Comments on: Solving vs. Profiting from Problems

By: Frank

Frank — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 00:31:43 +0000

hkjb makes an interesting Kaldor-Hicks point; I’ll accept it more readily when we have some international mechanisms that can guarantee that the “winners” compensate the “losers.”

The other two commenters inadvertently demonstrate the point of the piece I linked to in the hyperlink “miracle of the market.” They betray a market fundamentalism, an extraordinary unwillingness to accept that the market might just produce bad outcomes.

I am by no means a pollyannish believer in the efficacy of gov’t–see my post on Excesses of Eurocracy from yesterday. Moreover, I realize that forces empowered by market exchange can also capture government regulators:

http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2007/09/the_price_of_a.html

I am just trying to wring some concession of the wisdom of collective action out of fundamentalist atomists who presume without proof that it is always part of a road to serfdom.

By: hkjhbjh

hkjhbjh — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:55:38 +0000

This post sidesteps a significant debate: whether it is more efficient for society to reduce pollution or to design a work-around to allow the world to function even when temperatures are higher. It might be the case that it costs $1 trillion to reduce pollution enough to stop global warming, but only $500M to deal with the consequences of global warming. If this is the case, society should chose the more cost-effective solution.

By: geoff

geoff — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 20:12:37 +0000

Are you kidding with this, Frank? There are two business models for responding to these crises? Did you happen to notice that this allegedly complete universe of responses both actually entail government domination of the process? Klein is a demogogue, at best. She is so blind that she actually thinks that she has offered a “government can guide the course gently” solution and a “the market left to its own devices will just perpetuate war and class conflict.” But how does a thinking person miss the fact that the solutions she offers are actually just two different versions of “government does it?” One is shiny and happy and the other is ominous and mean. Naomi — and you — believe that shiny and happy will predominate. I believe you are kidding yourselves. Either way, you’re not giving the market–which, unlike government, has never started a war–a chance at all, even though you think you’re talking about the market here. Naomi doesn’t even begin to “raise serious questions [I'm tempted to just end the quotation here] about whether market forces will lead to clean energy.” This is crappy scholarship, even for blogging. Quote a stupid demogogue’s demogoguery as “fact,” fail to question the glaring idiocy of that quote, and then, QED, conclude that the market is evil. Nice going, Frank.

Oh, and, yes, I’m suspicious of military spending as all free marketeers (libertarians) are (for some reason you claim to be talking about “conservative” market defenders. Who are these people? Most of the Republicans I see running for office are practically as anti-market as the next guy, they just use better rhetoric). But that’s just the point: It’s your precious and noble government that gets us into and spends money on war. Even — horrors — Democrats! As I said, the market never started a war. By all means, while reducing the size of the bloated government, reduce military budgets, as well. But while you are picking and choosing all the ways to expand the government (the litany of Frank Pasquale-endorsed paternalistic endeavors aimed at crushing those evil “positional goods”), you should realize that over-spending on military is far more likely to accompany overall overspending than a mindset devoted to shrinking the government and promoting the market. You should realize this, but I’m not holding my breath.

By: Maryland Conservatarian

Maryland Conservatarian — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:18:25 +0000

…and the alternative to markets is what? a select group of elites doing what is best for the rest of us?…I hope you can appreciate why those of us who would be ideologically ineligible to be part of that elite group (you know, because we’re registered Republicans, Fed Society members and/or Pro-Life) are skeptical