Re: Global Warming
"I think what you're talking about is cost externalities."
Yes, I belive I am
"But the solution is not less capitalism, i.e. more government regulations, interventions, and restriction. The solution is more capitalism"
Perhaps you AC could cope with all this, perhaps some subset of it, perhaps none, I am not interested enough to to all the studying. My point is that I don't see the world going that road, we are not getting more and more capitalism, we are getting more and more interventionalism and more and more tolls and what not. I don't belive that's going to change in a hurry. As you have stated yourself, neither you nor me see any way to go from where we are today to where you want us to be.
This is the "Natedogg argument", the free market can cope and therefor it'll be ok (ok, I'm not doing him justice, but anyway). Even if that is true it is only true if the free market is allowed to solve the problems. And I don't see that happening. I guess we share the same worry, but I am not at all convinced your solution would work. But let's not argue that.
Plus I remain unconvinced because of what wacki says, as it is today I don't see many companys investing in things that will bring revenue 20-30-40 years down the road, or not at all because patents don't last long enough. If it's not going to produce results soon it will be rationalized away as soon as there is a mild downswing in revenue.
"That isn't how "value" is determined."
The fact that I'm not an economist usually means I use economical terms the wrong way...
"How much work or energy went into the creation of a good is completely irrelevent. The only thing that's relevent is how useful it is in satisfying future needs or wants, and how much competition for that good exists in the market. "
What I mean is that the price we pay for many things does not reflect the real cost of it. It comes back to extrnalities again, the price we pay for a flight ticket does not reflect the cost on the environment for that flight. Or the price we pay for fish does not reflect the fact that fisheries are used highly unsustainably. We only pay the price for catching the fish. And to make a stab at you "more capitalism", I'm not at all sure that such problems would be solved by having an owner. I belive that in many cases that owner would seek to enrich himself and don't care about overfishing, since it wouldn't affect him, he'll be rich by the time the waters are empty.
"There's simply no way that humanity working with the available intellectual capital and the technological base that we have now could not solve the "energy problem.""
Well, perhaps you are correct, this would be the "Hirsch argument". There is enough tech. to get us through peak oil, but only if we start implement it in a crash-program style 20 years ahead of time. And if we are actually seeing PO now, as there are some indications we are, we are a bit late at it. If we don't, he argues that we'll basically see depression and a very bumby ride for at least a few decades.
And the combination of that with record levels of debt all over the western world and especially the US, does not look good to me.
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