3 ms·

> Why didn't the free market solve this particular problem? The Free Market doesn't care about externalities. Whichever solution produces the desired results

> Why didn't the free market solve this particular problem? The Free Market doesn't care about externalities. Whichever solution produces the desired results for the lowest amount of money wins. If it happens to destroy the environment in the process the market has no idea because the environment isn't on the market. This is the reason regulation exists, and why sometimes regulation causes companies to go out of business, because the regulation can't be applied globally and if there is somewhere else in the world where the environment can be destroyed to produce the product more cheaply then that is what will happen. It is a tragedy that we apply environmental regulation locally when the environment is a shared global resource.

bombcar 5y ago
It's not just the "free market" it's human nature; unless presented with an immediate pressing issue, people will not choose the "best option" in many cases. Smoking is a perfect example, and it goes downhill from there.
- crowbahr 5y ago
  Yes but Ayn Randian free market capitalists insist that the only issue we face is regulation. The point is that no, you cannot live in a utopia and have an unregulated market. The market will greed itself into non-existence.
- scythe 5y ago
  The international economy is a de facto "free" market, or at least freër on the whole than its constituent countries. This can lead to a "race to the bottom", with the most damaging activities concentrated in the most permissive jurisdictions. That's where we — qua humanity — run into trouble.
Workaccount2 5y ago
I think it is more timescales. The effects aren't externalized from the market, they are externalized to some point in the future. Eventually the market will collide with the massive pile of externalities laying in its future path. Lead gas would eventually reach the point of doing so much damage that people wouldn't want to use it anymore, even if it was cheaper. Even if it didn't get to this point, eventually it would be killing/debilitating so many people that it phases itself out.
- jandrese 5y ago
  Yes, if an aspect of the product doesn't directly affect its price on the market today then it is invisible. This is why pure market solutions don't work. But at the same time markets are by far the most efficient way to distribute limited resources so you want to use them as much as you can. You just have to remember that they are no good for solving problems you can't put a price on and you may have to artificially weight the market to account for side effects.
  - Workaccount2 5y ago
    >Yes, if an aspect of the product doesn't directly affect its price on the market today then it is invisible. I'm saying that there is no invisible effect, just so small it can't (initially) be detected. But it is inherently additive, and one day (days, years, centuries, millennia) the market will correct for it.
    - jandrese 5y ago
      The ultimate market correction is when everybody is dead.
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  > Lead gas would eventually reach the point of doing so much damage that people wouldn't want to use it anymore, even if it was cheaper. Even if it didn't get to this point, eventually it would be killing/debilitating so many people that it phases itself out. For that to be the case: (a) you'd have to be able to make the causal link between societal damage and lead from vehicle fuel, which isn't something most people are capable of doing as individuals (b) you'd have to have a choice in the matter as an individual consumer, which you didn't have for cars, because automakers produced engines that (they said) required lead gasoline, and the situation is similar for AV fuel
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
BurningFrog 5y ago
Here is how a free market can solve problems like these: Lead pollution in the air damages people's property. The owners of that property can then sue the lead emitters for damages. This has practical problems when the externality is very small for each emitter and each damaged party, but that's the principle. Typically modern regulations kills this recourse, since if you've followed the regulations, you can't be sued for it. Then the emitters sooner or later capture the regulator, and things go bad anyway.
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  We can certainly stipulate how things should work in a fantasyland where everyone behaves rationally and courts produce principled decisions. But that isn't the world where we actually live. And this is where most of capital-L Libertarian ideology falls apart.
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    This system has a long track record of working pretty well in the real world. I don't deny there are many unrealistic dreamers on "my" side. But that's endemic across all ideological sides.
    - mcguire 5y ago
      Do you have a source for this long track record? Specifically, dealing with externalities?
    - SamBam 5y ago
      How many times has someone successfully sued for some fractional externality that harms them, and was the suit ever enough to effect change? Even if there are one or two cases, that's hardly a "long track record" compared to the inability of private citizens to sue to enact meaningful change in climate change, asbestos, leaded gas, fracking, polluted oceans, acid rain, deforestation, lead in the water, chemicals in our food supply, etc etc etc.
- mcguire 5y ago

bombcar 5y ago

It's not just the "free market" it's human nature; unless presented with an immediate pressing issue, people will not choose the "best option" in many cases. Smoking is a perfect example, and it goes downhill from there.

crowbahr 5y ago
Yes but Ayn Randian free market capitalists insist that the only issue we face is regulation. The point is that no, you cannot live in a utopia and have an unregulated market. The market will greed itself into non-existence.
scythe 5y ago
The international economy is a de facto "free" market, or at least freër on the whole than its constituent countries. This can lead to a "race to the bottom", with the most damaging activities concentrated in the most permissive jurisdictions. That's where we — qua humanity — run into trouble.

Workaccount2 5y ago

I think it is more timescales. The effects aren't externalized from the market, they are externalized to some point in the future. Eventually the market will collide with the massive pile of externalities laying in its future path. Lead gas would eventually reach the point of doing so much damage that people wouldn't want to use it anymore, even if it was cheaper. Even if it didn't get to this point, eventually it would be killing/debilitating so many people that it phases itself out.

jandrese 5y ago
Yes, if an aspect of the product doesn't directly affect its price on the market today then it is invisible. This is why pure market solutions don't work. But at the same time markets are by far the most efficient way to distribute limited resources so you want to use them as much as you can. You just have to remember that they are no good for solving problems you can't put a price on and you may have to artificially weight the market to account for side effects.
- Workaccount2 5y ago
  >Yes, if an aspect of the product doesn't directly affect its price on the market today then it is invisible. I'm saying that there is no invisible effect, just so small it can't (initially) be detected. But it is inherently additive, and one day (days, years, centuries, millennia) the market will correct for it.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    The ultimate market correction is when everybody is dead.
KerrAvon 5y ago
> Lead gas would eventually reach the point of doing so much damage that people wouldn't want to use it anymore, even if it was cheaper. Even if it didn't get to this point, eventually it would be killing/debilitating so many people that it phases itself out. For that to be the case: (a) you'd have to be able to make the causal link between societal damage and lead from vehicle fuel, which isn't something most people are capable of doing as individuals (b) you'd have to have a choice in the matter as an individual consumer, which you didn't have for cars, because automakers produced engines that (they said) required lead gasoline, and the situation is similar for AV fuel
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

BurningFrog 5y ago

Here is how a free market can solve problems like these: Lead pollution in the air damages people's property. The owners of that property can then sue the lead emitters for damages. This has practical problems when the externality is very small for each emitter and each damaged party, but that's the principle. Typically modern regulations kills this recourse, since if you've followed the regulations, you can't be sued for it. Then the emitters sooner or later capture the regulator, and things go bad anyway.

KerrAvon 5y ago
We can certainly stipulate how things should work in a fantasyland where everyone behaves rationally and courts produce principled decisions. But that isn't the world where we actually live. And this is where most of capital-L Libertarian ideology falls apart.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  This system has a long track record of working pretty well in the real world. I don't deny there are many unrealistic dreamers on "my" side. But that's endemic across all ideological sides.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    Do you have a source for this long track record? Specifically, dealing with externalities?
  - SamBam 5y ago
    How many times has someone successfully sued for some fractional externality that harms them, and was the suit ever enough to effect change? Even if there are one or two cases, that's hardly a "long track record" compared to the inability of private citizens to sue to enact meaningful change in climate change, asbestos, leaded gas, fracking, polluted oceans, acid rain, deforestation, lead in the water, chemicals in our food supply, etc etc etc.
mcguire 5y ago