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Old 11-20-2007, 10:37 PM
Mark1808 Mark1808 is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 590
Default Re: Weather Channel Founder says\"Global Warming is Biggest Scam in His

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People who are concerned about generating greenhouse gases are talking steps to reduce. If enough people think it is a problem green house gases will be reduced.

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Do you at least accept the fact that there might be bad results? Unlike the market, the laws of nature don't really respond to individidual preferences.

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Decisons in life are not made with certainty by anything or anyone. There are probabilities and estimates of costs and benefits. Nature and humans are in a constant state of adjustment to maximize utility. To have one person or a small group decide for the good of all when it comes to allocating resources does not seem to be as good as a market based solution. With a market based solution adjustments are constantly made to new information.

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You keep repeating this. Do you accept that some people know these probabilities and risks better than others? Do you accept that allowing the masses (who are uninformed, short sighted and greedy) to make decsions that affect everyone (including those who are more informed, doing the "right" thing) is a bit "unfair"?

You say that the market responds to new information, but there is always a large lag. In the case of environmental damage, this lag may be sufficient to move things into the "too late" case. Your faith in the market borders on religious faith.

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Did you know that within minutes of the 1980's Space Shuttle explosion the company's stock (Morton Thiokol) who made the O ring that caused the explosion sold off about as much as the NPV of the company's actual loss? The market is an amazing mechanisim.

When you go to a grocery store do you count all the items of everyone in front of you and the speed of each cashier to choose your line? Probably not, but believe it or not there would not likely be any gain because the decsions of the people before you have created an effecient system where each line has the same expectation of time.

The Soviet Union had a planned economy where experts decided what was to produced and at what price with disaterous results. Do you ever marvel at the sheer number of goods and services you can purchase 24 / 7 in this country. Why is there usually always plenty available of what you want? Who gave the orders? Who figured it out?

The market is not perfect but it is an effeciency seeking mechanism far more powerfiul than any group of experts. Small adjustments are constantly made based on price and new information that constantly moves to a more effecient allocation of resources.

Know one knows for sure what energy source can replace oil, I know solar is not competitive yet. Through the profit motive solutions will be found to this problem. To those who say the solution is too capital intensive we need government I ask how capital intinsive is the auto industry? Did it not solve a great transportation problem? Was government needed to supply the capital? How about electricity? How about telephones? Government doesn't create capital it takes it by force from the most productive members of society to spend in a way that usually is a complete waste. Education? War on drugs? War on poverty? Postal Service? Welfare?
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