitful to pretend that the economic activity in both of those situations doesn't help more than it hurts. If it didn't work this way progress would grind to a halt because the increased material wealth of having the batteries would be more than cancelled out by the problems that poisoned watersheds create, to run with the existing example.
- lern_too_spel 5y ago
  Examples where most people are worse off are easy to think of. I gave an example where everybody is worse off because it is an interesting scenario. I made no claim about how often that situation occurs. There is no reason for overall progress to grind to a halt — the Nash equilibria for a game can be arbitrarily bad. There is only the obvious conclusion that governments should get involved to fix these problems when they occur, including regulating lead use, given that we see plenty of governments that have not and have suffered the consequences.